Levels of cognition

Whenever we approach a scientific subject, whenever there is one aspect of nature or society (in our case — human speech) that we want to understand and analyse, we begin our investi­gation with the particular object (предмет) as it is given to us naturally (this is what we call “the ontological level of cogni­tion”). In other words, we confine ourselves to our immediate experience, to what our senses tell us, to what we acquire or learn by direct and immediate observation. We are absolutely sure that if we have set out to learn something about a certain subject, we begin with the way it is open to our senses, with the way it is immediately observable. Therefore, we should begin with factual acts of speech (произведения речи) which are directly and im­mediately apprehended by our sense of hearing (or sight, as the case may be).

Now, as has been pointed out above, within the scope of the present manual we concentrate on the feature level of analysis.

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The speech act in its entirety is an extremely involved phenom­enon, the complexity of which is revealed by the fact of so many different sciences trying to unravel it from different points of view (e.g. psychology, sociology, acoustics, semantics, semiotics, lin-guostylistics and others).

The science of the feature level singles out what we think is the basic, essential, fundamental part of speechology as a whole (the “fundamentals of language”,⁴ the “indispensable founda-tion”⁵). While quoting the indisputable authorities on the subject, we must again emphasize the special importance of never confin­ing this all-important aspect to either phonetics, or orthography, or punctuation, or rules of reading. The “indispensable founda­tion”, the “fundamentals of language” are all these fields of study rolled into one.

It follows, naturally, that we begin with the study of the fea­ture level by investigating and trying to understand as clearly as possible how it is that the sounds and letters of English are actu­ally made to serve the purpose of distinguishing between words and morphemes.

Unfortunately, even in this country, people tend to begin studying languages on the second (the gnoseological level). In the majority of textbooks and manuals, for example, we find, first and foremost, the system of phonemes and graphemes which comes, as it were, “from nowhere”. The learner of the language simply has to begin by believing that the system of phonemes and graphemes actually exists as such, in vacuo, independently of each other and, consequently, of the ontological level, of what really happens in speech. And this is a methodologically unac­ceptable approach.

The English Articulation Basis

It is clear from what has just been said above, that the first step (whether it is theoretical research or the practical teaching of languages) must begin with complete understanding of the nature of the articulation basis. It should always be borne in mind that unless we know the difference between the articula­tion basis of our own language and the language we are learning,

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we get nowhere, because instead of learning the sounds of the language, the “indispensable foundation”, whatever we would try to do would always be a kind of caricature, because the whole of the basic arrangement of the speech organs would be wrong.

In what follows we are going to remind our readers of the general tendencies which control the formation of English sounds, the movements and positions of the organs of speech which con­stitute the English articulation basis⁶:

1. The tongue is broadened and flattened and drawn back from the teeth, which it scarcely ever touches. It is lowered, and the fore part of it is “grooved” or hollowed out. This results in a “dull” quality of English sounds which is particularly noticeable in [1] The flattening of the tongue makes English vowels wider and favours the development of mixed vowels. Its lowering makes the second element of English diphthongs indistinct (hence their “gliding” character); together with the retraction of the tongue, it also favours the formation of unpalatalized consonants.

The retraction of the tongue does not favour the formation of dental sounds: the absolute majority of English sounds are articu­lated behind the teeth.

2. Lips are kept as much as possible in a neutral position: in unrounded vowels (such as [a:], [i]) the lips are passive; in the formation of front vowels (such as [i:], [e]) there is no “chinking” or spreading out of the corners of the mouth; rounded sounds (such as [w], [u]) are formed without any pouting of the lips.

Recent research in the field⁷ has shown that there are many more points that a Russian learner of English should bear in mind if he (or she) is striving to acquire an acceptable pronun­ciation.

First and foremost, there is the activity of the glottis: the “glottalization” of quite a number of English sounds, both vowels and consonants (which is discussed in greater detail on pр. 19—21 below).

