GEC 1033 – WEEK 4

SPEECH PRODUCTION
DISCRIMINATE SOUNDS (MINIMAL
PAIRS)
STRESS & INTONATION

PREPARED BY:
NOR ‘AZAH BT. ABD. AZIZ
UNIT PENGAJIAN INGGERIS, JABATAN BAHASA
IPG KAMPUS IPOH

1 IRA/IPGKS
DISCRIMINATE SOUNDS

MINIMAL PAIRS

2 IRA/IPGKS
 Minimal Pairs
 Minimal pair refers to two or more words which
are identical except for one phoneme that occurs
in the same position in each word.
 In other words, when 2 distinct words are
distinguished by a single phone occurring in the
same position, they constitute a minimal pair.
 E.g. pain /pen/
bane /ben/
main /men/
 Minimal pairs illustrate that some speech sounds
are contrastive in a language and these
contrastive sounds represent the set of
phonemes of that language.
 Activity: Find minimal pairs in the
initial, medial and final positions.

MP INITIAL MEDIAL FINAL

/∫/ ; /s/ ship, sip bushes, buses hash, has
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

IRA/IPS 4
 MINIMAL PAIRS
bed - bad saw - sought boot -
boat
soot - suit but - boot
why - way
know - now wreath - wreathe leak -
lick
look - luck sock - suck
vest - vast
cod - card dug - dog
thirst - first
fair - fear pay - bay
read - lead
need - mead zoo - sue near -
ne'er
catch - cash azure5 - assure jet -IRA/IPGKS
 desk
A disk, fan van
minimal pair is a pair of words that
vary by only a single sound, usually
meaning sounds that may confuse
English learners, like the /f/ and /v/
in fan and van, or the /e/ and /ɪ/
in desk and disk
Different kinds of pronunciation
pairs

1. 2.
ship / sheep cursor’s / curse’s
place / plays a current of air / a current affair
I blocked it / I’ve locked it
3. 4.
hair / air REcord / reCORD
gold / goal GREENhouse / green HOUSE
support/sport BUS stop / bus STOP
thirteenth / thirteen
liked / like

5. 6.
Alice’s here / Alice was They’re leaving. Soon it’ll be
here quieter. / They’re leaving soon. It’ll
I like to cook / I like the be quieter.
cook Who said “Martin”? / “Who?”, said
 7.

Tell me everything you know.

She tells me
everything,
“Blue Mountain” is kind of coffee
a
“Blue Mountain” is nice
Where are you from? South AFRICA.
Which part of Africa are SOUTH Africa.
you from?

I’ve got some bad news for you. What?

I’m afraid your house has burnt What!
down.
10.
wait / weight
stopped aching / stop
taking
greet guests/Greek
guests
the officers changed / the
office has changed
 STRESS &
INTONATION
 Stress is the relative emphasis that
may be given to certain syllables in a
word, or to certain words in a phrase
or sentence.
 In English, stressed syllables are
louder than non-stressed syllables.
Also, they are longer and have a
higher pitch.
 Let’s consider the following
example first:
Question: What is the difference in the way the following two sentences
sound?

A. He is going tomorrow.
B. He is going tomorrow?

Answer: The ‘melodies’ of the two sentences are different:

• The melody of sentence A drops at the end, making it a statement.

• The melody of sentence B rises at the end, making it a question.
• In languages like English, we call these sentence melodies intonations.
• All spoken languages have intonations.
 Primary Stress
 The strongest degree
of stress placed on a syllable in the
pronunciation of a word.
 The mark (′) used to indicate the
strongest degree of stress. In both
senses also called primary accent.
 Secondary stress. 
 Secondary stress 
(or obsolete: secondary accent) is
the weaker of two degrees
of stress in the pronunciation of a
word; the stronger degree
ofstress being called primary. ...
That is, each syllable has stress or it
does not.
?What is intonation
•Intonation is a term used to refer to the distinctive use of different
patterns of pitch that carry meaningful information.

Pitch is the rate of vibration of the vocal folds. When we speak,

normally the pitch of our voice is constantly changing. We
describe pitch in terms of high and low.

Show me the money

H L H L

0 0.892948
Time (s)
 And Stress!
• Stress is applied on Content Words in spoken
utterances.
    cOntent - Noun.
"I really liked their presentation's content.“
contEnt - Verb.
"I have done my best. I am content.“

• Stress on a pair of words distinguishes between

the syntactic role played by each word in the pair.
• tight<pause>rope : A rope that is held taut.
• tight-rope : A circus-act uses this contraption :)
[2]
In linguistics, intonation is
variation of spoken pitch that is not
used to distinguish words; instead it
is used for a range of functions
such as indicating the attitudes and
emotions of the speaker, signalling
the difference between statements
and questions, and between
different types of questions,
focusing attention on important
elements of the spoken message
 Intonation ?
• Conveys paralinguistic information, emphasis and
contrast.
 Intonation on a particular word could differentiate between
sentence moods.
– You are finISHED (interrogative)
– You are FINIshed (imperative)

Image courtesy Google Image Search

 Exercises
 Divide the following utterances into
tone units and decide where the tonic or
nucleus might fall in each tone unit:
1. The first student to finish can go early
2. Sadly, Maurice has gone away
3. The person who was watching me left
a ticket behind
4. Alan couldn't make it so Ken took his
place
 Answers
1. //The first student to finish// can go
early//
2. //Sadly// Maurice has gone away//
3. // The person who was watching me
//left a ticket behind//
4. //Alan couldn't make it //so Ken took
his place//
 Discuss the different consonant and
vowel sounds using minimal pairs
and the changes in meaning with
different stress and intonation
patterns
 TUTORIAL
 Provide examples of words to
discriminate between the different
consonant and vowel sounds using
minimal pairs
 More exercises

 http://www.englishmedialab.com/pro
nunciation/upper-intermediate
%20intonation%20exercise.htm
 http://www.tolearnenglish.com/exerc
ises/exercise-english-1/exercise-
english-674.php
 http://eolf.univ-fcomte.fr/index.php?
page=92