User:Grover cleveland/American Theater Standard

American Theater Standard, also known as Theater Standard, Eastern Standard, American Stage Speech, "Good American Speech" or "Good Speech", is a stage dialect associated with the voice coach Edith Skinner and defined in her work Speak With Distinction. It is taught as the appropriate dialect for use in "classics" and "elevated texts" (such as the works of Shakespeare) in several prestigious dramatic schools in the USA, including the Yale School of Drama, the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, Juilliard School, and the Tisch School of the Arts. It codifies the Mid-Atlantic dialect of English widely used in Hollywood films of the 1930s and 1940s, associated with figures such as Cary Grant and Franklin Roosevelt.

Vowels
* only occurs in unstressed syllables

Realization
The long monophthongs and closing diphthongs each have three possible phonemic lengths:
 * long, when occurring in a stressed syllable and either word-final or followed by a voiced consonant
 * mid-long, when otherwise occurring in a stressed syllable
 * short, otherwise

All other vowels are short at all times.

Lexical distribution of vowels
This table shows the distribution of the vowels in accordance with the Standard Lexical Sets of John C. Wells:

* In words of the START, NORTH and FORCE sets, closing diphthongs are used only where a historical /r/ has been vocalized, and in the close derivatives of such words. Thus STAR is, STARRY is , but ARIA is

Triphthongs are used in words such as HIRE, FLOWER.

In unstressed syllables, is used in words such as Obey.

In Speak With Distinction, Skinner herself used a different set of keywords: will, let, Pat, honest, cup, would, pass, stir, Lee, pay, fathers, all, go, who/you, my, boy, now, here's, their, car, ore, poor.

Consonants
may be voiced between two vowel sounds. Linking R is used but intrusive R is not permitted.

Comparison with other accents
American Theater Standard is similar to English Received Pronunciation. The chief points of difference are:
 * The addition of a distinctive phoneme for words in the BATH set only.
 * The addition of closing diphthongs, for most words in the START , NORTH and FORCE sets.
 * The starting point of the GOAT diphthong ( rather than ).
 * The presence of the unstressed vowel.
 * The lack of intrusive R
 * The presence of.

Comparison with General American accents reveals far more extensive differences:


 * Resistance to the father-bother and cot-caught mergers.
 * The separate phoneme for words in the BATH set.
 * Absence of the lot-cloth split.,
 * Retention of vowel length distinctions.
 * Nonprevocalic is either replaced by centering diphthongs or dropped completely.
 * Resistance to the Mary-marry-merry, mirror-nearer and hurry-furry mergers.
 * Absence of yod-dropping after, and.
 * Absence of lenition of intervocalic /t/.