Understanding and Teaching the Pronunciation of English.pdf

Content words, on the other hand, are words that have
lexical meaning, not grammatical meaning, such as nouns,
verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and question words. These words
have meaning in themselves; they refer to objects, actions, or
ideas in the real world. We can think of them as the words
that are most important in conveying the basic meaning of a
sentence. Here are types of content words:

9.3 CONTENT WORDS9.3 CONTENT WORDS

Category Examples

Nouns book, teacher, responsibility

Main verbs read, eat, study, examine, report

Adjectives big, beautiful, tired, many

Possessive pronouns mine, yours, his, hers, theirs

Demonstrative pronouns this, that, these, those

Questions words who, what, where, when, why, how

Not and ~n’t not, isn’t, don’t, hasn’t, can’t

Adverbs often, always, easily, happily

In English, content words tend to receive more stress than
function words, and, therefore, they are usually longer in
duration. Function words tend to be unstressed, and so they
last a shorter time. This is a basic principle that helps create
the rhythm of English.

Reduced function words

Look again at this example sentence:

TEACH•ers should KNOW a•bout pro•nun•ci•A•tion.

There are !ve unstressed syllables between the last two

stresses. How can speakers manage to say so many unstressed

syllables so quickly?

We’ve learned in Chapter 5 that unstressed syllables and

function words can have weak, reduced forms. In fact, some

reduced forms are even written in a shortened form,

especially in product names, like In-N-Out Burger,

McDonald’s Filet-O-Fish sandwich, Land O’Lakes dairy

products, or Sweet’N Low arti!cial sweetener.

These reduced forms make syllables shorter and enable them

to squeeze in between the stressed syllables. Sometimes

sound changes also make it easier for us to say the reduced

forms quickly so that regular timing can be maintained. This

helps create the “music” of English. If we pronounced each

syllable of each word with its full “dictionary” form, or

citation form, the rhythm would sound unnatural and

staccato—we’d be singing an entirely di"erent song.

Here’s another example:

I should have GIV•en him a PRES•ent.

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