Фонетики со смежными науками: акустикой, анатомией, физиологией, психологией

can [kæn] vs. tin can [keən].

The flapping of intervocalic /t/ and /d/ to alveolar tap [ɾ] before unstressed vowels (as in butter, party) and syllabic /l/ (bottle), as well as at the end of a word or morpheme before any vowel (what else, whatever). Thus, for most speakers, pairs such as ladder/latter, metal/medal, and coating/coding are pronounced the same.

Both intervocalic /nt/ and /n/ may be realized as [n] or [ɾ̃], making winter and winner homophones. Most areas in which /nt/ is reduced to /n/.

The pin-pen merger, by which [ɛ] is raised to [ɪ] before nasal consonants, making pairs like pen/pin homophonous. This merger originated in Southern American English.

[r] is articulated with greater retroflaction than the British one (the tip of the tongue is curled futher)

Also, there are differencies in pronunciation of individual words: either [i:], schedule [sk],tomato [ei].

There are many stress differencies: in words of French origine the stress is on the last syllable while in RP it’s on the first one (ballet RP[′bæleı] GA[bæ′leı]). Then: ‘address, ‘cigarette, ‘magasine, ‘adult, ‘inquiry,’research, ‘weekend, ‘ice-cream.
The intonation is slightly different, too. The differencies mostly concern the direction of the voice pitch and the realization of the terminal tones. In GA the voice doesn’t fall to the bottom. This is why the English speech for Americans sounds “affected” or “pretentious” or “sophisticated”. And for the English, Americans sound “dull”, “monotonous” and “indifferent”.
Theoretical Phonetics.

Seminars.

1. Modification of consonants and vowels in connected speech

The three stages in the articulation of a sound.

The ways of joining sounds (merging of stages, interpenetration of stages).
The junctions of consonants (loss of plosion, incomplete plosion, nasal plosion, lateral plosion). Progressive, regressive and double (reciprocal) assimilation.
Assimilation affecting the work of the vocal folds; the active organ of speech; the manner of noise production; both: the place of articulation and the manner of noise production. Accommodation.
Historical and contemporary elision.
Essential weak and contracted forms in English.
Degrees of reduction of the unstressed vowels in English (qualitative, quantitative, zero).
The role of the neutral vowel in the system of the unstressed vocalism in English.
The peculiar features of the unstressed vocalism in English and in Russian.

2. Differences in the articulation bases of English and Russian consonants and vowels.

3. British types of pronunciation.

RP, Estuary English, Cockney and their phonetic peculiarities.

Social and situational variation in British pronunciation.
The main tendencies in modern British pronunciation.
English dialects.

4. The main phonetic peculiarities of American English

General American (GA).

American dialects.