This weeks blog post is about strong forms and weak forms of words and how they help to make the language we speak more intelligible. Weak forms occur on small, less important words (like prepositions and articles) that link the operative, key content words of a sentence together (things like verbs, adverbs, adjectives or nouns). These weak form words are what we call function words, and typically they are words such as:

• auxiliar verbs am, are, be, been, can, could, do, does, has, had, shall, should, was, were, would,
• prepositions at, for, from, of, to,
• pronouns he, her, him, his, me, she, them, us, we, you,
• conjunctions for, and, but, or, than, that,
• particles to,
• articles  a, the, an,

It is worth noting that there are some function words that don’t have weak forms, such as a stranded preposition, as in the example where are you going TO? , where the word to cannot be in its weak form. Function words are closed class items, that is that this limited group of words is exhaustive, and that we can’t make up new ones, whereas open class words (as most content word types are) are invented all the time! See Wikipedia on this for more detail.

These function words have strong forms which are pronounced with their dictionary form—this is the pronunciation we use when we talk about the word. This involves a stressed, full form of its vowel. In their weak form, many of these vowels are reduced all the way to the center of the mouth, the schwa vowel. The indefinite article “A”, is only pronounced with its strong form [eɪ] when we are emphasizing it. Normally it’s just pronounced with a schwa, [ə] . In some cases, weak forms can be reduced by dropping certain sounds from their pronunciation, such as him, her pronounced as ‘im, ‘er. In other cases, vowels are dropped and final continuant consonants like l, n, or m, become syllabic, so words like shall become sh’ll [ʃɫ̩]. Can you work out the strong form of these words?

[ ðə, əm, bɪn, ɪm, ənd, ðəm, ɪz, ðət, ʃɫ, ðn]

So what does this have to do with intelligibility? The basic idea is that we need to find a balance between strong forms and weak forms. Stressed forms are a way of emphasizing words, particularly for function words, so if we need to stress a function word we use its strong dictionary form. But otherwise we don’t use its strong dictionary form and we need to reduce those words appropriately so they don’t stand out. Unfortunately some people are mistaken, and believe that they need to stress these weak form words in order to be clear. Adding emphasis to unimportant function words is a way of making your text less clear, and more confusing. Frequently you can hear journalists or news readers reading their way through a newscast, choosing to emphasize unimportant function words as a way to keep their reading “interesting sounding”. It’s so common that I think most of us have become immune to this strange way of reading aloud! I also tend to hear people who were taught to read aloud as children. Forensics programs teach kids to make presentations, and when they read aloud they frequently are told to elevate articles like the word “the” to their stressed form, “thee”. Unless we mean to say “that particular one”, we should always make this word by using the pronunciation with schwa. It is worth noting that when we hesitate, we do elevate indefinite and definite articles, a and the, to their strong form just before a pause. So though we might say “I bought a dog,” if we hesitated before saying dog, we would say “I bought A… dog” and use the [eɪ] pronunciation.

Casual speech brings with it further degrees of weakening, and, depending on accent of course, expressions like “I’m going to” reducing to I’m gonna or I’ng unna. Ben Trawick-Smith handles this particular weak form in great depth over on Dialect Blog. There are many similar reductions and contractions, like “gonna, wanna, gotta, shoulda, coulda, woulda, oughta” Wikipedia’s entry on this topic has plenty of examples of these so called relaxed pronunciations that you might explore. Being an aspect of the informal register, they are part of the way native English speakers converse in an informal, personal, relaxed manner. Intelligibility, in my book, means setting the right register for the context, and often that means using these forms appropriately. L2 learners of ESL or EFL would do well to study these in great depth, as this is often something that sets a native apart from a non-native speaker (NNS). On several occasions I have coached a NNS to “mumble” more, by teaching the words that could be reduced, based on the context.

More formal registers, like those that come with speaking classical text or verse, demand that we avoid these forms. However, they do not require that we avoid weak forms altogether! I recall coaching the voice work on a production of Mary Stuart by Friedrich Schiller, and the director was insisting that the word “to” in all instances must be pronounced in its strong form, as [tu] always, never [tə] or even [tʊ]. The actors that she hired were very adept at giving her what she wanted (which was no mean feat), but their language sounded stilted, and confusing, as they continued to draw attention to words that weren’t important to their message. What had been adopted as Good Speech was merely an obstacle to the audience’s deeper involvement and engagement with the ideas of the play.

Where’s My Exercise?

OK, I get it. I’ve trained you to want an exercise you can apply this concept with! Here you go:

Start with a text you are familiar with. Let’s use the start of the most famous Shakespearean soliloquy of all time:

To be, or not to be, that is the question,
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them.

Last article was about Mumbling, so, to be fair, this article will be about its opposite, Over-Articulation.

Over-articulation is, as one might guess, the process whereby we give too much energy to the articulation of our thoughts, dialling up the emphasis strategies we use to make words stand out beyond the needs of the situation or environment we’re in. Frequently, we hear over-articulation in the rate of speech (slower), in the stressing of operative words (lots of them, and very strongly and evenly), in the movement of the articulators (effortful, with lots of engagement of the facial muscles, as we signal our intent), and with more fortis release on voiceless stop-plosive consonants, [p, t, k] .

