4. Main trends in phoneme theory.

Many linguists consider the phoneme as a basic element of a language. However, some of them use purely psychological approach to the phoneme while the others prefer the physical aspect of the phenomenon. So, the basic approaches were divided into 4 basic classes.

The mentalistic or psychological approach regards the phoneme as an ideal « a mental image » or as the target to which the speaker aims. According to this concept allophones of the phoneme change its materiality. This approach was developed bya well-known Russian linguist Buduenom де Куртуне, and something of the sort was taken Sapir.

A so-called functional approach presents the phoneme as the minimal sound unit of a language by means of which it is possible to distinguish the meanings, without a special consideration of actually pronounced sounds of speech. For representatives of this approach the basic characteristic of the phoneme is meaning differentiating.

More conventional form of the functional approach is concentrated in the abstract approach, where the phoneme is viewed as an independent unit from acoustic and physiological qualities associated with it, thus from speech sounds. This view on the phoneme was first mentioned in the works of Ельмслев, Тогби etc.

The physical approach to the phoneme is submitted by such linguists as Дэниэл Джоунз, Mark Jakovlevich Bloh, Трагер etc. representatives of this approach consider the phoneme as a "family" of the homogeneous sounds adequate to certain concrete circumstances, such as:

- The Various members of the "family" should have phonetic similarity

- No member of the family can occur in one context with other member of family.

This approach is purely materialistic as considers the phoneme only as a group of articulatory similar elements, without paying special attention to its functional and abstract aspects.

Lecture 3-4. The System of English phonemes. Modifications of phonemes in connected speech.

1. The system of English phonemes.

It is a common knowledge that every language has its own number of phonemes and different number of allophones representing them. So every language has its own system of phonemes. The systematic character of the sounds in every language is determined by the fact that every member of the system is determined by all the other members and does not exist in isolation, doesn’t function in isolation.

Passing to the main issue of the lecture I would like to remind you that in every phonetic system there are two main levels – segmental and suprasegmental and speech sounds are the units of the segmental level of the system. I would also like to draw your attention to the fact that traditionally all the scholars distinguish two major classes of sounds in every language – vowels and consonants. The distinction between them is basically based on auditory effect. Consonants are known to combine noise and voice, while vowels are the sounds that consist only of voice. On the articulatory level the difference lies in the work of organs of speech (formation of obstruction while pronouncing consonants and absence of the latter in the articulation of vowels)

Now it seems to be fair enough to consider every class of sounds separately. But before doing that I would like to say some words about the method of establishing the phonemic status of a sound.