Learn English – Rules for pronouncing prefixes and suffixes

american-englishbritish-englishprefixespronunciationsuffixes

I'm hoping 'this' is the right place, as my attempt on the Linguistic site failed miserably (it was moved to the ELL site, here -> Phonetic transcription of English prefixes and suffixes).

In case 'reasons' are required; I'm wanting to look at rhyme (true/near) and minimal pairs (true/near) (amongst other things) in both British and American English (I want to look at Canadian, South African and Australian later :D). Though I have a large list of words, I'm missing the pronunciation of many inflections. I thought I'd look at some dictionary entries, and noticed that many don't include transcriptions for inflected forms.
Apparently (according to comments on Ling.) this is because the pronunciation is generally standard. I find this a little questionable – just looking at pluralisation shows three different pronunciations, and one of those creates an additional syllable.

I've found some general "rules of thumb" – but I'm left wondering how reliable/accurate they are.
I'm not expecting there to be rules without exception – but I'd like an idea if I'm looking at occasional exceptions, or lots of them.

* -s  
    + [p] / [t] / [k] / [f] = 's'  
    + [b] / [d] / [g] / [l] / [r] / [w] / [m] / [n] / [v] / [y] = 'z'  
    + [tʃ] / [dʒ] / [s] / [z] = 'iz' (+additional syllable)  
*-ed  
    + [p] / [k] / [θ] / [f] / [s] / [ʃ] / [tʃ] = 't'  
    + [b] / [g] / [ð] / [v] / [z] / [ʒ] / [dʒ] / [m] / [n] / [ŋ] / [r] / [l] = 'd'  
    + [t] / [d] = 'əd' or 'ɪd' (+additional syllable)

Are such rules fairly consistent?
Can I apply them with a fair degree of accuracy?
Are there established/known exceptions (or better, sub-rules for exceptions)?
Any idea on how to identify whether a past-tense verb should have ''əd' or 'ɪd'?
Are there such rules for Prefixes as well as Suffixes?

Best Answer

NOTE: This is off the top of my head; there may be aspects of this I've overlooked, so I would welcome any correction anybody wants to supply.

You're missing a simpler way of understanding this, because you're working off letters (which should properly be enclosed in ‹› rather than []) instead of sounds (specifically, phonemes, which should properly be enclosed in // rather than []).

Here are the rules:

  1. Your two suffixes are what linguists call archiphonemes, which are sound-types "realized" as different phonemes in different sound contexts. We may designate them as /S/ and /T/, and categorize them as

    /S/ - (dental/alveolar) sibilant, realized as either voiceless /s/ or voiced /z/
    /T/ - dental stop, realized as either voiceless /t/ or voiced /d/

  2. How the archiphoneme is realized depends on the sound which ends the base word and therefore immediately precedes the suffix:

    • If that sound is voiced, the suffix takes its voiced realization, and
    • if that sound is voiceless, the suffix takes its voiceless realization, EXCEPT THAT
    • if that sound is of the same category as the suffix, an unstressed vowel is inserted between the base and the suffix so you can hear the two sounds as distinct. Since all vowels are by definition voiced, a voiced sound now precedes the suffix, and the suffix takes its voiced realization. The vowel itself may be realized as anything in the approximate range [ɛ] – [ɪ], usually 'reduced' to [ə] – [ᵻ].

As far as I know, these rules are invariant in Standard English; but when both a plural and a possessive /S/ are applied (e.g., the Joneses' house) one may be suppressed in speech, I believe many Scots dialects realize /D/ fairly consistently as /ɪt/, and there may be other variations I've overlooked or I'm not familiar with.

Similar rules govern prefixes; but since nowadays most prefixes are of Latin or Greek origin, the rules are mostly derived from practices in those languages.

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