why ???

[94BANSHEE]

hi. i have a question about pronunciation, pertaining to words such as :

Province / Provincial

I was wondering, why is "province" has a "pa - ra" sound at the beginning , but "provincial" has a "pr-oh" sound?

Is there an English rule for thses types of prefixes??

thanks!!

[Tdol]

The stress changes from the first syllable in 'province' to the second in 'provincial'. The unstressed sound becomes a schwa.

[94BANSHEE]

Originally Posted by tdol

The stress changes from the first syllable in 'province' to the second in 'provincial'. The unstressed sound becomes a schwa.

sorry, but what do you mean by "schwa" ??

[Casiopea]

It's called tri-syllabic laxing. That's when a two-syllable word becomes a three-syllable word and stress is redistributed, like this,

[1] pro'vince (two syllables)
[2] pro'vin'cial (three syllables)

In [1] the letter "o" is pronounces as [a], as in father, and in [2] the letter "o" is is pronounced as schwa, which is the sound the letter "e" makes in the word the.

Here's how tri-syllabic laxing works: Add the suffix -al to the word province and the stress changes; it moves one syllable forward:

[1] pro (stressed) vince
[2] pro (unstressed) vin (stressed) cial

In [2], stress is taken off of "o", pronounced [a], which reduces or laxes the vowel sound [a] to schwa. Other examples of schwa are,

want to => wanna
going to => gonna

Schwa is unstressed. Any vowel stripped of its place of articulation is reduced to schwa.

Hope that helps.