Kepariwisataan 2 - Assignment

Connected Speech

 

What connected speech is

"English people speak so fast" is a complaint I often hear from my students, and often from those at an advanced level, where ignorance of the vocabulary used is not the reason for their lack of comprehension.
When students see a spoken sentence in its written form, they have no trouble comprehending. Why is this?

The reason, it seems, is that speech is a continuous stream of sounds, without clear-cut borderlines between each word. In spoken discourse, we adapt our pronunciation to our audience and articulate with maximal
economy of movement rather than maximal clarity. Thus, certain words are lost, and certain phonemes linked together as we attempt to get our message across.

 

How this affects native and non-native speaker

As native speakers, we have various devices for dealing with indistinct utterances caused by connected speech. We take account of the context, we assume we hear words with which we are familiar within that context.
In real-life interaction, phonetically ambiguous pairs like " a new display" / " a nudist play", are rarely a problem as we are actively making predictions about which syntactic forms and lexical items are likely to occur in a given situation.

Non-native speakers, however, are rarely able to predict which lexical item may or may not appear in a particular situation. They tend to depend almost solely on the sounds which they hear. Learners whose instruction has focused heavily on accuracy suffer a "devastating diminuation of phonetic information at the segmental level when they encounter normal speech." (Brown 1990.) 

 

Aspects of connected speech 

So what is it that we do when stringing words together that causes so many problems for students? 

• Weak Forms
  There are a large number of words in English which can have a "full" form and a "weak" form. This is because English is a stressed timed language, and in trying to make the intervals between stressed syllables equal, to give the phrase rhythm, we tend to swallow non-essential words. Thus, conjunctions, pronouns, prepositions, auxiliaries and articles are often lost, causing comprehension problems for students, particularly for those whose language is syllable timed. Some examples of words which have weak forms are;
  
  • And
    fish and chips (fish´n chips)
    a chair and a table (a chair ´n a table)
  • Can
    She can speak Spanish better than I can (The first "can" is the weak form, the second the full form.)
  • Of
    A pint of beer
    That´s the last of the wine!
  • Have
    Have you finished? (weak)
    Yes, I have. (full)
  • Should
    Well, you should have told me. (Both "should" and "have" are weak here)

   

   

  The Comparative and The Superlative

   

  Comparative Adjectives

  Comparative adjectives are used to compare differences between the two objects they modify (larger, smaller, faster, higher). They are used in sentences where two nouns are compared, in this pattern:

  Noun (subject) + verb + comparative adjective + than + noun (object).

  The second item of comparison can be omitted if it is clear from the context (final example below).

  Examples

  • My house is larger than hers.
  • This box is smaller than the one I lost.
  • Your dog runs faster than Jim's dog.
  • The rock flew higher than the roof.
  • Jim and Jack are both my friends, but I like Jack better. ("than Jim" is understood)

   

  Superlative Adjectives

  Superlative adjectives are used to describe an object which is at the upper or lower limit of a quality (the tallest, the smallest, the fastest, the highest). They are used in sentences where a subject is compared to a group of objects.

  Noun (subject) + verb + the + superlative adjective + noun (object).

  The group that is being compared with can be omitted if it is clear from the context (final example below).

  Examples

  • My house is the largest one in our neighborhood.
  • This is the smallest box I've ever seen.
  • Your dog ran the fastest of any dog in the race.
  • We all threw our rocks at the same time. My rock flew the highest. ("of all the rocks" is understood)

   

  Forming Regular Comparatives and Superlatives

  Forming comparatives and superlatives is easy. The form depends on the number of syllables in the original adjective.

   

  One syllable adjectives

  Add -er for the comparative and -est for the superlative. If the adjective has a consonant + single vowel + consonant spelling, the final consonant must be doubled before adding the ending.

  Adjective	Comparative	Superlative
  tall	taller	tallest
  fat	fatter	fattest
  big	bigger	biggest
  sad	sadder	saddest

   

  Two syllables

  Adjectives with two syllables can form the comparative either by adding -er or by preceeding the adjective with more. These adjectives form the superlative either by adding -est or by preceeding the adjective with most. In many cases, both forms are used, although one usage will be more common than the other. If you are not sure whether a two-syllable adjective can take a comparative or superlative ending, play it safe and use more and most instead. For adjectives ending in y, change the y to an i before adding the ending.

  Adjective	Comparative	Superlative
  happy	happier	happiest
  simple	simpler	simplest
  busy	busier	busiest
  tilted	more tilted	most tilted
  tangled	more tangled	most tangled

   

  Three or more syllables

  Adjectives with three or more syllables form the comparative by putting more in front of the adjective, and the superlative by putting most in front.

  Adjective	Comparative	Superlative
  important	more important	most important
  expensive	more expensive	most expensive

   

  Irregular comparatives and superlatives

  These very common adjectives have completely irregular comparative and superlative forms.

  Adjective	Comparative	Superlative
  good	better	best
  bad	worse	worst
  little	less	least
  much	more	most
  far	further / farther	furthest / farthest

  Examples

  • Today is the worst day I've had in a long time.
  • You play tennis better than I do.
  • This is the least expensive sweater in the store.
  • This sweater is less expensive than that one.
  • I ran pretty far yesterday, but I ran even farther today.

   

   

   

   

  Source:

  https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/connected-speech

  https://www.ef.com/wwen/english-resources/english-grammar/comparative-and-superlative/