Pronunciation of the

#pronunciation #linguistics Published: 2021-11-13

TL;DR

• The sound of “the” when used for emphasis can be /ði/.
• The sound of “the” before words with first-syllable stress can be /ðə/, while that before words with second-syllable stress can be /ði/ (regardless of whether the following sound is a vowel or a consonant).

Background

Today, I read a paper on the pronunciation of “the”.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/BF03196110

In this post, let me share the main results of Experiment 1. For simplicity, I will omit the exact details (exact data and discussion) and the results of Experiment 2. If you want to know more details and the further experiment, please see the paper yourself.

Introduction

• In principle, the definite article “the” sounds /ðə/ before a consonant and /ði/ before a vowel. This is so-called the normative rule.
• But in actual speech, there are some exceptions. One obvious deviation from the normative rule is when “the” is used for emphasis (e.g., “This is the (/ði/) most important …”).
• These deviations can actually happen depending not only on whether the initial sound is a consonant or not, but also on the position of the stress and some initial letters or sounds such as “h” (/h/ or silent h), /j/, /i/, or /ɪ/, of the following word.

Targets

50 students at the University of York participated in Experiment 1. They were from 18 to 22 years old and their native language was British English.

Methods

Omitted

Results

1. As to vowel-initial words: words with first-syllable stress provoked more deviations than did words with second-syllable stress. For example, “the” in “the attitude” is more likely to be pronounced /ðə/ than that in “the attention”.
2. As to consonant-initial words: words with second-syllable stress provoked more deviations than did words with first-syllable stress. For example, “the” in “the society” is more likely to be pronounced /ði/ than that in “the service”.
3. As to words beginning with the sound /j/: words beginning with a vowel letter provoked much more deviations than did words beginning with a consonant letter. For example, “the” in “the united” is much more likely to be pronounced /ði/ than that in “the yellow”.
4. The deviation rate was higher for /j/-initial words beginning with a consonant letter than other regular words beginninng with a consonant letter. For example, “the” in “the yellow” is more likely to be pronounced /ði/ than that in “the fellow”.
5. Deviations similar to 1 or 2 above occurred for the words beginning with the letter “h” (regardless of whether the “h” is silent or not).
6. The sound /i/ are /ɪ/ are called high front vowels and they are the closest to the vowels used in /ði/, which may have two possible phonetic consequences. One is that the assimilation process takes place (e.g. /ði.i/ -> /ði/), and the other is that the “the” sound is reduced in the same way as in 1 or 2 above. The experimental data seem to support the second alternative.
7. Even as to the same word, there are some inconsistency depending on the context.

Discussion

• As to 1, 2: Whatever the rule is, “the” before words with first-syllable stress tends to be /ðə/, and vice versa. The simplest way to understand this is that the /ði/ sound is stronger than the /ðə/ sound, so it is slightly harder to pronounce the consecutive strong sounds like /ðiˈæ/ in “the attitude”.
• As to 3, 4: /j/ sounds more like a vowel than other consonants, which makes some participants treat it as a vowel. If the spelling has a vowel letter such as “u”, it accelerates the tendency even more.
• As to 5: This can be understood by analogy with the alternation in indefinite articles. “h”-initial words with second-syllable stress are sometimes combined with “an” (e.g., “an historical”).
• As to 6: this is probably to increase its comprehensibility.