As we explored with the Mumble Method, there is something to be gained by exploring your natural impulse in over-articulating. By engaging in this, we can feel its possible negative side effects, such as habitual tensions associated with over-working, and if we notice how we’re doing it, we might possibly observe the emphatic strategies we’re over-using, and learn to turn them “for good, rather than evil.” So here’s my assignment to you right now:

Speak a text you have memorized, and attend to how you do what you do. I believe it helps to have a point of focus for this, so you’re speaking to someone (even an imagined someone) that you need to be crystal clear about something. I might help to dial up you need about this, as if you were speaking to an authority figure who just doesn’t get it, or someone who is frustrating you intensely in an extremely irritating manner. Go and play, and then come back and I will talk further about what I observe, and you can compare your results with mine. If yours are significantly different, or if you can think of further strategies than what I’ve outlined, I hope you’ll share your  thoughts in the comments! (Don’t have anything memorized? That’s ok! Try a bit of invective from King Lear 2.2, or try a rant, or bit of bdelygmia [dəˈlɪɡmiə]…)

OK, you back? So let’s compare notes. Here’s what I noticed:

• increased pressure behind stop-plosives [p, t, k, b, d, g], and greater aspiration behind [pʰ, tʰ, kʰ]
• releasing final consonants, especially stop-plosives,
• lengthening final fricatives,
• being sure to fully voice final voiced consonant sounds
• exaggerating the sibilance of /s/ sounds (their hissy-ness)
• greater lip-rounding on rounded vowels, such as [u, ʊ, oʊ, ɔ, ɒ], and on rounded consonants [ʃ, ʒ, tʃ, dʒ, w, ʍ]
• greater lip-spreading on spread vowels, especially [i] and possibly [ɪɚ].
• louder speech throughout,
• emphatic strong emphasis on many operative words that are regularly stressed “on a beat”
• tendency to glottalize initial vowels
• choosing to use dictionary-form or strong-forms of word pronunciations (e.g. a word like “our” gets bumped up to [ʔaʊɚ], and an elision like “gonna” gets elevated to “going to” [ˈgoʊ.wɪŋ ˈtu].
• consonant clusters may introduce small schwa-like releases of stops to make them more emphatic (e.g. “gleams” becomes [gəˈɫimz])
• with the greater effort may come habitual tensions in the neck, throat, tongue root, face, shoulders, chest, breathing mechanism, etc.
• either more even, or more dynamic intonation patterns, and other prosodic elements

As with the discoveries we discussed with the Mumble Method, this can lead us to realizations about over-articulation. This means we need to dig in and see which of these features we could use maybe one at a time, or maybe several at once. This will take some practice and exploration, but we can find a way to make this bad habit into a good practice. If the theory is that over-articulation is merely over-emphasis, all we may need to do is choose fewer words to emphasize and we’ll get a more balanced approach. Naturally, we want to leave out any of the patterns that involve excessive tension, effort, over-enunciation—moving the articulators too grossly.

How can we do this effectively? I would suggest that you start with a piece of text that is written out. Then go through with a pencil and underline two or three emphatic words per sentence. This will give you a smaller number of words to emphasize. Then, using the strategies we’ve outlined above, go through and try doing things like:

• energizing your stop-plosive consonants
• aspirating [pʰ, tʰ, kʰ], especially at the ends of phrases, before a pause or punctuation mark
• finding ways to put your emphasized words on a regular beat
• lengthen or relish final fricatives, and make sure that voiced final consonants are fully voiced.

Over articulation can be a bad habit. But it can also be a pathway to discovering more about what makes your speech interesting, audible, and most importantly, intelligible.

In this second instalment of the Intelligibility Series, we’re going to look at what Intelligibility isn’t. Of course, we’re talking about mumbling, which is defined as “to say something indistinctly or quietly, to mutter something under one’s breath.” What I’d like you to do today is experiment with mumbling in your own private way. Take a piece of text that you have memorized, and mumble your way through it. Once you’ve done that, you can come back here and we’ll discuss what’s going on. Don’t have anything memorized? That’s ok — why not read some poetry?

You back? OK. So let’s think about what happened. Here’s what people typically report happens when they mumble. Maybe some of these occurred for you?

• monotone speech (talking on one pitch, perhaps dropping at the end of phrases)
• low pitch, probably in the “basement” of your range
• slow pace, even rate
• glottal fry, especially at ends of phrases, but possibly throughout
• reduced movement of articulators, particularly the jaw and tongue
• increased tension in articulators
• “lazy” speech, whatever that means for you
• eliding of one word into another
• using contractions rather than full versions of words, like “gotta” for “got to”, etc.
• reduced facial vibration (aka resonance), with the sound trapped in the throat
• vowels not very distinct from one another (as if they were all approaching the centre of the mouth, like vowel schwa [ə])
• devoicing at the ends of words or phrases, turning voiced consonants into voiceless ones
• etc.

If you found other features of your mumbling you’d care to share, why not make a comment below?

Mumbling is typically a reduction of voice and speech energy. When we explore it as an affectation, we tend to go all out and do every possible variable that can lead to the qualities we think of as mumbling. But what if you went back to your text and did each of those bullet points individually, and not all at once? This all-at-once quality tends to make your mumbling completely unexpressive. But what if you could mumble and still do things like emphasize key/operative words? Why not try that now.

By mumbling our way through the text we’ve essentially turned all the dials on our speech Mixing Board down to 1 (or maybe even zero). We want to explore turning only one feature down at a time, and feel its effects. Taken one at a time, many of these aspects of mumbling can be see as possibly beneficial, if used at the right time, in the right place, or as a means of emphasis. The only extreme ones that really compromise intelligibility are the reduced movement and tension of articulators, and indistinct vowels. So we have three features we really need to explore in greater depth in our next exploration: what impact do indistinct vowels, habitual tension, and immobility of articulators have on your speech?