they are words that have little semantic content of their own, but tend to have more grammatical or referential function in relating content words or higher syntactic units to one anot[r]
Trang 1Strong & Weak Forms
In connected speech, many of the ‘small’ words we use very frequently tend to take on a different ‘shape’ from the one listed in the dictionary All of these words belong to the category of function words, i.e they are words that have little semantic content of their own, but tend to have more grammatical or referential function in relating content words
or higher syntactic units to one another Function words are essentially closed class words, such as pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions, auxiliaries, etc Below, you’ll find a table listing these words, together with their strong or dictionary form, as well as their potential weak forms The following tables are based on Roach, 2000, with slight
modifications/additions
In general, weak forms do tend not to occur in sentence-final position or in
contrastive/emphatic use
Determiners/Quantifiers
orthography strong form(s) weak form(s)
Pronouns
orthography strong form(s) weak form(s)
Prepositions/‘Particles’
Trang 2orthography strong form(s) weak form(s)
Conjunctions
orthography strong form(s) weak form(s)
Auxiliaries
orthography strong form(s) weak form(s)
Trang 3were wɜ: wə
Sources & Further Reading:
Roach, P 32000 English Phonetics and Phonology: a Practical Course Cambridge:
CUP