The Blur Gap – again
L1 speakers and expert L2 speakers of English are generally not aware of the variety of soundshapes that spoken words have. L1 speakers understand meanings without realising that there is very often a big difference between the soundshapes that occur in the acoustic blur of speech and the citation soundshapes that words have.
The acoustic blur refers to the way in which words, in the stream of speech, do not have clearly defined beginnings and endings. Their edges are blurred, syllables are dropped and vowels and consonants disappear or change their nature. L1 speakers often hear mere traces of words in the acoustic blur and yet they believe they have heard citation forms in these traces.
For example the acoustic blur may contain a rush of three syllables going at 750 words per minute – weatherwuh – but L1 speakers will believe that they hear where followed by there followed by were in soundshapes which are close to the citation form.
L1 speakers are deaf in this special way − deaf to the fact that we decode traces. We do not hear the acoustic blur of the sound substance that reaches our ears. Instead we hear the results of an extremely rapid, automatic, internal decoding process which has already, in a split second, matched the traces that are heard to the citation form soundshapes of words. It is an expert skill which operates subliminally, below the level of awareness and attention.
The gap between what L1 speakers believe they hear and what is actually in the acoustic blur of speech is what I call the blur gap. It is another purpose of Phonology for Listening to raise awareness of the blur gap, and to ensure that allowances are made for it in the teaching of listening.
The following four speech units, taken from Brazil (1994, chapter 1) illustrate the blur gap. Click the speaker icons on the left to hear the whole speech unit, click the speaker icons on the right to hear the word ‘where’ extracted from each speech unit. For speech units 03 and 04 there are additional icons where you can hear ‘where she’d’ and ‘where there were’. Note the different soundshapes of ‘where’. (A similar variety of soundshapes can also happen to content words such as ‘students’ and ‘produced’ – see here and here.)
The above is an extract from the introduction to Phonology for Listening.
01 // but i WASn't sure WHERE //
02 // WHERE MARket street was //
03 // where she'd SAID //
04 // where there were STREET LIGHTS //
In 01 'where' sounds close to the citation form that you would find in the dictionary; in 02 it is shorter and the vowel is less of a diphthong; in 03 and 04 both 'wheres' sound like the short sharp bleat of a strangled lamb. What these four examples show, quite neatly, is that words do indeed change their shape according to their relationship to other words.
In 01, 'where' is prominent, tonic (falling tone) and it occurs before a pause: these are optimal conditions for the production of a citation form, but are relatively rare in everyday speech.
In 02, 'where' is prominent early in the speech unit, and is therefore not before a pause, it is therefore shorter than in 01.
In 03 and 04 'where' is non-prominent, early in the speech unit, therefore not before a pause, it is even shorter.
Position in the speech unit, and choice by the speaker of whether or not to make a word prominent, are therefore key determinants of the sound shapes of any word.
You might argue that this kind of thing only happens to function words. But you would be wrong. See Favourite Speech units no. 5.
Brazil, D. (1994). Pronunciation for Advanced Learners of English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Cauldwell, R. T. (2013). Phonology for Listening: Teaching the Stream of Speech. Birmingham: Speech in Action.
