1. What phenomenon is called 'reduction'?
2. Name the sounds which are commonly found in the unstressed syllables.
3. In what kind of words do non-reduced vowels occur in unstressed syllables? Give examples.
4. What degrees of reduction do you know?
5. Read the following sentence: 'I can read it alone.' What type of reduction is observed in the word can ? ,
6. Transcribe and read the sentence: 'He is right.' What type of reduction is found in theword hel
7. Give examples to illustrate the verb to do in the reduced and non-reduced forms.
8. Within what segments of speech is the reduction realized?
9. Suppose your fellow-student says: 'Com'bine is a noun.*
What is his mistake? What will you tell him to do to correct
the mistake? What kind of mistake is it, phonetic or phono
logical?
10. Your fellow-student may probably say satisfaction as [satis'faekjh). Is his mistake phonetic or phonological? What will you advise him to do to correct his mistake?
Chapter VI. STRONG AND WEAK FORMS
Spoken English shows a marked contrast between its stressed and unstressed syllables. Words which bear the major part of information are generally stressed and are called content (or notional) words. These are: nouns, adjectives, notional verbs, adverbs, numerals, interrogative and demonstrative pronouns. The other words in a sentence are mostly form (or structural) words which link the content words and help us m this way to form an utterance. They are: articles, prepositions, < conjunctions, particles, and also auxiliary and modal verbs, personal and possessive pronouns. These are not many in number but they are among the commonest words of the language. As lorm-words are normally unstressed in a sentence their weak induced forms are generally used in speech, eg
/ Ic said he'd come in the morning, [hi Vsed hid 'êẹ̈ in Çư vmD:nin).