It was during the reign of Henry II (1154–89) that royal justice was available to anyone could bring their case within a certain formula, known as a writ. This is discussed in Chapter 5, ‘The Father of the Common Law (c.1154–1215)’, the title of which refers to the title often bestowed upon Henry II, the first monarch from the House of Plantagenet. The chapter focuses on the development of the writ system during and in the aftermath of Henry’s reign in relation to what we now call land law and whether this marked a move to centralisation that replaced the feudal system. The chapter begins by examining the Becket controversy but will then move on to argue that it is for other developments that Henry Plantagenet’s reign should be remembered. The second part of this chapter explored the developments to the legal system that occurred during this reign and that allowed for a common law to develop and be regularised. The final section will explore in detail the origins of the writ system, following Maitland’s legendary account of The Forms of Action as well as the revisions and criticisms put forward by Milsom.

This chapter begins our examination of the origins of the common law. Many accounts – including that of Maitland – begin just before the Norman Conquest and explore how centralised authority had developed in the late Anglo-Saxon period. This is the focus of this chapter, which explores the debate as to the importance of this period by examining the characteristics of the late Anglo-Saxon legal system. This chapter will explore what the Anglo-Saxon inheritance was. The first section will look at the historical debate as to where the history of English law begins and the importance that should be placed on the Anglo-Saxon period. It will contrast the still influential approach of Maitland with more recent scholars, most notably Patrick Wormald. The second section will then outline what is considered to be the major achievement of the long Anglo-Saxon period as a whole: the move from feud to compensation. The third and final section will then explore how what we would call the legal system had developed by the end of the Anglo-Saxon period. It will ask what did William the Conqueror inherit and to what extent this provided some foundation for the English common law.

Individual speech sounds are modified by the phonetic environment in which they are found in connected speech. In this book, the term accommodation is used generically for any and all articulatory modifications that arise from the phonetic environment. The term assimilation is used for accommodation that crosses phonemic boundaries, and coarticulation is used for sub-phonemic accommodations. Accommodation occurs not due to laziness, but through these forces: (1) the fundamental constraints on producing a number of segments in rapid, connected succession, and (2) the efficiency of speech production – not producing gestures, or extending gestures beyond what is required for the production of highly intelligible speech. Accommodations might be informally called shortcuts, and some shortcuts are required by physical constraints and some are not; others are required by the grammatical rules of the language in question, defined by language-specific rules.

Suprasegmentals are phonetic elements that are not restricted to individual segments, but whose influence extends across a number of segments. What is phonetically the same type of suprasegmental may play a role at a very different place in the grammatical structure of a given language. One type is prominence, involving extra loudness and duration of the segments that are affected. In English, prominence is primarily grammatical stress playing a role in word pronunciation, but also emphasis, playing a role in the structure of a phrase or sentence. In English, an unstressed syllable contains a reduced vowel, normally realized as schwa. Another type of suprasegment involves variation in fundamental frequency. If this occurs at the level of the word (especially where words are restricted to a single syllable), the phenomenon is tone. Where F0 variation plays a role in the grammatical structure of the phrase or sentence, the phenomenon is intonation. Articulatory set (setting) is considered as a suprasegmental.

This chapter provides a short overview of the phonemes of General American English, shared in large part with the phonemes of Canadian English. American English phonemes are comprised of the following: 6 plosives, 9 fricatives, 2 affricates, 3 nasal consonants, 4 approximants, and a non-rhotic flap, and 13 vowels. General American English, like all varieties, makes use of stress, emphasis, and intonation.

Speech is anatomy made audible. Anatomy influences the possible human phonetic repertoire. Speech is an overlaid function, in the sense that all the “organs of speech” have more basic functions. Speech anatomy is divided into regions: supraglottal, the larynx, and subglottal organs. Subglottal organs are restricted to those that create a pulmonary breath stream for speech. The larynx produces a tone called voice, which is fundamental to speech production. The supraglottal organs comprise primarily the tongue, lips, and velopharyngeal port (soft palate). These vary the possible resonance frequencies, and thus contribute in a fundamental way to the variety of sounds typically generated in speech. The surface of the tongue is divided into regions for the purpose of phonetic classification. Speech production involves many individual muscles; muscles pull but do not push, except in the sense that, if a muscle contracts over its primary dimension, it will bulge on the sides. To produce speech sounds, the tongue often arches in the middle, and it often assumes a position with the tongue tip raised or curled back.

In the production of speech, airflow or heightened air pressure is required in order to produce the individual sounds of speech. Most usually this is achieved through the use of outgoing (egressive) air flowing from the lungs. Air pressures used in speech are generally not great, but involve a pressure differential from ambient air pressure. For the production of a small number of speech sounds, a negative air pressure is required, and for some speech sounds airflow is ingressive. Normal ambient air pressure at sea level is 101.325 kilopascals (kPa) or 14.7 pounds per square inch (psi). When air is permitted to flow unimpeded, air will flow from an area of higher pressure to an area of lesser pressure in order to equalize pressures. In speech, air may flow, causing the vocal folds to vibrate. Air may be forced to move through a constricted space such that it generates noise. Airflow may be blocked and a heightened pressure built up behind the blockage, which is then released with an explosive effect.

This chapter explores the effect of the Norman Conquest as well as looking at the developments during the Norman period as a whole during the reigns of William I (1066–87), William II (1087–1100), Henry I (1100–35) and Stephen (1135–54). It falls into three sections. The first provides an overview of the main effects of 1066 in terms of law and order. The second and main section then discusses in detail what is often considered to be the most significant development under the Normans, the feudal system, and how this impacted upon law and order. Feudalism actually undermined the development of a common law by feudal lords presiding over their own feudal courts for their tenants. The king’s law and protection was only afforded to his own personal tenants. The third section then focuses upon two aspects that are often overlooked in accounts of the effect of the Conquest: the effect of the Norman era upon the position of slaves and women. The importance of the later Norman kings will be the focus of the conclusion.

Voice is the production of a vibrating tone through the vibration of the vocal folds under pulmonary airflow. The glottis is the space between the vocal folds. Phonation is produced through the myoelastic aerodynamic theory, which takes into account the actions of muscles, tissue elasticity, and aerodynamic (airflow) principles. Fundamental frequency is the frequency of vibration of a talker’s vocal folds (as distinguished from other frequencies in speech). An individual’s “normal” fundamental frequency is called their modal frequency. Voice onset time (VOT) is the time (duration) between the release of a plosive and the start (onset) of voicing in the following segment. The vocal folds are complex anatomical structures involving superficial and deep layers; this structure influences the nature of vocal fold vibration and the mucosal wave. In order to explain and illustrate the complex vibration, the two-mass model and the cover--body model are used. Whisper and nasality are phenomena that are counted under the heading "voice" by some authors.