23 Phonemes and Allophones.

Phoneme - the smallest contrastive language unite which may produce a change of meaning. It's functional unite, i.e. It's capable of differentiation of the meaning.

Various speech realizations of the phoneme are called allophones - are variations of the same phoneme, is due to the position in various phonetic contexts,

[d]: 1.as isolated sound; 2.dot (точка): here [d] is lenis (слабый), voiced, stop articulated, with the tip of the tongue against the teeth ridge. 3.breadths: in this word [d] is formed with the tip of the tongue against the upper teeth and the quality of the sound changes.

dry: [d] is pronounced with tip of the tongue against the teeth ridge.

The list of allophones of this sound might be continue. Nevertheless all the allophones of the phoneme [d] have a few articulatory features in common: Allophones of the same phoneme never meet in the same phonetic context - they can't differentiate the meaning; Though allophones of the same phoneme possess similar articulatery features they may frequently show considerable phonetic differences; all allophones of the same phoneme are indicated by the same symbol. When teaching the articulation of the phoneme [d] one musn't ignores the changes in the place of articulation in the character of explosion.

25. Syllable. Syllable division and formation.

Being the smallest pronounceable units, syllables form morphemes, words and phrases. Each of these units is characterized by a certain syllabic structure. Thus a meaningful language unit phonetically may be considered from the point of view of syllable formation and syllable division.

The syllable is a complicated phenomenon and like a phoneme it can be studied on four levels - articulatory, acoustic, auditory and functional. The complexity of the phenomenon gave rise to many theories.

No phonetician has succeeded so far in giving an adequate explanation of what the syllable is. The difficulties seem to arise from the various possibilities of approach to the unit. There exist two points of view:

1. Some linguists consider the syllable to be a purely articulatory unit which lacks any functional value. This point of view is defended on the ground that the boundaries of syllables do not always coincide with those of morphemes.

2. However the majority of linguists treat the syllable as the smallest pronounceable unit which can reveal some linguistic function.

Trying to define the syllable from articulatory point of view we may talk about universals. When we mean the functional aspect of the syllable it should be defined with the reference to the structure of one particular language.

The definition of the syllable from the functional point of view tends to single out the following features of the syllable:

1. a syllable is a chain of phonemes of varying length;

2. a syllable is constructed on the basis of contrast of its constituents (which is usually of vowel - consonant type);

3. the nucleus of a syllable is a vowel, the presence of consonants is optional; there are no languages in which vowels are not used as syllable nuclei, however, there are languages in which this function is performed by consonants;

4. the distribution of phonemes in the syllabic structure follows by the rules which are specific enough for a particular language.