- •How stress defined by different authors?
- •What is stress on the auditory, articulatory and acoustic level?
- •4. To what type of word-stress does the English and Russian structure belong?
- •What is the difference between fixed and free type of word-stress?
- •How does stress perform constitutive, distinctive and recognitive functions?
- •What is terminology suggested by different authors to distinguish between different degrees of word-stress?
- •What factors determine the place and different degree of word-stress?
- •9. What rules of word-stress are: a)for prefixal words; b) for compound words?
- •10. How does the rhythmic tendency influence word-stress in Modern English?
- •11. How does the semantic factor affect the place of word-stress?
- •12. What are the most common types of English stress patterns?
- •13. What are the lines along which a syllable can be analyzed?
- •14. What is the structure of syllable?
- •15. What is the role of sonorants in syllable formation?
- •16. What do you know about structural differences of English and Russian syllables?
- •17. Speak on the theories of syllable formation?
- •18. How does the syllable perform constitutive and distinctive functions?
18. How does the syllable perform constitutive and distinctive functions?
The syllable as a phonological unit performs three functions: constitutive, distinctive, identificatory. They are closely connected.
1. Constitutive Function
Syllables constitute words, phrases and sentences through the combination of their prosodic features: loudness — stress, pitch — tone, duration — length and tempo. Syllables may be stressed, unstressed,, high, mid, low, rising, falling, long, short. All these prosodic features constitute the stress pattern of words, tonal and rhythmic structure of an utterance, help to perform distinctive variations on the syllabic level.
2. Distinctive and Differentiator Function
If we compare the words: lightening освещение and lightning молния, we may observe that their syllabicity is the only minimal, distinctive feature: /Uaitfltn vs. Uaitnm/.
It is an example of the word-distinctive function of the syllab-icity of /n/.
There are rather many combinations in English distinguished from each other by means of the difference in the place ol the syllabic boundary: a name—an aim, ice cream—/ scream, we loan— we'll own: /ataeim/—/an leim/, /iais'kri:m/—/ai iskrhm/, /wi- Uaun/— ,/wil isun/.
The distinctive, differentiator function of the syllabic boundary makes it possible to introduce the term "juncture". Close juncture or conjuncture occurs between sounds within one syllable, e.g. a name, I scream: in the first example the close juncture is between In! and /ei/, in the second — between /s/ and /k/. Open juncture, disjuncture, or internal open juncture occurs between two syllables. If we mark open juncture with /-f / then in our examples it will occur between a +mme, I + scream. American scientists H. A. Gleason, L. S. Harris and K. Pike consider the open juncture a separate segmental phoneme. They include /+/ into the inventory of phonemes as a separate differentiatory unit.