The Russian learners of English must also pay special atten­tion to the so-called “glides”, or, as Henry Sweet put it, “a spe­cial class of ... transitional sounds, produced during the transition from one sound to another”.⁸

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Thus, for example, in the word “key” we have not only the two sounds [k] and [i:], but also the sound produced in passing from the back position of [k] to the high front one of [i:], i.e. the aspiration of the strong velar stop [k].

It may be added, that as far as the pronunciation of English vowels in open syllables is concerned, the general tendency to­wards glottalization affects them to such an extent, that by the end of phonation they tend to loose their quality and turn into the so-called “whispered glides”.⁹

In this case vowels are finished by a gradual opening of the glottis, with the final glide passing through whisper to breath, giving the “gradual” off-glide to vowels in such words as, for example, “day”, “pay”, “may”, “pie”, “eye”, and so on.

One more very important characteristic of the English organic basis is the greater degree of muscular tension which accompanies the articulation of English sounds. This is closely connected with the shape of the oral-glottal resonator. In other words, the reso­nator is narrower (due to the activity of the glottis) and stretches further back, because there are additional resonators — the pha-ryngeal and nasal ones — which take part in the articulation of sounds.

These peculiarities of the English articulation (or organic) basis are of primary importance to the Russian learner, whose native basis of articulation is drastically different from the one he (or she) is supposed to acquire, make his (or her) own.

There is one more point to be made in this connection. It is the difference between the English voice and the Russian one. At the same time we must own that so far we have been unable to teach our students the English voice as clearly and systematically as the elements of the English articulation basis.

It should be noted, and not in passing, that voice is one of the most mysterious and fascinating categories of the feature level. Although everybody can produce voice, from the speechological point of view, there are voices and voices. Otherwise stated, the term “voice” is used in a number of different meanings (or ac­ceptations). The most widely known one is: “Voice is the sound produced by the vibration of vocal chords which are brought to­gether and made tense under the pressure of exhaled air”¹⁰.

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We can consider the opposition of presence or absence of voice on two levels: from a more general point of view this definition is adequate and covers both speaking and singing. On a more sophisticated level the opposition of presence or absence of voice becomes part of the science of phonetics and is used to distin­guish between phonological oppositions (see p. 17). A completely new part of our subject is the investigation of the cessation of

phonation.¹¹

When we introduce into our course certain elementary notions and rules connected with what is described as “speaking voice”, we always prefer to begin with a few introductory remarks and draw the attention of our readers to the all-important question of voice production in general and the role resonators play when different kinds of voice are compared and analysed. We can do no better than adduce here a very clear and detailed exposition of the subject which we find in “A n Essay on Voice” by P. Waine and L. Minajeva:

“If we return to the discussion of the human voice, it is most helpful to consider a stringed instrument as a model. The string is plucked, it vibrates, and a note is produced. But this note is disembodied, unless it is associated with a resonator. For exam­ple, the string is juxtapposed with a small box, and then this box gives the voice of a mandoline or a guitar, or a string is enclosed in a larger box, and then it is a piano. The form of the box can be changed and in accordance with it the voice changes its quality.

In the case of the human voice, the note is given its quality by the joint influence of the resonators: throat, mouth, pharynx, nasal passages, chest.”

What we have described so far is the most general concept of the human voice, which is studied by different branches of science.

Although every human being is endowed with what may be described as a “speaking voice”, and although voices of individual speakers vary widely in many ways, not only the man in the street, but also the rank-and-file phonetician would certainly not be able to explain how the different varieties of “speaking voice” are apprehended, described or investigated.

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What we have just said has been proved again and again by the fact that the teaching of English so far has been completely divorced from the all-important problem which may be described as “national voice”.

We have come to the distinct conclusion that we must begin by analysing this problem from the point of view of the opposi­tion of resonant and non-resonant voice. It is now accepted by members of the English department (philological faculty, Moscow University) that speaking Russian implies greater resonance than speaking English. Indeed, special research¹² has shown that the difference between Russian and English voices depends entirely on the shape of the resonators, on the drastic difference between the two articulation bases. The English voice must be learnt, un­derstood and reproduced by Russian anglicists, and they must constantly bear in mind the specific shape of the resonators in the two languages.

