Transcript LCD720 – 04/16/08 - City University of New York

LCD720 – 04/22/09
Pronunciation and orthography
Announcements
Homework
• 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
–
–
–
–
-VCØ
fat
pet
bit
mop
æ
ɛ
ɪ
ɑ
short/lax
vowels
-VCe
fate
Pete
bite
mope
ey
iy
ay
ow
long/tense
vowels
• -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…
Vowel pairs:
Phonologically
FRONT
CENTRAL
iy beet
HIGH
boot uw
ɪ bit
put ʊ
ey bait
MID
LOW
BACK
ɛ bet
æ bat
æ/ey: fat/fate
ɪ/ay: bit/bite
boat ow
ə Rosa
ʌ butt
more
ɔ
bomb ɑ
ɛ/iy: pet/Pete
ɑ/ow: mop/mope
Vowel pairs:
Orthographically
FRONT
CENTRAL
iy beet
HIGH
LOW
BACK
boot uw
ɪ bit
put ʊ
ey bait
MID
Why this
difference?
ɛ bet
æ bat
æ/ey: fat/fate
ɪ/ay: bit/bite
boat ow
ə Rosa
ʌ butt
more
ɔ
bomb ɑ
ɛ/iy: pet/Pete
ɑ/ow: mop/mope
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 Shift
Between 1400 and 1600 the long vowels changed
Middle
English
Modern
English
Modern
English
[mays]
[maws]
Middle
English
[i:]
[u:]
mice
mouse
[mi:s]
[mu:s]
geese
goose
break
[ge:s]
[go:s]
[brɛ:ken]
[giys]
[guws]
[breyk]
[e:]
[o:]
[ɛ:]
[iy]
[uw]
[ey]
broke
name
[brɔ:ken]
[na:mə]
[browk]
[neym]
[ɔ:]
[a:]
[ow]
[ey]
[ay]
[aw]
The Great Vowel Shift
FRONT
HIGH
MID
i:
CENTRAL
ay
BACK
u:
aw
e:
o:
ɛ:
LOW
a:
The colon indicates long vowels,
e.g., /i:/ is similar to our /iy/
ɔ:
The Great Vowel Shift
• That is why the vowels sound differently in pairs
like divine-divinity; please-pleasant; sereneserenity; crime-criminal
Can you
– First, the vowels sounded the same
think of
– Then, there was the Early Middle English
more pairs?
Vowel Shortening rule
• E.g., divinity i => ɪ
Appendix 9,
– Finally, there was The Great Vowel Shift
p. 387
• E.g., divine i => ay
• The Great Vowel Shift didn’t affect divinity,
because the [i] had already been changed to [ɪ]
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 – critical
medicine – medication
deduce - deduction
The letters c and g
• The letter g can represent /g/, /ʤ/ and /ʒ/
– / g/
This explains:
• In clusters: grass, grumpy
analogy – analog(ue)
• Word-finally: log, bag
prodigious - prodigal
• 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
The letters c and g
• /g/ or /ʤ/? Why?
– got
– gin
– dig
– green
– get
– gesture
– German
before o
before i
syllable final
in cluster
before e but Germanic origin
before e
before e (not Germanic origin)
• 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/
feud, few
eucalyptus
heuristic, pew
menu, music
confuse
unity, humid
no /y/
crew
rude
Except
after r
– NAE: Except after t, d, s, z, n, l, x (e.g., new)
Invisible y and palatalization:
/ʃ, ʧ, ʒ, ʤ, y, kʃ/
• Palatalization of /s, t, d, ks/
– /s+y/ → /ʃ/
– /t+y/ → /ʧ/
– /d+y/ → /ʤ/
– /ks+y/ → /kʃ/
issue
virtue
arduous
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?
English doesn’t
allow these
clusters
• Some silent letters are pronounced in related
words
– crumb-crumble; sign-signify, paradigm-paradigmatic
– Why?
because the
consonants are in two
different syllables now
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
paff
cutch
dinch, dynch
quate, quait
drock
6. kiym
7. ʤæpl̩
8. sɛri
9. kayp
10.wown
keam, keme, keem
japple
serry, serrey
kipe, kype
woan, wone
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
long2
traditional
simplified
pinyin
Chinese dragon
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