LCD720 – 04/16/08

Pronunciation and orthography

AnnouncementsHomework• Look at the lesson plan, and answer the

following questions.a. What is being taught?b. Which of the five stages of pronunciation teaching

are covered. Give examples, and explain why each activity fits a certain stage.

c. What are the strong points of this lesson plan? What are its weaker points?

d. What would you do to improve this lesson plan, and why?a. E.g., change activities, add more activities, or

different order?

Homework

• Select an activity from Phonics they use, Chapter 2– Can you modify these activities for older

children and adult? (If so, how?)– Consider:

• What is the objective of the activity?• Do you think the activity will be effective? Why?

Interfaces, or How pronunciation is involved in other parts of language

knowledge and skills

• Listening: perception

• Grammar

• Orthography (spelling)Today

English spelling

• How regular is English spelling?– Not regular because …– Regular because …

Vowel pairs• Consider these pairs

– fat fate– pet Pete– bit bite– mop mope

• -VCe indicates that the vowel is pronounced as a ‘long vowel’

• Note that these are not the tense-lax pairs we know from the vowel quadrant…

short/lax vowels

long/tense vowels

Vowel pairs:Phonologically

FRONT CENTRAL BACK

HIGH

MID

LOW

boot uw

ɪ bit

ey bait

ɛ bet

æ bat

put ʊ

boat ow

more ɔ

bomb ɑ

ə Rosaʌ butt

iy beet

æ/ey: fat/fate ɛ/iy: pet/Peteɪ/ay: bit/bite ɑ/ow: mop/mope

Vowel pairs:Orthographically

FRONT CENTRAL BACK

HIGH

MID

LOW

boot uw

ɪ bit

ey bait

ɛ bet

æ bat

put ʊ

boat ow

more ɔ

bomb ɑ

ə Rosaʌ butt

iy beet

æ/ey: fat/fate ɛ/iy: pet/Peteɪ/ay: bit/bite ɑ/ow: mop/mope

Why this difference?

Vowel pairs

• The same vowel pairs can also be signaled as follows– In multisyllabic words: Consonant doubling for short

vowels• latter later• mopping moping

– In monosyllabic words: Vowel digraphs (instead of -e) for long vowels

• bait, heat, loan• These vowel pairs have a historical origin

– The Early Middle English Vowel Shortening rule, and– The Great Vowel Shift

The Great Vowel ShiftBetween 1400 and 1600 the long vowels changed

Middle English

Modern English

Middle

English

Modern English

mice [mi:s] [mays] [i:] [ay]

mouse [mu:s] [maws] [u:] [aw]

geese [ge:s] [giys] [e:] [iy]

goose [go:s] [guws] [o:] [uw]

break [brɛ:ken] [breyk] [ɛ:] [ey]

broke [brɔ:ken] [browk] [ɔ:] [ow]

name [na:mə] [neym] [a:] [ey]

The Great Vowel Shift

FRONT CENTRAL BACK

HIGH

MID

LOW

u:

e:

ɛ:

o:

ɔ:

a:

i:

away

The colon indicates long vowels,e.g., /i:/ is similar to our /iy/

The Great Vowel Shift

• That is why the vowels sound differently in pairs like divine-divinity; please-pleasant; serene-serenity; crime-criminal– First, the vowels sounded the same– Then, there was the Early Middle English

Vowel Shortening rule• E.g., divinity i => ɪ

– Finally, there was The Great Vowel Shift• E.g., divine i => ay• The Great Vowel Shift didn’t affect divinity,

because the [i] had already been changed to [ɪ]

Can you think of

more pairs?

Appendix 9, p. 387

English spelling is more regular than you’d think

• English retains many older spellings– It retains information about pronunciation in earlier

stages• divine/divinity; sane/sanity

• It retains etymological information– Silent b in debt, because of the Latin root

• It spells certain morphemes consistently– cats and dogs (s for [s] and [z])

• English spelling doesn’t represent pronunciation exactly– But that makes written English mutually intelligible (cf.