Chapter 2.

THE SYSTEM OF ENGLISH PHONEMES

Now we are turning to what is usually described as the pho­nological system of the English language. When we set out to describe the phonological system, to think of ways and means of presenting the inventory of the so far established English phonemes, we again have to turn to certain methodological premises.

If our aim is to present English phonemes as a system, the only acceptable way of doing it consists in introducing a system which is based on the facts of speech, because phonemes are extracted from the speech-chain as metal is extracted from ore.

It follows that if we intend to say something tangible about the sounds of English, we must have a look at their very numerous descriptions already registered in a large number and variety of books.¹³ Of these the one authored by A.I. Smirnitsky¹⁴ provides us with a foundation for our main direction of research — the

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indissoluble unity of the written and oral forms of the feature level of the English language.

Smirnitsky’s description of the English phonological system is based entirely on the functional approach, on the minute in­vestigation of what actually happens when phonemes are used to serve their specific purpose, i.e. to tell from each other the sound-cauls (or envelopes) of different morphemes and words. As we have already said, Smirnitsky’s system is the system on which the complete understanding of the feature level of English

is based.¹⁵

All descriptions of phonological systems are based on the con­cept of phoneme. Phonemes are two or more sounds the differ­ence between which is not conditioned by their position alone. It is quite clear from this definition that we do not speak of a phoneme in the singular, because the concept as a whole is based on the opposition of no less than two entities (as seen from the definition). Thus, for example, if we take the following two pairs of words: bad — bed, pan — pen, we shall see that the vowels in these words differ. But the fact is that the difference between them is not conditioned by their position. The positions are identical. Therefore, these two vowels (No. 4 and No. 3) are separate phonemes.

If the difference between the two or more sounds is condi­tioned by their position, we speak about variants of phonemes. For instance, unaspirated [t] in “stone”, aspirated [t^h] in “tone” and faucal [t]¹⁶ in “written” differ. But the difference in all the three [t] is conditioned by their position. Therefore, they are variants of the phoneme [t] and not separate phonemes.

Different phonemes are used to differentiate only the sound-envelopes of units of the semantic level.

From what has just been said it could be mistakenly assumed that the functioning of phonemes can be described in terms of regarding them as separate unities, as certain elements of the diacritical level whose natural form of existence is deducible from the way every one of them can sound.

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However, phonemes are “-emes”, and when considered on the ontological level they have to be deduced, abstracted from the in­finity of speech events. But the moment we turn to the functional aspect, we are immediately faced with the obvious fact that they cannot function as such; they can only function within words and morphemes. Otherwise stated, the actual functioning of speech sounds is entirely conditioned by their opposition in the units of the semantic level.

The moment we begin to understand English vowels as they are, we come to the conclusion that the so-called system of Eng­lish vowel phonemes does not exist as one monolithic whole. In actual fact, there are two completely different systems in so far as the vowels are concerned, and this two-fold division, this di­chotomy depends on the concept of stress, or accent.¹⁷

The role of stress in the vowel system of the English lan­guage is very great indeed. Four degrees of stress may be sin­gled out:

1. Main strong primary stress: pen, game, family.

2. Strong seconary stress: demonst’ration accele’ration

3. Weak secondary stress: analyse, realize, fellow, window.

4. Completely unstressed syllables: better, a’bout.

The weak secondary stress is the minimum of stress in which all the characteristics of English vowels are distinguished. In the completely unstressed positions these characteristics become in­distinguishable.

As it has been already mentioned above, A.I. Smirnitsky stud­ied the peculiarities of the English accentual system in detail, and came to the conclusion that there are, in actual fact, two differ­ent subsystems which together form the overall system of English vowels. They are the so-called “strong” and “weak” phonemes. The strong phonemes are: [i:], [i], [e], [se] [a:], [э], [э:], [u], [u:], [л], [э:]. There are only three weak phonemes: [i], [u], [э]. The

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three weak phonemes thus in unstressed position stand for all the vowel phonemes of English. And the distribution is as follows:

[i] stands for [i:] and [i]

[u] equals [u] and [u:]

[э] stands for all the rest of the strong vowel phonemes.

