ACCENT:
This is one of the terms commonly used in world languages, especially in English, which shows an indispensable and unique way of placing emphasis on syllables within words in sentences with a particular reference to pitch prominence (higher, longer and louder). Accent reveals the manner of speaking and patterned manner of speech of a certain area in a geographical location in a particular country. Accent, synonymously, means elocution,
- ACCENTUAL:
This term is an adjective and it is used to relate to accent or stresses within words in sentences. It is associated with number of stresses in poetic lines and metrical verse(verse has meters).
- ACCENTUATE:
This implies saying something so as to place a particular emphasis on an accent while speaking, with a view to making it more apparent. In other words, It is a way of pronouncing with a stress or accent. Its synonym is as follows: emphasise, foreground, highlight.
- AFFRICATES:
Certain English sounds are compulsorily articulated with the instrumentality of combined of both the features of stop and fricative. Thus, there exists the term affricate. In the course of producing the affricates- /tʃ/ and /d3/, there is an absolute stoppage of the airstream, emanating from the lungs, leading to the gradual release of the airflow as found in fricatives.
- BINARY:
This is a way of showing that a sound has either of two choices. For example, a sound is voiced or voiceless, consonantal or non-consonantal, rounded or unrounded. In short, a sound cannot have two features concurrently. As a consequence, such binary does refer to as binary choices.
- ANTERIOR:
The front of palato-alveolar region is used in the production certain English sounds. Such sounds are grouped under bilabial sounds-/b/, /m/ and /p/; alveolars-/t/, /s/, /d/, /z/, /r/, /n/; labio-dentals-//f/, /v/; and dentals- /θ/ and /ð/.
- APPROXIMANTS:
Other pronunciation terms used to describe approximates are liquids and glides and they are closely related, however, the disparity between them is that while some of the approximants are described as glides which involve continuous movement from one sound quality to another (We have /j/ in young and /w/ in water), liquids are unique different from glides in that they can be maintained as steady sounds (Such sounds include: /r/ and /l/.
- ALLOPHONE:
This term is popularly described by linguists as a variant of phoneme. Scholars are of the opinion that this variance is predictable. In another words, allophone, in a speech, involves the different phonetic manifestations of variants of a phoneme which largely relies on the environment where it occurs. Take for instance, the two /r/ sounds in the two words: ‘ray’ and ‘tray’ are different as in the /r/ in ’ray’ is voiceless and fricative, while the /r/ in ‘tray’ on the other hand is voiceless and fricative. The truth here is that the two types of /r/ -voiceless and voiced respectively- in these words are of allophones of the same /r/ variant.
- PHONEME:
Phonemes are abstract sounds. This makes it entirely different from allophones which are actual sounds. In ‘pan’ and ‘pen’, the only difference relies on the different vowel phonemes (/ӕ/ & /e/).
- ALVEOLAR
Alveolar, as a phonological term, is used to described the English sounds that are produced when there are total stoppage to the outflowing airstream fromthe lungs due to the firm contact between the tips of the tip of the tongue and the teeth (alveolar) ridge. The alveolars include: /s/, /z/, /t/, /l/, /n/
- ARTICULATION
The contact of two different organs of speech to produce sounds in languages (e.g English).
Bibliography
-Hornby, A.S. (2015). Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. 9th Ed. Oxford University Press
-Jones, D. edited and revised by Roach, P.J. and Hartman, J. (1997) Daniel Jones English Pronouncing Dictionary. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
-Roach P. (2000) English Phonetics and Phonology, A self-contained comprehensive pronunciation course. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press