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Department of English and American Studies the Schwa Sound in Two

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Department of English and American Studies the Schwa Sound in Two Masaryk University Faculty of Arts Department of English and American Studies English Language and Literature Bc. Gabriela Marková The Schwa Sound in Two Speeches by Elizabeth II Master’s Diploma Thesis Supervisor: PhDr. Kateřina Tomková, Ph.D. 2017 1 I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography. …………………………………………….. Author’s signature 2 I would like to express my sincere thanks to my supervisor PhDr. Kateřina Tomková, Ph.D. for her guidance, advice, and support. 3 Table of Contents List of figures ............................................................................................................. 6 List of tables ............................................................................................................... 6 Notations and conventions ....................................................................................... 7 List of phonetic symbols ........................................................................................... 9 Introduction ...............................................................................................................13 Reasons for research ..............................................................................................15 Preliminary research questions ................................................................................16 1 Schwa - origins of the term and symbol ...............................................................18 1.1 Origin of the term ...............................................................................................18 1.2 Origin of the Latin symbol ..................................................................................21 1.3 Definition of the term in modern linguistics .........................................................23 1.3.1 The short schwa sound ...............................................................................24 1.3.2 Schwa as a cover symbol ............................................................................25 1.3.3 The long schwa sound .................................................................................27 1.4 Further notes on transcription ............................................................................28 1.4.1 Broad and narrow notation ..........................................................................31 1.4.2 Simple and comparative transcription ..........................................................32 1.4.2 The IPA and the mid-central sounds ............................................................33 2 Phonetics and phonology ......................................................................................34 2.2 Production of sounds .........................................................................................36 2.2.1 Vowels .........................................................................................................38 2.2.2 Monophthongs, diphthongs and triphthongs ................................................49 2.2.3 Consonants .................................................................................................51 2.2.4 Prosodic features ........................................................................................52 2.2.5 Coarticulation ..............................................................................................54 3 Language changes and sound shifts ....................................................................56 3.1 General features of language change ................................................................56 3.1.1 Permanent character of a change................................................................57 3.2 Progress of a sound change ..............................................................................58 3.3. Major types of vowel change .............................................................................60 3.3.1 Reduction ....................................................................................................61 2.3.2 Intrusion ......................................................................................................62 2.3.3 Elision .........................................................................................................63 4 4 Vowel changes in the history of English ..............................................................65 4.1 From Proto-Indo-European to Old English .........................................................66 4.2 From Old English to Middle English ...................................................................68 4.5 Contemporary British English and RP ................................................................72 4.5.1 Changes in RP involving schwa sounds ......................................................74 4.6 Notes on schwa in other English variants and dialects .......................................76 4.6.2 American English .........................................................................................76 4.6.3 Australian and New Zealand English ...........................................................78 4.6.4 South African English ..................................................................................79 5 Acoustic analysis ...................................................................................................80 5.1 Research question .............................................................................................80 5.2 Sample determination ........................................................................................81 5.3 Preliminaries ......................................................................................................83 5.4 Methodology ......................................................................................................87 5.4.1 Transcription, segmentation, and annotation ...............................................88 5.4.2 Distributional analysis ..................................................................................89 5.4.3 Formant analysis .........................................................................................90 5.5 Text 1 (1957) ......................................................................................................95 5.5.1 Transcription ................................................................................................96 5.5.2 Distributional analysis and formant measurements ......................................99 5.6 Text 2 (2016) .................................................................................................... 101 5.6.1 Transcription .............................................................................................. 101 5.6.2 Distributional analysis and formant measurements .................................... 103 5.7 Findings ....................................................................................................... 105 6 Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 107 References ............................................................................................................... 110 Primary sources ..................................................................................................... 110 Secondary sources ................................................................................................ 110 Summary .................................................................................................................. 120 Summary in Czech .................................................................................................. 121 List of Appendices .................................................................................................. 122 Appendix 1 The IPA chart....................................................................................... 123 Appendix 2 Queen’s Christmas speech, 1957 ....................................................... 124 Appendix 3 Queen’s Christmas speech, 2016 ....................................................... 128 5 List of figures Figure 2.1. Speech organs. 36 Figure 2.2. Vowel space. 38 Figure 2.3. Vocal tract in the neutral configuration 39 Figure 2.4. Positions of tongue in vowel production after Bell. 42 Figure 2.5. Two vowel diagrams by Daniel Jones. 45 Figure 2.6. Central part of Jonesian quadrilateral. 45 Figure 2.7. Formants of British vowels. 42 Figure 2.8. Plot of the first two formants of British vowels. 47 Figure 2.9. Diphthongs and triphthongs. 50 Figure 3.1. S-curve schematic. 59 Figure 4.1. The Great Vowel Shift and the Short Vowel shift. 71 Figure 4.2. The Second and Third Vowel Shifts. 71 Figure 5.1. Sample of annotation of the recorded text. 94 Figure 5.2. Formant measurement. 95 Figure 6.1. Plot of average F2-F2 frequencies of schwa sounds. 108 List of tables Table 2.1. Vowel table after Bell’s vowel descriptions. 42 Table 2.2. Cardinal vowels. 44 Table 2.3. Mean F1 and F2 values for female General British speakers. 46 Table 2.4. Closing and centring diphthongs of RP. 50 Table 2.5. Triphthongs of RP. 51 Table 3.1. Strong vowels and their weak counterparts. 61 Table 4.1. Neogrammarian system of short PIE vowels. 68 Table 4.2. Well’s lexical sets. 75 Table 5.1. Text 1 (1957). Average formant frequencies for Group 1. 99 Table 5.2. Text 1 (1957). Average formant frequencies for Group 2A. 99 Table 5.3. Text 1 (1957). Average formant frequencies for Group 2B.
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