American, British, Australian accents)

• Some more regularities

The letters c and g

• The letter c can represent /s/ and /k/– /s/

• Before certain vowels: e, i, y• Before silent -e: ice, piece• Mnemonic: center-circle-cycle

– /k/• In clusters: clean, crime• With k: sick, jacket• Word-finally: tic, chic, zinc• Before certain vowels: a, o, u

This explains:electric – electricity

criticize – criticalmedicine – medication

deduce - deduction

The letters c and g

• The letter g can represent /g/, /ʤ/ and /ʒ/– /g/

• In clusters: grass, grumpy• Word-finally: log, bag• Before certain vowels: a, o, u• Before e and i in Germanic words: get, give

– /ʤ/• Before e, i, y in Romance words: gentle, giant,

gyro– /ʒ/

• French-sounding words in -ge: beige, garage

This explains:analogy – analog(ue)prodigious - prodigal

The letters c and g

• /g/ or /ʤ/? Why?– got– gin– dig– green– get– gesture– German

• Why is there a u in guess and guilty?

The letter x

• The letter x can represent /ks/, /gz/ and /z/– /ks/ in extra, laxity, box– /gz/ between vowels, before a stressed

syllable: exact, example– /z/ in initial position: xylophone, xerox

Invisible y

• Addition of /y/– Before /uw/ if it’s spelled as eu, ew or u

/y/ no /y/• feud, few crew• eucalyptus rude• heuristic, pew• menu, music• confuse• unity, humid

– NAE: Except after t, d, s, z, n, l, x (e.g., new)

Exceptafter r

Invisible y and palatalization:/ʃ, ʧ, ʒ, ʤ, y, kʃ/

• Palatalization of /s, t, d, ks/– /s+y/ → /ʃ/ issue– /t+y/ → /ʧ/ virtue– /d+y/ → /ʤ/ arduous– /ks+y/ → /kʃ/ sexual

• Always with certain word endings– e.g., vacation, question, expression, revision,

measure

Silent consonant letters• We know that the vowel e can be silent

– E.g., bite, worked

• Consonants can also be silent– knee, gnat, pneumonia, mnemonic– psychology, write– Why are these consonants silent?

• Some silent letters are pronounced in related words– crumb-crumble; sign-signify, paradigm-paradigmatic– Why?

Practice

• How would you write these nonsense words? Why?– Transcribe them– Propose one or more plausible spellings– Explain your choice of spelling

1. pæf

2. kʌʧ

3. dɪnʧ

4. kweyt

5. drɑk

6. kiym

7. ʤæplX

8. sɛri

9. kayp

10.wown

Other writing systems

• ESL learners may have a writing system that is very different from English– Alphabetic systems with different letters

• Greek, Korean, Cyrillic, Arabic• Note: In Hebrew only consonants are written

(although vowels can be used too)

– Characters in Chinese

Chinese• Chinese has characters

– Each character represents a word or morpheme– Chinese doesn’t have a lot of inflections, so it doesn’t

needs many extra characters for them

• Chinese readers need to know about 5,000 characters to be able to read a newspaper

• There is now a spelling system based on the Roman alphabet: pinyin– Used for internet and foreign visitors

Chinese dragon

traditional simplified

long2

pinyin

Teaching spelling

• There are too many regularities to address them all

• Don’t present too many regularities at once– This will overload the students’ working memory– Present a few regularities and exceptions

• Give a lot of examples– When there are many rules and exceptions, it’s often

easier to learn by analogy to examples

• Watch out for ‘spelling pronunciation’• How would you teach spelling at different levels,

and to students of different ages?

Phonological and phonemic awareness

• Everything so far assumes phonological and phonemic awareness:– Phonological awareness:

• The ability to separate sequences into words, words into syllables, and syllables into onsets and rimes; and to manipulate these

– Phonemic awareness• The ability to recognize that words are made up of a discrete

set of sounds, and to manipulate these individual sounds

• Children and non-literate adults need to develop phonological and phonemic awareness

Reflection

• Do you believe there is any relation between a learner’s ability to spell English and the ability to pronounce it? Why or why not?

• Do you feel that the concept of “long” and “short” vowels is useful for understanding the relationship between English spelling and pronunciation? Why or why not?

• Do you agree or disagree with the commonly heard statement that English spelling is unsystematic? Explain.

• Do you think English spelling should be reformed? Why or why not?

Next week

• Read Phonics they use, Chapter 14– What do you think of the author’s “personal

phonics history”?– Select one or two things you found the most

interesting about• how good readers read words• about how children learn to read words?

For example, what did you not know yet, or what can you use in your classroom?

• Practice homework about orthography