Odd one out: adjectives

I took some of the words from dictionary.com. 

Ex. Each of the following sets of adjectives consists of three words which are synonyms or near-synonyms and one word whose meaning is different. Choose the word which is different.

1. gaudy; garish; perky; chintzy
2. impressionable; gullible; naive; impregnable
3. mauve; bland; dull; insipid
4. antediluvian; prehistoric; primordial; precarious
5. bubbly; flabby; sparkling; effervescent
6. vitriolic; harsh; scathing; meretricious
7. apt; irrespective; pertinent; germane
8. bereft; deprived; pernicious; lacking
9. inclement; tempestuous; stormy; feigned
10. imperial; royal; regal; infernal
11. immodest; boastful; bragging; indecent
12. incandescent; loquacious; luminous; radiant
13. bemused; perused; perplexed; befuddled

In the following examples the items are idioms and other phrases used as adjectives.

14. off colour; under the weather; right as rain; below par
15. on cloud nine; as happy as Larry; over the moon; over the hill

KEY
1. perky, 2. impregnable, 3. mauve, 4. precarious, 5. flabby, 6. meretricious, 7. irrespective, 8. pernicious, 9. feigned, 10. infernal, 11. indecent, 12. loquacious, 13. perused, 14. right as rain, 15. over the hill

Word stress: The '-able' suffix

 The word able is pronounced /'eɪbəl/ or /'eɪbl̩/. The difference in transcription is just a matter of how we treat the syllabic allophone of /l/, i.e. whether we write the schwa /ə/ symbol or a stroke under the /l/. Some sources regard this unstressed vowel as /ʊ/. The diphthong /eɪ/ occurs in words like table, cable, fable and the name Mabel. 

By contrast, the suffix -able does not have a stressed vowel at all and is pronounced /-əbəl/ or /-əbl̩/. Many foreign speakers of English stress the suffix unnecessarily, which can make the word impossible for listeners to understand. Anecdotal examples include a Polish speaker of English pronouncing comfortable as come for table.

The suffix -ible has same pronunciation as -able.

Ex. 1 Put the following words containing -able in two categories: a. with a stressed sound /eɪ/ or b. with the unstressed /ə/. Which syllable carries primary stress?

preferable, publishable, vegetable, stable, unstable, capable, comfortable, drinkable, portable, irreconcilable, indescribable, unfathomable, unbreakable, sable, remarkable

Ex. 2 Do the following words contain -able or -ible?

leg__ble, illeg__ble, ed__ble, imagin__ble, ined__ble, respons__ble, permiss__ble, inflamm__ble

KEY

1. a. stable - 1st, unstable - 2nd, sable - 1st

b. preferable, publishable, vegetable, capable, comfortable, drinkable, portable - 1st, irreconcilable - 4th, indescribable - 3rd, unfathomable, unbreakable, remarkable - 2nd

2. Inflammable and imaginable have "a"; all the other words have "i"

Linking sounds: /j/, /w/ and /r/

 In February 2019 I wrote a post about linking and intrusive /r/ in connected speech. Linking /j/ and /w/ work in a similar way:

a. linking /j/ connects /iː/, [i] or a diphthong ending in /-ɪ/ to the next word which begins with a vowel,
b. linking /w/ connects /uː/ or a diphthong ending in /-ʊ/ to the next word which begins with a vowel,
c. /r/ is used after the remaining vowel sounds: /ɑː/, /ɜː/, /ɔː/, /ɪə/, /eə/, /ʊə/, /ə/.

Ex. Read the following sentences and find the places where you should use a linking /j/ or /w/.

1. I think it's great news for you and me.
2. Did you see Alan's car yesterday? It's blue and green.
3. Sue and Ray have a cow and five chickens. 
4. Ray always says he is fed up with the hard work.
5. Joe isn't fond of coffee or tea; he drinks water instead.
6. Germany is larger than Austria and Switzerland. 
7. 'How about a day at the beach?' 'But it's windy outside. I don't want the wind to blow in my face.'

Are there any places where we use a linking or intrusive /r/?

KEY

1. you /w/ and, 2. see /j/ Alan's; blue /w/ and, 3. Sue /w/ and; cow /w/ and, 4. Ray /j/ always; he /j/ is, 5. Joe /w/ isn't; coffee /j/ or, 6. Germany /j/ is, 7. How /w/ about; day /j/ at; windy /j/ outside; blow /w/ in

/r/: 5. water /r/ instead; 6. Austria /r/ or

Devoicing of voiced consonants

Voice and voicelessness in English consonants can be a complicated topic. Describing the phonology of English has never been an objective of this blog, which is why in today's post I describe the basics which can be confusing to Polish students of English in particular and may also be similarly difficult to speakers of other languages where the devoicing of consonants works in a comparable way, e.g. other Slavic languages, German or Finnish.

