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Файл:Теоретическая фонетика английского языка = English Theoretical Phonetics. Учебное пособие
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4.3. Dif ferenc es in the Articulation Bases of the English and Russian Consonants
3. Complete the table featuring the articulatory classication of
the English RP consonants.
Table 12. Articulatory Classication of RP Consonants
Type of obstruction
(a manner of the production of noise)
Active organ
Bilabial
Labial
Forelingual
Lingual
Mediolingual
Backlingual
Pharyngal Glottal
Labiodental
Interdental
Alveolar
Post-
alveolar
Palato-
alveolar
Palatal
Vel a r
Occlusive Constrictive Affricate
Plosive Nasal Fricative Sonorant
Place of obstruction
4. Explain which features the sets of sounds share.
a) [p], [b], [m];
b) [g], [p], [t], [d], [k], [b];
c) [t], [s], [p], [k], [f], [ʃ], [ʧ];
d) [v], [z], [n], [g], [d], [b], [l], [r], [j], [w], [ʤ], [ʒ];
e) [t], [d], [s], [l], [n];
f) [r], [ʤ], [ʃ], [ʒ], [ʧ];
g) [w], [l], [ʤ], [ʃ];
h) [k], [g], [ŋ].
5. Which features distinguish the sounds in A and B.
A B
[p], [t], [k], [s], [f ] [b], [d], [g], [z], [v]
[p], [b], [m] [t], [d], [n], [l]
[f], [v], [s], [z], [ʃ], [ʒ] [ʧ], [ʤ]
41
Unit 4. Consonant System in Modern English
6. Observe the pairs of words and discuss the relevant features of
the opposed sounds.
torn – dawn
tought – caught
tone – none
time – lime
tie – e
ten – men
take – sake
tool – pull
tin – bin
teal – veal
7. Answer the questions using one-word / phrase answers.
1. How many aspects of speech sounds are distinguished?
2. How many major types can speech sounds be subdivided into
according to the specic character of the work of the speech organs?
3. The sounds [r], [w], [j] are termed … .
4. Sounds in the production of which the soft palate is lowered, and
the air escapes through the nose are called … .
5. A labial, labio-dental, constrictive, fricative, voiceless, fortis consonant
phoneme is … .
6. An alveolar-apical, constrictive, fricative, lateral sonorant is … .
7. A glottal, constrictive, fricative, fortis consonant phoneme is … .
8. A post-alveolar, constrictive, fricative, medial sonorant is … .
9. A forelingual, palato-alveolar, constrictive, fricative, voiced, lenis
consonant phoneme is … .
10. A lingual, backlingual, velar, occlusive, plosive nasal sonorant
is … .
11. A labial, bilabial, constrictive, fricative, medial sonorant is … .
12. A lingual, backlingual, occlusive, plosive, voiceless, fortis consonant
phoneme is … .
13. A lingual, forelingual, post-alveolar, constrictive, fricative, medial
sonorant is … .
14. A forelingual, interdental, constrictive, fricative, voiceless, fortis
consonant phoneme is … .
15. A voiceless aricate is … .
16. According to morphological criterion [ʧ], [ʤ] are considered
to be … .
17. British phoneticians points out … aricates.
18. How many consonant phonemes are there in RP?
19. English voiceless stops [p], [t], [k] are pronounced with … .
20. The English forelingual consonants are articulated with
the apical-alveolar position of the tip of the tongue. Russian forelingual
consonants are … .
42
UNIT 5.
WORD AS A PHONETIC PHENOMENON.
SYLLABLES AND WORD STRESS
Words are the fundamental building blocks of language. The foremost
task of any language learner is to nd out the segment and divide
the speech they hear into meaningful units: words and their meaningful
parts. Phonology plays an important role in identifying the boundaries
between words. For example, the string greenhouse. Phonological stress
disambiguates the meaning of the utterances in A and B. Identifying that
greenhouse is a single (compound) word in A, but two distinct words
green and house in B:
A. They walked past a GREENhouse.
B. They walked past a green HOUSE.
A phonological word is a piece of speech, which acts as a unit of
pronunciation. This is based on certain criteria, which vary from language
to language.
Properties of phonological words are:
y words are entities having a part of speech specication;
y words are syntactic atoms;
y words (usually) have one main stress;
y words (usually) are indivisible units (no intervening material possible).
R. Dixon states that a phonological word is a phonological unit larger
than the syllable (in some languages it may minimally be just one syllable)
which has at least one (and generally more than one) phonological dening
property: segmental features, prosodic features, phonological rules.
Segmental features include:
y internal syllabic and segmental structure;
43
Unit 5. Word as a Phonetic Phenomenon. Syllables and Word Stress
y phonetic realization in terms of segmental features;
y word boundary phenomena;
y pause phenomena.
A phonological word can be realized depending on the dierent
segmental features of a word, for example, sequence of phoneme types,
vowel clusters between consecutive syllable, possible positioning of
phonemes within a word, role of aspiration and nasalization and pausal
phenomena.
Prosodic features concern stress, or accent, that in many languages
proves one helpful criterion for dening a phonological word. It becomes
easier to nd the position of word boundaries from the location of stress
in a word, but in some languages, stress placement may depend on
a combination of morphological and phonological factors. In such cases,
stress may not be a useful criterion for phonological word.
Phonological rules that are applied in a phonological word have
particular rules of pronunciation, which help to gure out the boundary of
a word. For example, for languages that stress the last syllable of a word,
a word boundary is likely to fall after each stressed syllable.
So, a word as a meaningful language unit, has a denite phonetic
structure, that comprises not only the sounds that the word is composed
of, it also has a denite syllabic structure that these sounds form and
a denite stress pattern.