We can fully understand the nature of phonemes only if we un­derstand the dialectics of the general and the particular, and that all phonological generalizations and abstractions must be firmly rooted in the objective reality of speech. The reader may also be reminded of the fact that phonemes (like all -emes) belong to what we have described above (see p. 10) as the gnoseological level of study and are not directly apprehended by the senses. They are deduced from the reality of different kinds of relations.

We have already explained the system of English vowel pho­nemes as described by A.I.Smirnitsky, because without complete understanding of the way it works we shall never be able to go on with the analysis of the way language is committed to writing (see Chapter 5).

As far as English consonants are concerned A.I. Smirnitsky has confined himself to their ontological description, which is adduced in Appendix 3.

Interestingly, consonants in general do not play as great a role in understanding the whole system, in investigating the functional aspect of English sounds as the vowels. First of all, it is common knowledge that the difference between variants of English (both social and territorial) is based on the different pronunciation of vowels. The pronunciation of consonants is much more uniform. There is, of course, a certain variety in the pronunciation of con­sonants as well, but it is not noticed, apprehended, to the extent the variety of vowels is. It takes a trained ear, a better knowledge of the language to actually see at first sight the difference between dialects in the pronunciation of consonants.

We are, therefore, faced with the following decision: do we confine ourselves to merely adducing in the appendix the sys-17

tematic presentation of English consonants or do we still need to say something about them as well? On mature consideration we have come to the following decision: we shall briefly summarize the more important aspects of what is already known about the essential features of English consonant phonemes, especially as viewed by the Russian learner (or the learner who uses Russian as the mediator language when learning English).¹⁸

Very briefly they may be summed up in the following manner:

Plosives. In Russian the opposition “voiced vs. voiceless” is neu­tralized in final position, for example ded [-t], lob [-p] etc. In Eng­lish, however, there is a large number or words which depend on the opposition of plosives in final position, such as cab — cap, led — let, dog — dock, etc. But it would be a mistake to imagine that the sus­tained opposition is based on a “voicing” of the final plosives, or that in contrast to the final plosives in Russian they are kept from “devoic-ing” in English. The “devoicing” of final plosives is a fact, based on physiological (anthropophonic) regularities. The distinctive feature of these pairs in English is not “voice vs. absence of voice” but “weak­ness vs. strength”, i.e. the “lenis — fortis” opposition. The strong plosives are aspirated: when a strong plosive is unaspirated in initial position, it is apprehended as a weak one. For example, «park» when pronounced with an unaspirated [p] will be apprehended as «bark». Before the weak plosives vowels and resonants are lengthened, thus, for instance, pence [pens] — pens [penz], bat [bset] — bad [bad].

The Glottal Fricative. In modern English [k] and [g] have no analogous fricative consonants. Therefore, the regular pattern p/b — f/v, t/d — 9/6, k/g — ? is distorted. Fricatives are not opposed to stops and there exists no [X] or [y]. At the same time we find a very strange glottal fricative [h] and a strong palatal fricative [q] (commonly known as the “Ich-Laut”), which occurs only in initial position before [ju:], for example hue [cju:], human [cju:man], humour [cju:ma] and so on.

Because of the non-standard type of pronunciation which includes the so-called “aitch-dropping” (which means the non-pronunciation of the glottal fricative in strong positions) the only point that can interest us here is that most manuals on English phonetics¹⁹ do not stress sufficiently the importance of avoiding full pronunciation of glottal fricatives in weak position within the literary standard.

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Thus, for instance, no advanced learner of English (or Russian anglicist for that matter) would ever dream of speaking of the [еэ av 6ied] (“the hair of the head”, a phrase borrowed from a well-known joke about a Cockney speaker), because he/or she knows very well that this is “aitch-dropping”, or something that has got nothing to do with the kind of English he/or she is learning.

But the same person will go on saying: “Give [him] the book”, “Tell [ha:] to come here”, “That’s [him]”, which is completely wrong, because the glottal fricative is fully pronounced only in a strong posi­tion, before a stressed vowel, e.g. “Put that coat on the hook”.

