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The orphoepic norm of english (rp) and its types

The conditions for a variety of English pronunciation to be accepted as the orthoepic norm are

  1. recognition of the fact that RP has the “prestige accent”; the presence of factors that encourage standardization of pronunciation.

  2. Registering/recording the well-established variants of pronunciation by the pronouncing dictionariesWide currency, conformity to the main phonetic tendencies, social acceptability.

  3. Intolerance of dialectal pronunciation and variants of non-standard pronunciation; a non-regional character of pronunciation.

All the national types of English pronunciation have many features in common because they are of common origin. At the same time, they have a varying number of differences due to the new conditions of their development after separation from British English and to the degree of their connection with British English after that separation.

At present, there may be distinguished the following types of cultivated English:

  1. Southern English Pronunciation, or RP;

  2. Northern English Pronunciation;

  3. Standard Scottish Pronunciation.

Features:

???Different approaches to syllable division in English

The sounds of language can be grouped into syllables accord. to certain rules. The part of phonetics that deals with this aspect is called phonotactics. The problem of syl division exists in case of intervocalic consonants and their clusters like in words city, agree, extra. Theoretically two variants are possible: a) the point of syllable division is after the intervocalic consonant; b) the point of syllable division is inside the cons-t. In both cases the 1st syl-le remains closed according to phonotactic rules of the E language, because the short vowel should remained checked. The results of instrumental analysis show that the point of syllable division in words like pity, topic, Bobby is inside the intervocalic consonant. In E the stressed syllable in the structure (C)VCV(C) is always closed if the syllabic vowel is short and checked.

There are two authentic sources for looking up syllable boundary of any given word in E: EPD (Cambridge Engl Pronouncing Dict-y) and LPD (Longman). The two sources agree on the following: 1. Compounds should be divided into syllables according to the morphological principle: hard-ware. 2. A single consonant which appears between two syllables after a short stressed vowel should be attached to the preceding vowel: bett|er. However there are differences as to where to put a consonant which follows a long vowel or a diphthong. EPD attaches a single word-medial consonant to the following syllable (Maximal Onset principle): la.dy, in.vi.ted, while LPD puts all word-medial single consonants and clusters to the stressed syllable (Maximal Stress principle): lad y, in vit ed. Thus the word window will be differently attested in the two dictionaries due to the two different principles of syllable division: EPD win.dow, LPD wind ow. Experimental evidence, as reported from British sources by Alan Crutenden, shows that following a long vowel a consonant was syllabified with the following syllable which supports EPD: la-dy. The retention stage of a consonant belongs to the previous short vowel, while the release is with the next syllable. In fact, the boundary between the two syllables runs within the medial consonant: city [sit-ti] better [bet-t`].

Theories on syllable formation and division (подходит для билета 15)

Speech can be broken into minimal pronounceable units into which sounds show a tendency to cluster or group. These smallest phonetic groups arc generally given the name of syllables. Being the smallest pronounceable units, syllables form morphemes, words and phrases. Each of these units is characterized by a certain syllabic structure. Thus a meaningful language unit phonetically may be considered from the point of view of syllable formation and syllable division.

Билет 18