ABSTRACT
Words as separable linguistic units are recognized in the sophisticated written form of English by the use of spaces between words. Although in the continuous stream of speech there are no pauses between words corresponding to such written spaces, words nevertheless show their independence by their ability to stand alone, e.g. as replies to questions and when being referred to or cited. Differences often exist between the pronunciation of words in their cited, isolate form and their pronunciation in connected speech, when they are subject to influences from other, surrounding sounds and from larger accentual and rhythmic patterns. The differences may concern the word as a whole, e.g. weak forms in an unaccented situation; or they may concern a word’s accentual pattern, e.g. loss or movement of an accent due to its position in a larger accentual pattern; or they may involve the sounds used at word boundaries as in ASSIMILATIONS, ELISIONS and LIAISONS. This variation between isolate forms and context-influenced forms often depends on the casual or formal nature of speech, the more formal and careful (and probably slower) the delivery, the greater the tendency to preserve a form nearer to that of the isolate word.
