4. Articulatory classification of the English vowels.

The vowel is a speech sound in the production of which the air streams coming out of the lungs meet no obstruction on its way.

The English vowel system consists of 20 vowel phonemes which can be classified according to the following principles:

I. According to the stability of articulation we distinguish

12 monophthongs /2 diphthongoids among them/ and 8 diphthongs.

II. According to the position of the bulk of the tongue we distinguish:

1. Front vowels with…

…the fully front /i:, e, æ/

…the front retracted /ɪ/

2. Central vowels /ɜː, ə, ʌ/

3. Back vowels with…

…the back advanced /ʊ, ɑː/

...the fully back /u:, ɔː, ɒ/

III. According to the tongue-height we distinguish:

1.High…

...narrow /i:, u:/

…broad /ɪ, ʊ/

2.Mid…

…narrow /e, ɜː/

…broad / ə, ɔː/

3. Low…

…narrow / ʌ/

…broad / æ, ɑː, ɒ/

IV. According to the duration /length/ we distinguish long and short vowel phonemes.

V. According to the degree of muscular tension we classify them into tense (all long vowels) and lax (all short vowels).

VI .According to the lip-position they are distinguished as labialized (rounded) /ɔː, ɒ, uː, əʊ, ʊə/ and non-labialized (the rest of the phonemes).

5. Articulatory classification of the English consonants

The Consonant is a speech sound in the production of which the air stream coming out of the lungs has to overcome a certain obstruction on its way.

The English consonant system consists of 24 consonant phonemes which can be classified as follows:

1. According to the type of obstruction / occlusives, constrictives, occlusive –constrictives or affricates/.

2. According to the work of the vocal cords /voiced, voiceless/.

3. Acoording to the articulatory organ /labial, lingual, glottal/.

4. According to the prevalence of noise over the musical tone /noise consonants and sonorants/.

5. According to the position of the soft palate / oral, nasal/.

6. The phoneme theory as the basis of phonology.

The founder of the phoneme theory was Baudouin de Courteney. His theory of phoneme was developed and perfected by Shcherba, who stated that in actual speech we utter a much greater variety of sounds than we are aware of, and that in every lang these sounds are united in a comparatively small number of sound types, which are capable of distinguishing the meaning and the form of words.

A phoneme – is a smaller linguistic unit capable of differentiating words. Ph-ms are given in classifications. Ph-ms build up a system of oppositions; each ph-m can be opposed to another one in an identical position.

Phonology as a science, its object and methods of investigation. Phonology studies phonemes, it is a branch oh phonetics (Trubetzkoy, Prague linguistic institute – believe that it is a separate science).

The aim of phonology is to establish the inventory of the phonemes of the given language. They do this with the help of commutation tests.

7. The functions of the phoneme.

Firstly, the phoneme is a functional unit. In phonetics function is usually understood as a role of the various units of the phonetic system in distinguishing one morpheme from another, one word from another or one utterance from another. The opposition of phonemes in the same phonetic environment differentiates the meaning of morphemes and words: e.g. bath-path, light-like. Sometimes the opposition of phonemes serves to distinguish the meaning of the whole phrases: He was heard badly - He was hurt badly. Thus we may say that the phoneme can fulfill the distinctive function.

Secondly, the phoneme is material, real and objective. That means it is realized in speech in the form of speech sounds, its allophones. The phonemes constitute the material form of morphemes, so this function may be called constitutive function.

Thirdly, the phoneme performs the recognitive function, because the use of the right allophones and other phonetic units facilitates normal recognition. We may add that the phoneme is a material and objective unit as well as an abstract and generalized one at the same time.