The Glottal Stop. Side by side with the glottal fricative there exists a glottal plosive (or a glottal stop). It is transcribed as [?]. This plosive occurs in strong initial (prevocalic) position in em­phatic pronunciation, for example in a speech situation like: “I didn’t say “seven”, I said “eight” [? eit]. So if we want to be emphatic and to stress the underlined words in the sentences: “This is ? absolutely impossible”, or “It was simply Tawful”, we shall succeed in doing this by pronouncing the stressed sounds in these words with the glottal stop.

The glottal stop occurs not only in emphatic speech, but also quite often precedes [p], [t], [k] and [tf], as well as the pronuncia­tion of initial weak plosives. In fact, it is believed that weak initial plosives in a strong position ([b], [d], [g]) can be properly pro­nounced only if they are preceded by a glottal stop. For example:

“Did Don dig that ditch?”[ ?did ?don ?dig 6set ?ditf] “Bad boys buy bad books”.[? bsed ?boiz ?bai ?bsed ?buks] “Good girls get good books”.[?gud ?ga:lz ?get ?gud? buks]

Here are some more examples with the glottal stop preceding [p], [t], [k] and [tf]:

Nature fascinates me. [’nei? t Гэ] The flu is unfortunately very catchy [’kseTtfi] That stupid/’stju: ?pid/actor/’se ?kta/ran out of petrol/’pe Ttral/on the motorway /’mauTtawei/.

The Velar Nasal [n] has very much in common with the glottal fricative [h] in the sense that what we have said about the glottal fricative may be applied to the velar nasal. Its use is reduced to

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one single position in much the same way as that of the glottal fricative. But in contrast to the glottal fricative which appears in a limited number of words and may be regarded merely as a voiceless beginning of a vocalic articulation, [n] appears in a very great number of words.

The functional loading of[n] is very great indeed.

[it] is a part of three homonymous, highly productive suffixes: 1) “ing”, the suffix of the present participle. 2) “ing”, the suffix of the gerund. 3) “ing”, the suffix of the verbal noun.

The Voiceless Bilabial [av]. All phoneticians more or less agree on the number of consonant phonemes in Modern English being twenty four. The only general doubt is about the voiceless bilabial [av]. There is always the problem of whether [av] is a separate phoneme or not.

It should be mentioned in this connection that in Old English there existed some kind of glottal friction as a fact of tensing a consonant, of making it stronger and more important. In addition to the voiced [r], [l], [n], [w], there were their voiceless counter­parts [hr], [hl], [hn], [hw]. Thus the Modern English “nut” was hnutu in Old English. The spelling with “h” was used to show that the sounds in question were voiceless. It is a well-known fact that both the spelling and the pronunciation ceased to exist by the 12-th century. In Modern English voiceless [r], [l], [n] do not occur as separate phonemes, although they may become voiceless in special positions, as in tram, please, etc.

The fate of [w] and its voiceless counterpart [av] was differ­ent. The differentiation of these two sounds has been preserved in English up to the present. In certain dialects these sounds are even phonematically opposed, thus:

which [Avitf] — witch [witf]

whether [л\eбэ] — weather [we6a]

whine [Avain] — wine [wain]

where [л\еэ] — wear [wea]

Russian learners of English know only one way of pronounc­ing w, as a voiced sound. But native speakers, even highly ed­ucated ones, pronounce it in two ways: [av], or [w]. The first variant occurs quite frequently in initial position for the sake of

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emphasis, for instance: [av] What are you doing?, [av] Where are you going?, and so on.

The Resonant [r]. There are in fact two different sounds of the [r] type in Modern English. One of them is the normal (dis­tinctive) [r] which appears only in prevocalic position. The other sound is the so-called “replacive” (linking or delimitative) [r] in Sandhi situations.

As far back as the 1930’s Jones and Ward showed that both acoustically and physiologically the distinctive [r] makes the im­pression of a [w] sound. It becomes, therefore, possible to speak of a phonematic merger of [w] and the distinctive [r].

