Spoken language phonotactics implications for the ESL/EFL classroom in speech production and perception

Abstract

Language realized as speech undergoes a striking metamorphosis from pre-dynamic citation form strings (words, sentences, text) to dynamic running speech (the flow of quasi-uninterrupted acoustic energy). This transition is not possible without a host of absorption processes that alter segmental sequences through assimilation, reduction, loss and similar levelling features and result in restructured syllabication. The phonostylistics of the spoken language, as the statistical analysis of a representative sample of informal American speech shows, exposes vowels and consonants, words and sentences as perhaps less pivotal entities in running speech than sonorants and obstruents, syllables and syllabic phrases (i.e. “runs” of articulated speech defined by their respective pausal envelopes). Such an inquiry into the nature of running speech has implications, not only for our understanding of the properties of the oral language, but also for second language acquisition in the way listening comprehension and oral fluency acquisition may be facilitated.