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Stress is a prominent feature of the English language, both at the level of the word (lexical stress) and at the level of the phrase or sentence (prosodic stress).Absence of stress on a syllable, or on a word in some cases, is frequently associated in English with vowel reduction – many such syllables are pronounced with a centralized vowel or with certain other vowels that are described as ...
In the approach used by the Longman Pronunciation Dictionary, Wells [81] claims that consonants syllabify with the preceding rather than following vowel when the preceding vowel is the nucleus of a more salient syllable, with stressed syllables being the most salient, reduced syllables the least, and full unstressed vowels ("secondary stress ...
The effect may be dependent on lexical stress (for example, the unstressed first syllable of the word photographer contains a schwa / f ə ˈ t ɒ ɡ r ə f ər /, whereas the stressed first syllable of photograph does not /ˈfoʊtəˌɡræf-ɡrɑːf/), or on prosodic stress (for example, the word of is pronounced with a schwa when it is ...
In most cases, unstressed syllables may have one of five vowels (/a, e, i, o, u/), but there is sometimes an unpredictable tendency for /e/ to merge with /i/ and /o/ to merge with /u/. For instance, some speakers pronounce the first syllable of dezembro ("December") differently from the first syllable of dezoito ("eighteen"), with the latter ...
In pronunciation handbooks and dictionaries it is now common to use the symbol /i/ to cover both possibilities. In a number of words where contemporary RP has an unstressed syllable with schwa /ə/, older pronunciations had /ɪ/, for instance, the final vowel in the following: kindness, doubtless, witness, witless, toilet, fortunate. [106]
In many dialects, /r/ occurs only before a vowel; if you speak such a dialect, simply ignore /r/ in the pronunciation guides where you would not pronounce it, as in cart /kɑːrt/. In other dialects, /j/ (yes) cannot occur after /t, d, n/, etc., within the same syllable; if you speak such a dialect, then ignore the /j/ in transcriptions such as ...
In non-rhotic varieties with the shift, it also encompasses the unstressed syllable of letters with the stressed variant of /ɪ/ being realized with a schwa-like quality . As a result, the vowels in kit /kət/ , lid /ləd/ and miss /məs/ belong to the same phoneme as the unstressed vowel in balance /ˈbæləns/ .
Vowel reductions in unstressed syllables: /oː/ became /ɑ/ in final syllables, but usually appears as o in medial syllables (although a and u both appear). /æ/ and /i/ (if not deleted by high-vowel loss) became /e/ in final syllables. /u/ normally became /o/ in a final syllable except when absolutely word-final. [16]