Unit fourteen

Task 1. Listen to the recorded words and word combinations. Write them down in transcription. Practise their pronunciation.

Supermarket

Boutique

Haberdashery

Confectionery

Delicatessen

Fishmonger’s

Florist’s

Millinery

Furrier’s

Hardware

Underwear

Ribbon

Textiles

Exorbitant

Sky-high

Expensive

Expansive

Precious

Valueless

Shoddy

Tawdry

Purchase

Bargain

Scanty

Protectionism

Encourage

Haggle

Broach

Dangling

Turquoise

Pearl

Ruby

Amber

Aquamarine

Scarecrow

Fright

Wallet

Perfumery

Corduroy

Scents

Chamois

Suede

Task 2. Listen to the words in Task 1. Write down the words consisting of two and more syllables. Analyse the words accentual structure and group them according to their stress patterns. Note: the symbol – ^| stands for a stressed syllable; the symbol È stands for an unstressed syllable (disyllabic words: ^| – È, È ^| –; three-syllable words: È ^| – È, ^| – È È, etc.).

Task 3. Read the following sentences that contain a word having the same spelling but different pronunciation. Define the part of speech the word belongs to. Transcribe the sentences observing the placement of stress in the analysed words. Practice reading the sentences. Record your reading.

a) It was a terrible conflict.

b) His views conflict with mine.

c) We gave her a present.

d) They plan to present an award.

e) The author wants to contrast good and evil.

f) There is a contrast between dark and light.

Task 4. Read the following sentences. Provide an appropriate context for each of the utterances in accordance with its intonation pattern. Record your situations.

a) _\Why, | ^-he's _|got a ^\sore _|throat.

b) To^/morrow?

c) ^|Sit _/down,.please.║ ^|What.seems to be the _/matter?

Task 5. Listen to the following proverbs and sayings. Lay stress-and-tone marks. Transcribe them. Give their tonograms. Explain the prosodic means of expressing semantic contrasts, advice, encouragement. Practice reading them. Record your reading.

a) If a ^|man de ^. ceives me _/once, | _\shame on him; || if he de^|ceives me _/twice, | _|shame on ^\me. (semantic contrast)

b) ^\Sit in your _/place |, and _|none can _|make you ^\rise.

c) ^|When you are _/well, | ^\hold yourself _|so.

d) You ^|never ^. know ^\what you can _/do | till you ^\try.

e) There’s ^|no _\love _|lost be_/tween them (they hate each other).

f) There’s ^|no ^. love ^\lost be_/tween them (they love each other).

Task 6. Read the text given below. Make sure you understand what it is about. Divide each sentence into syntagms, lay stresses and tone marks, practise your reading technique. Record your reading.

Henry Higgins is the best-known fictional phonetician, the central male character of Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion and of the musical My Fair Lady. Higgins is given more extreme views about the importance of correct pronunciation in the latter, and most phoneticians are rather embarrassed at the idea that the general public might think of their subject as being capable of being used in the way Higgins used it. Phoneticians like to guess at who the real-life original of Higgins was: the generally accepted theory is that this was the great phonetician Henry Sweet. Though there is some evidence to suggest that B.Shaw might have had his own contemporary, Daniel Jones, in mind, who was, with the possible exception of Henry Sweet, the most influential figure in the development of present-day Phonetics in Britain. Daniel Jones was born in 1881 and died in 1967; he was for many years Professor of Phonetics at University College, London. He worked on many of the world's languages and on the theory of the phoneme and of Phonetics, but is probably best remembered internationally for his works on the Phonetics of English, particularly his Outline of English Phonetics and English Pronouncing Dictionary.

Task 7. Spelling dictation. Listen to the following fairy tale. Write it down.

In case a student makes more than three mistakes he is asked to learn the text of the fairy tale by heart imitating the speaker’s intonation.