English has a few pairs of voiced-voiceless consonants, namely /b/-/p/, /d/-/t/, /g/-/k/, /v/-/f/, /z/-/s/, /ð/-/θ/, /ʒ/-/ʃ/, /dʒ/-/tʃ/. All of these are separate phonemes, distinct categories in the English speaker's mind. In languages such as Polish in some environments (around voiceless consonants, at the end of a word) a voiced consonant clearly becomes a voiceless one: the word mewa 'seagull' has /v/ represented by the letter <w>, but the Genitive plural mew before a pause contains /f/, as does mewka, a diminutive form (a small or young seagull) with the sequence /fk/ represented by <wk>. The same could be said about /b/ in żaba 'frog' and /p/ in żab 'frog-Gen-pl' and żabka 'little frog'.

Now when we look at the English words bird and frog, we will see that they are not spelt phonemically the same as Bert and frock respectively. Even though the /d/ and /g/ are devoiced at the end of a word before a pause or a consonant (i.e. excluding the bird is, the frogs where /d/ and /g/ clearly remain), these are not the same as /t/ or /k/. What is the difference then and why do English speakers distinguish between these consonants?

The difference lies in two things: vowel length and fortis-lenis. Before a voiced consonant, even when devoiced, the vowel is a fraction of a second longer: a short vowel becomes relatively longer (but we do not use the length mark [ː] to indicate that) and a long vowel or diphthong becomes even slightly longer than it would be when followed by a voiceless sound. The fortis-lenis distinction is just a Latin way of naming the force or loudness with which consonants are produced. A voiceless consonant like /p/, /s/ or /f/ is pronounced somewhat more loudly than a devoiced version (allophone) of /b/, /z/ or /v/. 

In the 20th century linguists described devoicing in English as partial. These days, however, they tend to write about devoicing, though bearing in mind that a devoiced consonant does not sound identical to a voiceless one.

Devoicing matters in learning about the pronunciation of the Past Simple or past participle <-ed> as well as the Present Simple, plural or possessive (Saxon genitive) <-s>, <-es> and <-'s>. When a textbook mentions that /d/ or /z/ should be pronounced after a voiced consonant, semi-vowel or vowel, that does not mean no devoicing can occur - that depends on the environment, the surrounding sounds or pauses. The vowel length and fortis-lenis differences apply regardless.

As time goes by and pronunciation changes some new distinctions can appear and others can be lost. One good example is /ʍ/, the voiceless equivalent of /w/. Nowadays heard in the speech of some speakers of regional dialects in the UK and the USA, it was the recommended standard pronunciation of <wh> in words like what, when, where, whale, overwhelm and whence. These days the distinction is omitted e.g. in RP-based pronunciation textbooks and words like whales and Wales are treated as homophones.

The final remark is that what I know about the issue is based on studying British RP and occasionally learning about the American GA accent. Other rules may apply in Englishes spoken by native speakers, bilinguals or non-natives around the world.

I deliberately used no reference sources to create this post. Let me know in the comments if anything requires correction. I may be a linguist but I do not consider myself an expert on the theoretical side of phonology.

2020 Halloween Special

I used Tophonetics.com to transcribe some of the answers.

 Ex. Match the trivia about Gothic and horror literature with the phonemic transcription of the answers. Then write the answers using ordinary English spelling.

1. the most famous vampire, described in a novel by Bram Stoker

2. the evil alien clown from Stephen King's novel IT

3. the author of Psycho and other horror and science-fiction novels

4. the main character of a novel by Ira Levin, who falls prey to her husband and evil neighbours

5. In E. A. Poe's famous poem the mysterious raven repeats this one word

6. the monster Dr Jekyll turns into in R. L. Stevenson's novel

7. Stephen King's novel about a family trapped in a haunted hotel

8. H. P. Lovecraft's most famous evil alien

a. /'nevəmɔː/ b. /ˈdrækjələ/ c. /ˈrəʊzməri/ d. /'kθuːluː/ e. /ˈmɪstə haɪd/ f. /ˈpeniwaɪz/ g. /ˈrɒbət blɒk/ h. /ðə ˈʃaɪnɪŋ/

