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Communication: Spoken English | 205

pronouns. Form words are auxiliary or helping verbs, prepositions, articles,
conjunctions, personal pronouns and relative pronouns.
In utterances said without any special emphasis, content words receive
the accent and form words do not.
For example,
The ׳boy has ׳gone to ׳school.
Form words are accented only when you wish to convey emphasis.

For example,
a. ׳She is ׳coming
b. No, ׳she is not ׳coming
c. She ׳is׳ coming.

Rhythm

The English language is said to be having a stress-timed rhythm. This means
that in an English utterance, the prominent or stressed syllables tend to occur
at regular intervals of time, irrespective of the number of weak or unaccented
syllable between any two accented syllables.
Consider the following sentences:

a. ׳Tom has ׳just re׳turned from London.
b. My ׳friend has ar׳ranged for my re׳turn trip.
Sentence (a) has eight syllables; there is one unaccented syllable between
any two accented syllables and therefore it is quite easy for a speaker to
speak in such a way that the accented syllables occur at regular intervals
st
of time. Sentence (b) has ten syllables, four of which receive accent. The 1
two accented syllables have two unaccented syllables between them, the
next two have three and the last two have none. The time interval between
ranged of arranged and turn of return will be approximately the same as
between turn of return and trip though there are three unaccented syllables
between ranged and turn and none at all between turn and trip. This is a
very important feature of English connected speech and if it is neglected,
the characteristic rhythm of the language is lost. To achieve this regularity of
occurrence of accented syllables, unaccented syllables, if they are too many
are pronounced rapidly. The use of weak forms of structure words and con-
tractions too contribute to maintaining the rhythm of the language.

Weak Forms

There are some words in English that have two or more qualitative and quan-
titative patterns. These words are accented in isolation and their strong forms
are used. When not accented and used in connected speech their weak forms

Bhatnagar_Chapter 09.indd 205 2011-06-23 7:52:58 PM
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