Task to Unit 5

1. Learn the following terms and word combinations.

• the spoken form of the language

• the written form of the language

• the pronunciation system of the language

• form the phonological point of view

• from the articulatory point of view

• phonemic differences

• the inventory of the phonemes

• the procedure of identifying the phonemes

• to determine the minimum recurrent segments

• to record the segments graphically

• sound sequences

• the distributional method

• the phoneticians of structuralist persuations

• the laws of phonemic and allophonic distribution

• contrastive distribution

• complementary distribution

• free variants of a phoneme

• the semantic method

• systematic substitution

• the commutation test

• minimal pairs of words

• a system of oppositions

• word-initial position

• word-medial position

• word-final position

• single opposition

• double opposition

• triple opposition

• common and differentiating features

2. Answer the following questions:

1. How does the functional (or phonological) approach study the sounds of a language?

2. What is the aim of phonological analysis?

3. What are the stages of identifying the phonemes of the language?

4. What methods do scholars use to differentiate between phonemes and allophones?

5. What does the distributional method consist in?

6. What are the laws of phonemic and allophonic distribution?

7. What do scholars mean by contrastive distribution?

8. What do phoneticians imply by complementary distribution?

9. What do scholars mean by “free variants” of a phoneme?

10. What does the semantic methods consist in? What is it based on?

11. What do phoneticians mean by a minimal pair of words?

12. What kinds of opposition do scholars single out?

3. Try and give exhaustive information on the following issues:

1. The aim of phonological analysis.

2. The distributional method.

3. The semantic method.

Unit 6

Syllabic Structure of English Words.

1. The notion of the syllable.

2. Syllable formation.

3. Syllable division.

1. It is generally known that speech is a continuum. However, it can be broken into minimal pronounceable units into which sounds cluster or group themselves. These smallest phonetic groups are called syllables. Being the smallest pronounceable units, the syllables form greater language units, that is morphemes, words and phrases. Each of these units is characterized by a certain syllabic structure. Consequently we may say that a meaningful language unit has 2 aspects: syllable formation and syll. division which form a dialectical unity.

Before we look at the E. syllable in detail let’s consider the general problem of the syllable. The study of the syllable has for a long time occupied an important place in linguistics as a field of theoretical investigation. But though phonetics has progressed far enough, the problem of the syll. is still an open question in phonetics.

It’s necessary to mention that the syll. is a fairly complicated phenomenon and, like the phoneme, it can be studied on 4 levels: acoustic, articulatory, auditory and functional.

2. Syllable formation in E. is based on the phonological opposition vowel – consonant (VC). Vowels are usually syllabic while consonants are not, with the exception of l m n, which become syllabic if they occur in an unstressed final position preceded by a noise consonant: little garden.

The structure of the syllable is known to vary because of the numbers and the arrangement of consonants. In E. 4 types of syllables are distinguished:

1) open	no [nəυ]	CV
2) closed	odd [Od]	VC
3) covered	note [nəυt]	CV(C)
4) uncovered	oh [əυ] oak [əυk]	V(C)

Due to its structure the E. language has developed the closed type of syllable as the fundamental one, while in Russia, it is the open type that forms the basis of syllable formation. The number of syllable varieties from the point of view of their structure is 23. The structure of the English syllable reveals variations in the number of pre-vocalic consonants from 1 to 3, and post-vocalic consonants from 1 to 5.

As to the number of syllables in the E. word, it can vary from 1 to 8, for example:

1. Come

2. City

3. Family

4. Simplicity

5. Unnaturally

6. Incompatibility

7. Unintelligibility

3. As was mentioned earlier, the other aspect of the dialectical unity is syllable division. The linguistic importance of syllable division in different languages is in finding typology of syllables and syllabic structure of meaningful units of a language, that is morphemes and words. It is the syllable division that determines the syllabic structure of the language, its syllabic typology.

Syllabic structure of a language (like its phonemic structure) is patterned, which means that the sounds of a language can be grouped into syllables according to certain rules. The part of phonetics that deals with this aspect of a language is called phonotactics. Phonotactic possibilities of a language determine the rules of syllable division. As the phoneticians point out, in English the problem of syllable division exists only in case of intervocalic consonants and their clusters like in the words city, agree [ə'gri:], extra ['ekstrə] and others.

In such cases the point of syllable division is not easily found. Let’s consider the 1^st case. Theoretically 2 variants are possible:

1. the point of syll. division is after the intervocalic consonant,

2. it’s inside the consonant.

In both cases the 1^st syllable remains closed according to phonotactic rules of the E. language, because the short vowel should remain checked. The results of analyses show that the point of syllable division in words like pity, topic, measure is inside the intervocalic consonant. This conclusion is of great importance for Russian learners of English. They should keep in mind that in the Russian language the stressed syllable in the structure (C) VCV(C) is always open, e.g. у-хо, мя-та, о-бувь, while in English this kind of syllable is always closed if the syllabic vowel is short. So to be able to pronounce the E. Words of this type correctly, it is necessary to make transition from a vowel to a consonant very close.

Now let’s examine another type of intervocalic consonant clusters.

It is the VCCV(C) type, for example agree [ə'gri:], abrupt [ə'brΛpt] and so on. To be able to determine the syllabic boundary in words of this type it’s necessary to apply phonological criteria, the 1^st of which is the distribution of segmental phonemes. In the above – mentioned examples, the words should be divided into syllables in the following way: [ə'gri:], [ə'brApt] because such combinations of consonants as gr - br are permissible initial clusters for English. On the other band, there are clusters that can never be found in the word initial position and consequently should be broken by syllabic boundary, for example: admire [əd'maiə].

It should be pointed out that there are cases when the distributional criteria may fail. In this case when the number of intervocalic consonants is 3, as in the word extra ['ekstrə] we have to state the possible points of syllable division:

1. ['ek – strə]

2. ['eks – trə]

3. ['ekst – rə]

In such cases it’s the native speaker’s intuition that could be relied on. The subconscious feeling of a new pronunciation effort makes him divide the words of such types into ['ek-strə].

This natural way of division is fixed in the pronunciation dictionary.

In compound words like toast-rack it is the morphological criterion that counts, because the boundaries of the syllable should correspond to morpheme boundaries, and so, such cases present no difficulty from this point of view.