AAE 103 : Understanding the Sounds and Words of English
Assignment

Topics

You should consider some of the following topics. Make sure you read the background material and make proper use of references when you discuss these issues.

• Vowel distinctions. Do you distinguish between the vowels in feast and fist? What about fool and full, dark and duck, and short and shot? How does this fit in with the descriptions of Singapore English? (Bown, 1988; Deterding & Poedjoseodarmo, 1998: 155; Bao, 1998; Deterding, 2003; Lim, 2004; Wee, 2004; Low & Brown, 2005: 115; Brown & Deterding, 2005; Deterding, 2007: 22)
• Open front vowels. What kind of vowel do you have in plan? Is it a fully open vowel? Or is it a mid vowel, as is commonly found among Singaporen speakers? (Suzanna & Brown, 2000; Deterding, 2007: 23)
• The vowel in stayed and gave. Do you have a diphthong in stayed and gave? Or is it a long monophthong (Deterding, 2000; Lee & Lim, 2000; Deterding, 2007: 25)?
• Reduced vowels. Do you use a reduced vowel (schwa) or a full vowel in the first syllable of the content words concern, convinced and successful? (Heng & Deterding, 2005; Deterding, 2007: 28) What about the function words some, and and to? (Deterding & Poedjosoedarmo, 1998: 131, 151; Deterding, 2006b; Deterding, 2007: 29)
• The vowel in poor. What vowel do you use in poor? How does this compare with the pronunciation of most young British speakers? (Deterding, 2005; Deterding, 2007: 26)
• Triphthongs. What sort of vowel do you have in diet? Is the word bisyllabic, with a /j/ in the middle? Or is it a single syllable, with some smoothing of the vowel? (Lim & Low, 2005; Deterding, 2007: 27)
• Fricative devoicing. Do you make a distinction between raising and racing? Or do you devoice the medial fricative in raising (Deterding, 2005)?
• L-vocalisation. Do you vocalise the dark /l/ in words such as wolf, little, full and all? Is this similar to the pronunciation of other Singaporeans? (Tan, 2005; Deterding, 2007: 20) How does this compare with young speakers in Britain?
• Dental Fricatives. How do you pronounce the words that begin with a voiceless dental fricative, thought, threaten and third? Is this the same as other Singaporeans? (Moorthy & Deterding, 2000; Deterding, 2007: 13) What about the voiced dental fricative at the start of there and this and in the middle of bothered? How do you pronounce the sound at the end of with?
• Final Consonant Clusters. Do you drop the final -ed suffix in watched, rushed and convinced? What about the final /t/ in next, forest, fist and feast? How does this compare with other Singaporean speakers (Gut, 2005; Cruz-Ferreira, 2005)? What about BBC speakers? (Deterding, 2006a; Deterding, 2007: 17)
• Glottal Stops. Do you use a glottal stop in place of final /t/ in foot, hot and diet? What about the final /k/ in trick and duck? (Deterding & Poedjoseodarmo, 1998: 158; Brown & Deterding, 2005: 12; Deterding, 2007: 19)
• American Features. Do you have any American features in your speech, such as an /r/ in dark and concern? (Poedjosoedarmo, 2000; Deterding, 2007: 21)
• Miscellaneous. What other features of your speech become evident from careful auditory analysis of the Wolf passage?

Auditory Judgements

Many of the materials you are encouraged to read and refer to involve measurements, especially of formants. You have not been taught about formants, so you are not expected to attempt this kind of measurement. Your conclusions should all be based on careful auditory judgements, not measurements.

If you are not confident about the reliability of your own judgements, you may decide to ask some other people to listen to your reading of the Wolf passage and tell you what they hear. If you wish, you can report on this.

Descriptive vs Prescriptive

This assignment should all be descriptive, not prescriptive. There are NO errors in your speech, just features of pronunciation. You will be marked down if you use prescriptive terminology, discussing "errors", "wrong" pronunciation, or how you "should" say something. There is no right and wrong in phonetics, only a description of how different people speak.

References

Bao, Z (1998) 'The sounds of Singapore English'. In Foley, J (et al, eds) English in New Cultural Contexts: Reflections from Singapore. Singapore: Oxford University Press, 152-74.

