Suprasegmentals
10 Connected Speech
John M. Levis and Kate Challis
Learning Objectives
To familiarize teachers with connected speech:
- normal spoken form vs. citation/dictionary form
- To enhance teachers’ ability to teach connected speech to students
- To introduce teachers to high-frequency phrases in English that are often pronounced using these 6 categories of connected speech
- To provide exercises for the most common connected speech phrases in English
Outline
10.1 What is connected speech?
Most people have noticed that there are often differences between the dictionary pronunciation of a word (its citation form) and the way it is pronounced when combined with other words in spoken language (its normal form). These differences happen because of the effects of connected speech on the expected pronunciations of words (Alameen & Levis, 2015). When people speak English naturally, their words are usually linked together smoothly without breaks between them. Sometimes, this leaves vowel and consonant sounds mostly the same, linking the sounds of one word to the sounds of another. Sometimes, connecting one word to another is done by adding sounds, deleting sounds, or changing sounds to make articulation smoother. These changes are completely normal but may make it challenging for English language learners to recognize words that they know in isolation.
Normal spoken form vs. dictionary form
The normal spoken form of a word refers to how it is commonly pronounced in natural speech. This form often includes elements of connected speech that connect adjacent sounds. Variations in the normal spoken form of a word may signal register variation (e.g., walking vs. walkin’) and regional accent differences (e.g., FRUStrate vs. frusTRATE).
The dictionary form, also known as the “citation form”, is the standardized pronunciation and form of a word as presented in dictionaries. It is a prescriptive, idealized pronunciation that does not account for speech context. This form provides a clear reference for how a word is articulated in isolation, without the influence of surrounding words or the rhythm of normal speech.
Types of Connected Speech Processes
There are many different ways connected speech processes can be categorized. Processes such as linking, insertion, deletion, and reduction occur within words (e.g., fact [fækt] vs. facts [fæks]), but in this chapter, we describe connected speech processes as occurring across word boundaries. We provide some examples of the following types of connected speech: linking, deletion, insertion, modification, reduction, and multiple processes.
Linking is perhaps the most fundamental feature of connected speech. Linking occurs in all languages in different ways. Linking has been part of English for centuries, but there are no prescribed rules for when linking occurs. In an example of linking, the final [k] in The bike is stolen will connect to the vowel in is, so the sentence will be spoken as “The by kiss stolen.” In