The features of the impending phonematic merger of [r] and [w] may be summed up as follows: 1) the general tendency in Modern English is towards a reduced activity of the lips. It is therefore clear that the merger in question is not conditioned by the needs and wants of the system of the language, 2) the re­markable ability of [r] and [w] to be subjected to the merger is manifested by their sharing relatively few positions of occurrence, [w] is extremely rare in intervocalic positions and quite unknown in the position immediately after [p], [f], [Г]; [r] never occurs im­mediately after [s] where [w] is very frequent. That is why there is practically no danger of “pathologic” homonymy owing to the number of pairs of the “ring — wing” type being very small. If the merger actually took place it would serve to clarify the posi­tion of [r] in the system of English consonants and strengthen the phonemic status of [w].

The phonemic status of [r] is also weakened by the tendency of supplanting [tr] and [dr] by the affricate phonemes [tf] and [d3] and thus turning, for example, chain and train into homonyms.

The replacive [r] shows no tendency towards merging with [w]. Therefore, the distinctive function of [r] is clearly op­posed to the non-distinctive (delimitative). As the non-distinc­tive [r] is not merged with [w], it may, in general, become rel­egated to the status of a non-phonematic delimitative signal.

Particularly important for phonological theory is the “intru­sive” [r] which is etymologically illegitimate and is used as a means of preventing hiatus, i.e. contact of the two vowels bor­dering on -r-, for example: Africa [r] and Asia, I had no idea

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[r] of it. In the language of children the linking character of the [r] is manifested in the substitution, for example, of [6irsepl] for [6isepl] (the apple).

The Alveolar Groove Fricatives [s] and [z]. It must be noted here that most foreigners continue to mispronounce words with these sounds, and this, to a great extent, is due to their dubious phonological position.

The distribution of [s] is far less restricted than that of [z]. Thus, for example, [z] may be used in initial position, but almost all the words beginning with [z] are of foreign origin. As far as the distribution of [s] and [z] in non-initial position in concerned, we find uncertainty of choice.

In this connection we must mention phonetic investigations conducted by W.R. Read, who examined the speech of several hundreds of educated speakers and found that words like “conclu­sive”, “persist”, “transition”, “vase”, “isolated”, “paradise”, etc., are pronounced either with [s] or with [z]. In other words, in cases like these [s] and [z] would appear to be in free variation. The table which follows shows the results of the experiment conducted by Read. Out of 241 speakers some pronounced the words with [s], others with [z]:

[s] [z]

1. conclusive 135 106

2. exclusive 102 139

3. evasive 96 145

4. suffice 227 14

5. persist 105 136

6. transact 90 151

7. transitive 148 93

8. unison 131 110

9. vase 205 36

10. venison 85 152

It follows that it is very difficult to determine the phono­logical status of [s] and [z] in Modern English. If the method of minimal pairs were used, we would find that there are only about half a dozen words in which the two sounds are “mini-

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mally” contrasted, i.e. sounds — zounds, seal — zeal, said — zed, scion — Zion.

The interchange of [s] and [z] is connected with the concept of Verner’s law in Modern English. K.Verner developed Grimm’s law, according to which the original Indo-European stops — [p], [t], [k], [b], [d], [g] — became fricatives — [f], [9], [h], [w], [6], [y]. But there were many cases where Grimm’s law did not hold true. Thus, for example, the Gothic counterparts of the Sanskrit ‘bhrata and p’ita were brobar and fa6ar, i.e. not merely 9 in both cases. Verner showed that this was due to the influence of stress. In brobar b is voiceless because the preceding syllable was stressed. In fa6ar б is voiced because the preceding syllable is unstressed. So the quality of the consonant depends on the preceding vowel. That was Verner’s discovery. Jespersen generalized the principle to cover Modern English. If we compare Old English wses [s], his [s] with Modern English was [waz], his [hiz] we shall see that the fricatives changed their quality (s — z) because of the operation of Verner’s law in Modern English: the alveolar groove fricative in words of this type appears after an unstressed vowel. The same applies to words like exist, exact, extract.