Phrase-level processes

Although the main focus has inevitably been on stress and prominence, this is not the only phonological characteristic of the word and phrase levels: segments may also be affected by those adjacent to them. The bulk of these segmental phonological processes are characteristic of fast and casual speech, and are often referred to as connected speech processes (CSPs for short). These generally involve either assimilations (whereby two adjacent sounds become more similar in quality, as the articulations used to produce them become more similar), or reductions; both these process types are natural consequences of talking more quickly and perhaps less carefully. Most CSPs are also optional, and will tend to be suspended or at least occur less frequently in more formal situations and in slower speech. To take just two examples, when two adjacent words have final and initial stops, these typically come to share the same place of articulation, so that sit close will tend to have medial [kk], and odd message [bm]. Function words like he, than, you, my also frequently reduce to [I], [ðən] (or even [ən]), [jə], [mə]: all these component processes, notably loss of consonants (in he, than), shortening of vowels (in he again), and reduction of vowels to schwa (in than, you, my) as a result of loss of stress, are segmental weakenings.

Speaking quickly and informally will also tend to cut the duration of unstressed vowels in full lexical words like nouns, verbs and adjectives, with a concomitant effect on their quality. In words like deduce, profound, connect, the first syllable in careful speech may contain a full vowel, [i], [aυ] or [ɒ] respectively; but in faster speech and more relaxed circumstances, these are highly likely to be reduced to schwa. Work by Fry in 1947 reported that nearly 11 per cent of vowel phonemes in English consisted of /ə/, with its nearest rival, at 8 per cent, being /I/, the other vowel frequently found in unstressed syllables. To put this in perspective, all other vowels in the survey fell below 3 per cent. This indicates clearly how common unstressed syllables were in 1947; and they are not likely to have reduced in frequency since. In some cases, however, vowels do not only reduce in fast speech: they are deleted. A word like connect, in connected speech, could be pronounced either as [kənεkt] or [knεkt]; and in cases like this one, and potato [pteItoυ], the result actually violates the phonotactics of English, since *[kn] and *[pt] are not permissible clusters

Such processes do not always affect vowels, however: sometimes both vowels and consonants are elided in fast speech, so that whole syllables may vanish when we compare the citation forms of words like February, veterinary with their fast speech equivalents, [fεbɹi], [vεʔnɹi]. Note also [ʔ] for /t/ in the second example; reduction of a stop to a glottal stop, or indeed to a fricative, is another example of lenition or weakening.

Moreover, phonological reductions and assimilations across word boundaries typically affect consonants rather than vowels. For example, at the phrase level, word-final /s/ followed by word-initial /j/ often combine to produce [ʃ], so that race you is often [ɹeIʃə], not the citation form [ɹeIs ju]. In this case, a very similar process also takes place word-internally, resulting in medial [ʃ] in racial; but again typically, these word-internal cases are not so clearly optional, and [ɹeIsjəl] would tend to be seen as old-fashioned or an example of a speaker trying too hard to speak ‘correctly’. Another very common process applying between words is [ɹ]-intrusion in non-rhotic accents of English, where [ɹ] appears between [ɑ], [ɔ], or [ə] and another following vowel, although there is noin the spelling and no etymological /r/ in the word concerned. For instance, the name of a tennis tournament, the Stella Artois event, will typically in casual speech be pronounced as [ðəstεləɹɑtwɑɹəvεnt], with intrusive [ɹ] after both cases of; and similarly, we find well-known examples like the idea is [ðiaIdiəɹIz] and law and order [lɔɹənɔdə]. Again, this process also takes place within words, as in sheep baa[ɹ]ing, draw[ɹ]ing, magenta[ɹ]ish. This might, on the face of it, seem a rather unusual fast speech process, since it involves the addition of a segment; but producing two vowels side-by-side appears to be rather difficult for speakers, and an intrusive consonant may allow more fluid and less hesitant speech. Many of these processes therefore have a similar rationale, in making life easier for speakers, and allowing speech tempo to be kept consistently fast.