THE INFLUENCE OF THE BRITISH SPEECH PROSODY ON THE FORMATION OF PROSODIC NORM OF CANADIAN ENGLISH

Abstract

The English language in Canada occupies the dominant position. Both British and American English influenced the formation of Canadian English, which has undergone a long historical process. According to the latest census survey the population of contemporary Canada is devided into 3 linguistic groups: anglophones – those whose native language is English; frankophones – whose native language is French and allophones – Canadians whose native is some other language. The aim of the given paper is to analyse which peculiarities of the British pronouncing system influence and are reflected on prosodic characteristics of anglophones’ speech. The tasks of the paper included the distribution of terminal tones and scales and the character of syntagmatic devision in the speech of the analysed groups of informants. The conducted investigation revealed definite specific character of the speech of Anglophones, where the peculiarities of British prosody – the frequency of low falling nuclear tone and Descending Stepping Head influenced the formation of Canadian intonational system.This statement is based on the earlier received data about the frequency of intonational Scalеs and terminal tones in the works of native and foreign linguists.