Key. 1b Dracula, 2f Pennywise, 3g Robert Bloch, 4c Rosemary, 5a nevermore, 6e Mister Hyde, 7h The Shining, 8d Cthulhu

Avoiding Polish "ą" and "ę" in English pronunciation

The sound inventory of Polish contains two phonemes which are treated as vowels even though phonetically speaking, they are diphthongs in which a non-nasal vowel is followed by a nasal semi-vowel. They are "ą" /ɔ̃/ and "ę" /ɛ̃/. Polish speakers of English may sometimes mishear and mispronounce e.g. the English vowel /æ/ or the sequence /en/ as /ɛ̃/ and the diphthong /əʊ/ or the sequence /ɒn/ as /ɔ̃/. In some cases the problem appears to lie in misinterpreting English spelling rather than mishearing a given word. Here we omit cases where in many native English accents vowel allophones are actually nasalised (e.g. in southern dialects of American English). 

N.B. There exist some borrowings from French in which the French nasal vowels close to /ɔ̃/ or /ɛ̃/ can be pronounced in a somewhat French manner. This group includes the words restaurant, genre, blancmange, croissant and pain (au chocolat), enfant (terrible).

Ex. In each set below there is pseudo-phonetic Polish transcription of common errors accompanied by the prescribed RP pronunciation in IPA. Write the words transcribed.

e.g. "kęt" /kɑːnt/ can't

a. "dęs" /dɑːns/   b. "częs" /tʃɑːns/   c. "frędz" /frendz/   d. "fręs" /frɑːns/
e. "pęz" /pænz/   f. "tęz" /tænz/   g. "hąk" /hɒŋk/   h. "dąt" /dəʊnt/
i. "łąt" /wəʊnt/   j. "łąt" /wɒnt/   k. "frąt" /frʌnt/   l. "ęt" /ænt/   m. "ęt" /ɑːnt/
n. "ęt" /ænd/ or weak forms /ən(d)/   o. "tąp" /tuːm/   p. "bąb" /bɒm/
q. "strąk" /strɒŋ/   r. "rąk" /rɒŋ/

KEY
a. dance, b. chance, c. friends, d. France, e. pans, f. tans, g. honk, h. don't, i. won't, j. want, k. front, l. ant, m. aunt, n. and, o. tomb, p. bomb, q. strong, r. wrong

Silent letters

This is a post about letters, particularly consonantal ones, which are not pronounced. The most common cases have been omitted, e.g. the "-e" in take.

Ex. In each set choose the word which is pronounced differently from the remaining words. Indicate which letter is or is not silent.

a. past - bath - party - logically
b. dumb - plumber - number - tomb
c. school - cause - muscle - cane
d. obtain - doubt - debt - bomb
e. castle - thistle - jostle - mostly
f. thyme - thick - thin - three
g. signing - reign - benign - ginger
h. hotel - honour - horror - hostel
i. heir - hair - hourly - honestly
j. folk - yolk - bulk - stalk
k. Malmö - palm - calmer - embalm
l. knowledge - acknowledge - knead - kneel
m. hymn - condemn - damnation - damn
n. pterodactyl - psalm - upside - psychology
o. corps - corpse - corporal - copious
p. choir - chorus - technical - church
q. gullet - ballet - bouquet - valet
r. fax - faux - lax - box
s. singsong - parson - lesson - person
t. wrapper - lower - whistle - white
u. wear - weary - more - merely
v. amazing - zany - lazy - rendezvous

KEY
a. logically silent "a",
b. number non-silent "b" (but number, the comparative of numb, also has a silent "b") ,
c. muscle silent "c" ("sc" pronounced /s/)
d. obtain non-silent "b"
e. mostly non-silent "t"
f. thyme silent "h" ("th" pronounced /t/)
g. ginger non-silent second "g"
h. honour silent "h"
i. hair non-silent "h" (in RP)
j. bulk non-silent "l"
k. Malmö non-silent "l"

l. knowledge non-silent "n"

m. damnation non-silent "n"

n. upside non-silent "p"

o. corps silent "p" (actually the entire word is pronounced just /kɔː/)

p. church both "h"s in "ch" are pronounced

q. gullet non-silent "t"

r. faux "x" is silent

s. singsong non-silent "o" (no syllabic /n/)

t. wrapper silent "w"

u. weary non-silent "r" (in RP)

v. rendezvous silent "z"