- •1. Phonetics as a science. It’s aims and significance.
- •2. The branches of Phonetics.
- •3. The connection of phonetics with other branches of linguistics and non-linguistic sciences.
- •4. The interconnection between phonetics and phonology
- •5. The subject-matter of phonology.
- •6. The main achievements in the historical development of phonology.
- •7. The phoneme as the unit of phonology. Its properties and functions.
- •8. Different views upon the phoneme.
- •9. English as a world language.
- •Spread of English in the world
- •11. The English English varieties of pronunciation.
- •English English
- •Southern accents.
- •Northern and Midland accents.
- •12. Received Pronunciation and Estuary English. British standard pronunciation
- •Estuary English
- •13. Dialects in England.
- •14. Differences between Southern and Northern groups of dialect.
- •15. The socio-linguistic situation in the usa. The varieties of American English.
- •16. Differences between Received Pronunciation and General American pronunciation.
- •17. Phonostylistics as a science.
- •19. The subject-matter of phonostylistics (Phs.).
- •17. Phonostylistics as a science.
- •18. Phonetic functional styles.
- •19. The subject-matter of phonostylistics.
- •20. The linguistic and non-linguistic factors studied by phonostylistics.
8. Different views upon the phoneme.
There are many definitions of the phoneme which reflect different aspects of this linguistic unit. The first definition runs as follows: the phoneme is a minimal abstract linguistic unit realized in speech in the form of speech sounds.
The phoneme is a functional unit. The functions that phonemes perform in the language are: constitutive (образующая), recognitive, distinctive.
The phoneme is material, real and objective. Phonemes realize themselves in speech through speech sounds, their allophones which are characterized by some phonetic similarity between them. The principle allophones are not subjected to obvious changes, subsidiary members are influenced by the neighbouring sounds.
There are different opinions on the nature of the phoneme and its definition among Russian and foreign linguists. I.A. Baudouin de Courtenay viewed phonemes as fictitious units and considered them to be only perceptions. Ferdinand de Saussure (France) viewed phonemes as the sum of acoustic impressions and articulatory movements. N.S.Trubetskoy (the Prague Linguistic School) defined the phoneme as a unity of phonologically relevant features. D.Jones, head of the London School of phonology, defined phonemes as a family of sounds. The phoneme theory in America was elaborated by the so-called structuralists L.Bloomfield, E.Sapir and others who define the phoneme as a minimum unit of distinctive sound-features, an “abstractional fiction…”. The representatives of the so called Copenhagen trend view all linguistic problem as “algebraic”(R.Jacobson, R.Halle).
L.V. Shcherba took the positive ideas from his teacher I.A.Baudouin de Courtenay, overcame the drawbacks of his theory and worked out a truly materialistic theory of phoneme. He was the first who defined the phoneme as a real independent distinctive unit, which manifests itself in the form of its allophones.
Phonemes are discovered by the method of minimal pairs, or by distinctive oppositions. This method consists in finding as many pairs of words as possible, which differ in one phoneme. The method of distinctive opposition enables one to prove whether the phonemic difference is relevant or not, e.g.
Depending on the number of relevant distinctive features oppositions can be (1) single, (2) double, and (3) multiple.
To establish the number of relevant and irrelevant features and to state whether the opposition is single, double, or multiple it is convenient: (1) to enumerate the characteristic features of the phonemes under discussion; (2) to mark distinctively irrelevant features by pluses and distinctively relevant features by minuses; (3) to count distinctively relevant features
9. English as a world language.
English is one of the major languages in the present day world.
English has become a world language because of its establishment as a mother tongue outside England in all the continents of the world. Actually this exporting of English began in the XVII th century with the first settlement on Northern America. Above all, it is the great growth of population in the USA, assisted by massive emigration in the XIX-XX centuries, that has given the English language its present standing in the world.
People who speak English nowadays fall into 3 groups:
Those who have leant it as the native language
Those who have leant it as the second language in the society which is bilingual
Those who are forced to use it for a practical purpose –administrative, professional, educational and cultural.
1 person in 7 of the entire world population belongs to one of these three groups. 75% OF THE WORLD’S MAIL AND 60% OF telephone calls are in English.
The recognition of English as world language doesn’t presuppose its spread in the world only. Linguists now believe that far from breaking away into mutually incomprehensible varieties English is developing a distinctive for of a world language – WORLD ENGLISH.
This particular for of the language has no geographical markers and has been described as standard international English , it is used by international investigations. Although each of these varieties has its own linguistic characteristics, linguists see the many common features as evidence that a standard WORLD ENGLISH is “emerging”.