XI Международная студенческая научная конференция Студенческий научный форум - 2019

The language is a vivid and living system which is constantly changing since the life and the people are changing. Modern British vowels are quite different from the old RP vowels. And they are different from the vowels that used to be in common currency 10 or 20 years ago.

As we know contemporary standard is – Standard Southern British. But although the real sounds we can here today are not anymore implied by old RP symbols, the graphical representation still remains unchanged. The reason is it would be too hard to manage the shift as the old symbols are used constantly and everywhere: in textbooks, articles and dictionaries.

But anyway this new system of symbols does already exist. And it’s a question is it really better for us to stick to the old standard in order to make it easier or do we encourage the ignorance by making this decision?

If we look at changes affecting vowels in current British English we can detect a rather general tendency: the anticlockwise vowel shift. This had three distinct components: lowering of the front vowels, raising of the mid back vowels, and fronting of the high back vowels.

To compare the vowels and to understand how has the vowel moved within the vowel space we’ll need some reference points. ‘Cardinal vowels’ serve as these points. There are 8 of them and this is scheme where the cardinal vowels are placed according to the estimated positions of the tongue body in the mouth.

 

Cardinal vowels

The biggest difference between the RP system and SSE system is that the SSE vowels are much closer to the cardinal vowels. What in fact happened because of these changes is rationalization of the vowel system.

RP used a lot of non-cardinal vowels and had crowding in some areas (when 2 or more vowels are close to each other). On the contrary the vowel system of SSB uses all the eight primary cardinal vowels, and just the two central vowels. This is much more understandable and beautiful picture of vowels.

Lowering of the front vowels.

FLEECE vowel used to be a monophthong in RP, and sometimes it was treated as ‘diphthongoid’. This term separated it from the usual monophthongs, emphasizing, that the articulation of this sound is slightly changing while pronouncing it. Contemporary system suggests rationalizing this approach by diphthongizing this sound.

This means that FLEECE got 2 elements instead of 1. it starts with KIT monophthong and ends in a semivowel ‘j’ or in old terms glide. So there is the one sound for short monophthong and the start of a diphthong and we don’t need to contrast them anymore.

The tendency of diphthongizing is not very obvious, because we can slightly hear semi-vowel ‘j’. But if we compare exaggerated versions, the difference is noticeable.

And if we are talking about KIT as a first element of FLEECE, there is a debatable point about it.

In SSB KIT lowered becoming a little bit more open. That made it very close to cardinal 2 ‘e’, and that’s why SSB system uses this symbol for KIT.

But we should remember that phonetic aims do not coincide with teaching or learning aims, so Geoff Lindsey and some other scientists consider the potential for confusing foreign learners too great. Geoff insists on leaving ‘I’ for KIT.

Contemporary TRAP is quite different from its RP equivalent. In general RP TRAP is more close. SSB TRAP is more open, moving down the vowel space it also has become more back.

In SSB there’s no need to use the non-cardinal symbol, because cardinal 4 ‘a’ is a quite clear representation of the ‘TRAP’. But speaking more precisely, modern TRAP lies between cardinals 4 and 5. In fact TRAP came to have more resemblance with the START vowel. The reason for that change is quite clear – it wasn’t rational to have such a great gap between the vowel TRAP and START.

Raising of the mid back vowels

LOT and NORTH sounds have risen and if we look on the scheme it also slightly moved to the front. Currently they are better described by cardinals 6 and 7 respectively.

The low LOT vowel of old RP was quite similar to START, but its contemporary version is much closer to the NORTH sound though of course shorter. And also we can notice that LOT has become more rounded.

The old symbol of LOT caused confusion and implied the sound close to the START vowel. The new symbol ‘ɔ’ eases the understanding of LOT.

NORTH vowel also raised, but not so much as LOT. The new symbol for it – ‘o’.

Fronting of the high back vowels

What happened to the FOOT is firstly, rounding and secondly, fronting. It was back, or back-advanced in RP. Now it’s perfectly described as the rounded close-mid vowel, which has no equivalent in cardinal vowels. The SSB symbol for FOOT is ‘ɵ’.

We talked earlier about the diphthongizing of the FLEECE sound. The same situation has happened with the GOOSE vowel. So now GOOSE is a diphthong ‘ʉw’. The start of the GOOSE can be considered as an equivalent to the contemporary FOOT vowel. But still the FOOT sound and the start of the GOOSE diphthong are not identical. The latter is a bit closer. For this reason, Geoff Lindsey suggests a new symbol for the GOOSE’s first element - ʉ.

So there is again a debatable point whether we should use the different symbols and what symbols are more suitable. But the truth is the widespread transcriptions are fossils so it’s more important to not use them

Tendency	Word	Statistical data	Type of innovation
FLEECE IS DIPTHONGISED	“least”	26/30	Almost complete
KIT HAS LOWERED	“live”	20/30	Well-established
TRAP HAS LOWERED	“battle”	24/30	Well-established
NORTH HAS RAISED	“fall”	26/30	Almost complete
LOT HAS RAISED	“gone”	27/30	Almost complete
FOOT IS FRONTED	“good”	25/30	Almost complete
GOOSE IS DIPTHONGISED	“loose”	27/30	Almost complete

This statistical data shows how many speakers out of 30 pronounce contemporary versions of sounds. The result prove, that the trends discussed in the article are at least well-established, and thus worthwhile talking about.

This article enables you better understand the system we find in the dictionaries and also consider the contemporary pronunciation trends. Certainly not all tendencies are worthwhile talking about in the classroom, but future teachers of English should be aware of developmental trends in linguistic system.

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