The duration pattern of English has an impact on language learning. If EFL/ESL learners understand the duration pattern of English, they will more accurately pronounce and understand English pronunciation.
The duration pattern implies that there is a pronunciation length regardless of the number of words in an utterance. Thus, a single word such as “abominable” and a phrase such as “a bomb in a ball” can have similar speech duration or timing processes. This phenomenon is known as polysyllabic shortening, the hypothesis behind de duration pattern of English.
The polysyllabic shortening hypothesis maintains that the speech duration of a primary stressed syllable or segment of a sentence is inversely proportional to the number of additional syllables within the word or segments within the sentence. Monosyllabic, disyllabic and trisyllabic words as well as phrases or sentence constituents may have the same speech duration. For instance, /əˈbɑmənəbəl/ may equally be the transcription of “abominable” and “a bomb in a ball.” This means that there is a durational adjustment regardless of the number of syllables or constituents.
Some linguists refer to the polysyllabic shortening of English as the Procrustean effect. They call it this way because the sub-constituents or segments of utterances are stretched or shrunk to make them fit into a duration pattern preserving uniformity.
A short word is compressed while a long one is stretched. This will give rise to a sound production that is similar in terms of duration or length, e.g., words such as hind and behind will have an equal length. In other words, the time taken to pronounce the word hind or produce the sound /haɪnd/ is similar to the time taken to pronounce the word behind or produce the sound /bəˈhaɪnd/. In the first case, people take time to produce the sound (stretching) and, in the second case, people rush to the stressed syllable (shrinking), reducing the unstressed vowel to a weak sound known as a schwa /ə/.
Similarly, expressions such as “you have” and “you have done it” may behave relatively the same in terms of speech duration.
You have /juː hæv/
You have done it /jəhəvˈdʌnət/; /jəvˈdʌnət/
Although the transcription of “you have done it” has more symbols, when you pronounce “you have done it” and “you have,” they both show a similar duration pattern. Notice that in the case of the transcription of “you have done it,” a schwa /ə/ takes the place of every unstressed vowel, making them almost speechless, thus giving rise to the shrinking phenomenon as in the case of polysyllabic shortening.
This duration pattern in which word clusters behave similar to polysyllabic shortening is typical of stress-timed languages like English.
A stress-timed language is a language where stressed syllables are pronounced at approximately regular duration patterns, keeping the sound property of stressed vowels, while unstressed syllables are shortened to fit this pattern, losing their original sound property thus giving rise to another sound, i.e., a schwa /ə/.
In a stress-timed language, like the case of English, vowel sounds in stressed syllables will always be pronounced the way we know they are pronounced in every word they appear. For instance, /I/ in the word it, /æ/ in the word have, and /u/ in the word you will always be pronounced /I/, /æ/ and /u/ respectively when they are stressed. However, when they aren’t stressed, they are reduced to a schwa /ə/. Thus,
/ju/ becomes /jə/
/hæv/ becomes /həv/
/It/ becomes /ət/
In other words, the sounds of these words (you, have, it) are reduced to a schwa /ə/ when they appear in unstressed segments, e.g., /jəhəvˈdʌnət/.
People don’t say /ju hæv dʌn It/ but /jəhəvˈdʌnət/, or even shrinking or compressing more to: /jəvˈdʌnət/.
This happens because speakers rush to the stressed syllable or segment, unconsciously fitting its sound production into a duration pattern, sometimes compressing and sometimes stretching, preserving certain uniformity on the typical rhythm of such a stress-timed language.
There is proof that the duration pattern of English has an impact on language learning. Bingru Chen found, for instance, that polysyllabic shortening is likely to affect the duration patterns of Mandarin speakers of English, leading to their Chinese accent when they speak English.
In addition, learners whose first language is not a stress-timed one have problems producing the unstressed sounds in English. Madeline Conlen, for instance, compared Stress-timed and syllable-timed languages and their impact on second language acquisition and found that there was not emphasis on the difference between syllable-timed (the case of Spanish) and stress-timed languages during second language acquisition. This is the reason why many nonnative speakers lack the ability to ever speak in a fluid way that is similar to a native speaker.
Moreover, if learners want to develop a natural and fluid speech in English, they’ll have to understand the duration pattern of English.
In order to assimilate the duration pattern of English, learners should master the process of English accentuation both productively and receptively. They should be aware that when they pronounce or listen to an English word, the unstressed syllable, regardless of what letter is in there, will be or become a schwa /ə/ (polysyllabic shortening), e.g., understand /əndərˈstænd/, animal /ˈænəməl/, durable /ˈdʊrəbəl/, and so on.
Similarly, since English is a stress-timed language, every unaccented vowel segment of a phrase or sentence will be connected and reduced to a schwa /ə/, e.g., you know it /jəˈnoət/. What often happens is that unstressed segments are said quicker and consequently they turn into this weaker sound known as a schwa /ə/.
Learn the duration pattern of English if you want to reduce your foreign accent!!!
Written by Jose Vallejo
