Лекція №1

The British Broadcasting Corporation (the BBC) adopted RP for the use by its news-readers since 1920s. The country’s population, for more than half a century, had been exposed through broadcasting to RP. Until the early 70s it was the only accent demanded in the BBC’s announcers . RP often became identified in the public mind with BBC English

By 1930 of the last c., any intention of setting up a standard of Spoken English was disclaimed by phoneticians and the term “Standard Pronunciation” was replaced by “Received Pronunciation”, which had been introduced for Southern Educated English by phonetician Ida Ward who defined it as pronunciation which “ had lost all easily noticeable local differences”

The second half of the 20th c. witnessed the radical changes in RP’s social base: 1) the second great communication leap (= the advent of radio and television) has led to a greater number of speakers , in various layers of society, using RP; 2) the social structure of the British society has lost much of its earlier rigidity; 3) access to higher education has led to a relaxation of view on prestige in pronunciation.

Since post-war years this pronunciation norm has not been exclusively correlated with one section of society. This vast extension of RP’s social base has resulted in a dilution[daI"lu:.S@n] of the original concept of RP.

According to Prof. J.C. Wells, contemporary RP/BBC English does not constitute a single variety but a setof varieties correlating with the speakers’ education, social status and other social factors: 1) Mainstream RP (the accent of middle class educated speakers); 2) U-RP (upper-crust, aristocratic RP); 3) Adoptive RP ( the accent of the adults who did not speak RP as children); 4) Near-RP (the accent of the speakers preserving strong regional features). It is spoken by 2-3% of the whole population of the UK.

Nowadays British phoneticians refer to an educated accent in London and the south-east which is termed Estuary English (EE)(англійська вимова в дельті Темзи)

Major linguistic sources forRP. The first description and codification of RP was made by Professor Daniel Jones in his books The Pronunciation of English [1909] and Outline of English Phonetics [1917]. Professor Alfred Charles Gimson gave an explicit description of RP in the middle of the 20th century in his book An Introduction to the Pronunciation of English [first published in 1962]. The sixth edition of this seminal work on RP was extensively revised by Alan Cruttenden and published in 2001 under the title Gimson’s Pronunciation of English. One of the most authoritative and detailed descriptions of all major accents of English, including RP, was made by Prof. John C. Wells in his three-volume Accents of English [1982]. A lot of informative recent publications on RP can be found at Professor Wells’s web-page: <http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/wells>

1.2. Phonological and phonetic dimensions of RP/BBC English.

The main segmentalfeatures of RP/BBC English. As for its phoneme inventory, this accent has 20 vowels and 24 consonants. The system of vowels embraces 12 pure vowels or monophthongs: i:, I, e, {, V, A:, Q, O:, U, u:, 3:, @, and 8 diphthongs: eI, aI, OI, @U, aU, I@, e@, U@. The system of RP consonants consists of the following two wide categories of sounds :

1) those typically associated with a noise component: p, b, t, d, k, g, f, v, T, D, s, z, S, Z, h, tS, dZ ;

2) those without a noise component which may share many phonetic characteristics with vowels – 7 sonorants: m, n, N, l, r, j, w.

According to the phonotactic specification of /r/ occurrence, RP is a non-rhotic or r-less accent, i.e. /r/ does not occur after a vowel or at the end of the words. It may be claimed that /r/ in RP has a limited distribution, being restricted in its occurrence to pre-vocalic positions.

Phoneme lexical distribution/SELECTION.Prof. J.C. Wells in his article “Cockneyfication of RP” discusses several of recent and current sound changes in RP:

1) the decline of weak /I/ (Lзменшенення вживання ненаголошеного) the vowel [I] is becoming less frequent in weak syllables. There is the trend towards preconsonantal schwa/[@]. This trend may be explained by the process of centralization of unstressed vowels (централізація ненаголошених голосних); 2) glottalling, [t] is pronounced as a glottal allophone [?] in certain environments.3) l-vocalization, (вокалізація)4)intrusive /r/, (вставний)

4)yod coalescence, and (асиміляція зрощення) an increased tendency towards the coalescence of yod (the semivowel /j/) with a preceding alveolar plosive, so that : t+j - > tS, d+j - > dZ = the process of affricatization;

s+j - > S , z+j - > Z = the process of assibilationmutual, education , educate, gradual,

5) assorted lexical changes(несистематичні зміни у вимові окремих слів).

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