Length in English Phonology: Vowel & Consonant Duration and Contrast, Ejercicios de Fonética y Fonología Españolas

¡Descarga Length in English Phonology: Vowel & Consonant Duration and Contrast y más Ejercicios en PDF de Fonética y Fonología Españolas solo en Docsity! Maria Luque Casanovas; 20410655 Phonetics £ Phonology Il What is the role of length in the English phonological system? Speaking phonetically, length or quantity is a particularity of sounds that indicates a different duration depending on the sound, basically is the physical duration of sounds. Not all languages present the same vowel or consonant length, normally they depend on each other or there's only one of the two. However, in certain languages, there are pairs of phonemes that are traditionally considered long-short pairs despite differing in length and also quality making them contrastive. This is where the English language falls; the phoneme f:/ in feet which would be considered long and the phoneme in fit /1/ would be short. In this case, the phoneme :/is more clear and more peripheral than /1/. Therefore English has a tense-lax distinction of vowels and consonants; using the same example as before with the phoneme /i:/ the muscles are tense when pronouncing it, therefore, requirin g more effort whereas as /1/ presents a more lax MOoA than /¡:/ being easier to pronounce. There are also other factors that contribute to vowel or consonant length in the English phonological system. Pre-fortis clipping presents changes in duration making the vowel or consonant tenser or laxer but also making them shorter. Stress can also affect this phenomenon since vowels are longer when stressed specifically when they are found in final position; for example the word go /gau/ is longer than in the word going /'gavin/. On the other hand, short vowels can be found in past tenses (for example the word; sleep and slept). Complexity can also affect duration as well as historical aspects (in this case making them specifically shorter). In conclusion, the role of length in the English phonological system would be to designate vowel and consonant length; but in the English language specifically, vowels and consonants are considered either short or long and therefore those can change and be affected by various factors.