Brown, A (1988). 'Vowel differences between Received Pronunciation and the English of Malaysia and Singapore: which ones really matter?'. In Foley, J (ed) New Englishes: The Case of Singapore, Singapore: Singapore University Press, 129-47.

Brown, A & Deterding, D (2005) 'A checklist of of Singapore English pronunciation features'. In Deterding, D, Brown, A, & Low E L (eds) English in Singapore: Phonetic Research based on a Corpus, Singapore: McGraw-Hill, 7-13.

Cruz-Ferreira, M (2005). 'Past tense suffixes and other final plosives in Singapore English'. In Deterding, D, Brown, A & Low, E L (eds.) English in Singapore: Phonetic Research on a Corpus, Singapore: McGraw-Hill, 26-36.

Deterding, D (2000) 'Measurements of the /ei/ and /ou/ vowels of young English speakers in Singapore'. In Brown, A, Deterding, D & Low, E L (eds) The English Language in Singapore: Research on Pronunciation, Singapore: Singapore Association for Applied Linguistics, 93-99.

Deterding, D (2003). 'An instrumental study of the monophthong vowels of Singapore English', English World-Wide, 24:1, 1-16.

Deterding, D (2005). 'Emergent patterns in the vowels of Singapore English', English World-Wide, 26:2, 179-198. (PDF Version)

Deterding, D (2006a). 'Deletion of final /t/ and /d/ in BBC English: implications for teachers in Singapore', STETS Language & Communication Review, Vol 5, No 1, 21-24. (PDF Version)

Deterding, D (2006b). 'Reduced vowels in Southeast Asia: should we be teaching them?', SOUTHEAST ASIA: A Multidisciplinary Journal, 6(1), 71-78. (PDF version)

Deterding, D (2007) Singapore English, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press (On-line materials)

Deterding, D & Poedjosoedarmo, G (1998) The Sounds of English: Phonetics and Phonology for English Teachers in Southeast Asia, Singapore: Prentice Hall.

Gut, U (2005). 'The realisation of final plosives in Singapore English: phonological rules and ethnic differences'. In Deterding, D, Brown, A & Low, E L (eds) English in Singapore: Phonetic Research on a Corpus, Singapore: McGraw-Hill, 14-25.

Heng, M G & Deterding, D (2005). 'Reduced Vowels in Conversational Singapore English'. In Deterding, D, Brown, A & Low, E L (eds) English in Singapore: Phonetic Research on a Corpus, Singapore: McGraw-Hill, 54-63.

Lee, E M & Lim, L (2000) 'Diphthongs in Singaporean English: their realisations across different formality levels, and some attitudes of listeners towards them'. In Brown, A, Deterding, D & Low, E L (eds) The English Language in Singapore: Research on Pronunciation, Singapore: Singapore Association for Applied Linguistics, 93-99.

Lim, L (2004) 'Sounding Singaporean'. In Lim, L (ed) Singapore English: A Grammatical Description. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 19-56.

Lim, S S & Low, E L (2005). 'Triphthongs in Singapore English'. In Deterding, D, Brown, A & Low, E L (eds) English in Singapore: Phonetic Research on a Corpus, Singapore: McGraw-Hill, 64-73.

Low, E L & Brown, A (2005) Singapore English: An Introduction, Singapore: McGraw-Hill.

Moorthy, S M & Deterding, D (2000) 'Three or tree? Dental fricatives in the speech of educated Singaporeans'. In Brown, A, Deterding, D & Low, E L (eds) The English Language in Singapore: Research on Pronunciation, Singapore: Singapore Association for Applied Linguistics, 76-83.

Poedjosoedarmo, G (2000) 'A description of the English pronunciation of young educated Singaporeans: a study in multidimesional variation'. In Brown, A, Deterding, D & Low, E L (eds) The English Language in Singapore: Research on Pronunciation, Singapore: Singapore Association for Applied Linguistics, 65-75.

Tan, K K (2005). 'Vocalisation of /l/ in Singapore English'. In Deterding, D, Brown, A & Low, E L (eds) English in Singapore: Phonetic Research on a Corpus, Singapore: McGraw-Hill, 43-53.

Wee, L (2004) 'Singapore English: Phonology'. In Schneider, E, Burridge, K, Kortmann, B, Mesthrie, R & Upton, C (eds) A Handbook of Varieties of English. Volume 1: Phonology. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1017-33.