5.1. Syllabic and Accentual Structure of English Words
Speech can be broken into minimal pronounceable units into which
sounds show a tendency to group themselves. These smallest phonetic
groups are called syllables.
The syllable is one or more speech sounds forming a single
uninterrupted unit of utterance which may be a commonly recognized
subdivision of a word or the whole of a word.
Syllables form language units of greater magnitude, that is morphemes,
words and phrases. Each of these units is characterized by a certain
syllabic structure.
The study of syllables has two aspects: syllable formation and syllable
division.
The syllable is a complicated phenomenon and can be studied on four
levels: acoustic, articulatory, auditory and functional.
44
5.1. Syllabic and Acc entual Structure of English Words
Articulatory level concerns the syllable as the minimal articulatory
unit of the utterance.
Auditory level concerns the syllable as the smallest unit of perception:
the listener identies the whole of the syllable and after that the sounds
which it contains.
Phonological level is about a structural unit which consists of
a sequence of one or some phonemes of a language in numbers and
arrangements permitted by the given language.
Theories of Syllable Formation
Expiratory / Chest Pulse / Pressure Theory
(R.H. Stetson)
Expiration in speech is a pulsating process and each syllable should
correspond to a single expiration so that the number of the syllables
in an utterance is determined by the number of expirations made in
the production of the utterance.
Sonority / Prominence Theory
(O. Jespersen)
The least sonorous sounds which have the least carrying power, are
those for which the mouth is closed (voiceless oral stops), while the most
sonorous sounds are those for which the mouth is wide open (low
vowels). The syllable is treated as the combination of a more sonorous
sound with a less sonorous one. All the sounds with the greatest degree
of sonority (vowels and sonorants) are at the peak of the syllable, the rest
of the sounds surrounding the peak cling to it.
The Theory of Muscular Tension
(M. Grammont / L.V. Scherba)
Syllable formation is explained by muscular tension impulses and three
types of consonants. Each impulse has its strongest point – the peak of
prominence – and its weakest prominence – the valley of prominence.
Valleys of prominence correspond to points of syllabic division. The end
of one syllable and the beginning of the next one can be ascertained
by determining the type of consonants which take part in forming the
syllables:
y initially strong;
y nally strong;
y geminate or double.
45
Unit 5. Word as a Phonetic Phenomenon. Syllables and Word Stress
The more energetic part of a consonant is attached to a vowel, so that
initially strong consonant occurs at the end of a close syllable, while
nally strong consonant occurs at the beginning of a syllable.
Loudness Theory
(V.A. Vasilyev / N.I. Zhinkin )
The syllable can be characterized by three physical parameters: pitch,
intensity and length. Within the range of the syllable these parameters
vary from minimum on the prevocalic consonants to maximum on the
centre of the syllable, then there is another decrease within the postvocalic
consonants. So the syllable can be treated as an arc of articulatory eort /
arc of loudness.
Functional Point of View
The denition of the syllable from the functional point of view tends
to single out the following features of the syllable:
y a syllable is a chain of phonemes of varying length;
y a syllable is constructed on the basis of contrast of its constituents
(usually of vowel-consonant type);
y the nucleus of a syllable is a vowel, the presence of consonants is
optional;
y the distribution of phonemes in the syllabic structure follows
the rules which are specic enough for a particular language.
5.2. Syllable Formation and Syllable Division
In English the syllable is formed by any vowel alone or in combination
with one or more consonants: not more than three preceding and not more
than four following it, e. g.: are [a:], we [wi:], it [ıt], sixths [sıksθs].
A word nal sonorants [n], [1], [m] are immediately preceded by
a consonant, e. g.: rhythm [ˋrıðᵊm], garden [ˋga:dᵊn].
The English sonorants [w], [j] are never syllabic as they are always
syllable-initial.
Phrase or sentence has as many syllables as it has syllabic elements.
Every English syllable has a centre or peak: a vowel or a sonorant.
The peak may be preceded by one or more non-syllabic elements which
constitute the onset of the syllable, and it may be followed by one or
more non-syllabic elements which constitute the coda, e. g.: cat [kæt],
tree [tri:], ice [ais].
46
Syllable
Onset Rhyme
5.2. Syllable Formation and Syllable Division
Nucleus
[k æ t] cat
Coda
According to the placement of vowels (V), consonants (C) and
sonorants (S) the following types of syllables are distinguished:
y According to the placement of vowels:
– open: the V is at the end, e. g.: they, wri-ter;
– closed: which end in C, e. g.: hun-dred, hat;
y According to the placement of consonants:
– covered at the beginning: the C is at the beginning, e. g.: tie;
– covered at the end: the C is at the end, e. g.: on.
The presentation of a syllable structure in terms of consonants and
vowels gives numerous combinations which can be grouped into four
structural types of syllables.
Table 13. Structural Types of Syllables
Combination Structure Example
Fully open V
Fully closed: V between C CVC
CCVC
CVCC
CCCVC
CVCCC
CVCCCC
Covered at the beginning: one C
or a sequence of C precede a vowel
Covered at the end: one C or more complete
the syllable
CV
CCV
CCCV
VC
VCC
ore, or
fat
place
fact
street
facts
sixths
too
spy
straw
on
act
Structurally, the commonest types of the syllable in English are VC;
CVC. Structurе CV is considered to be universal.
The characteristic feature of English is monosyllabism: it contains
between four and ve thousand monosyllabic words. Most of the words of
old English origin is of one syllable, the limit for the number of syllables
in a word in English is eight: in-com-pre-hen-si-bi-li-ty.
47
Unit 5. Word as a Phonetic Phenomenon. Syllables and Word Stress
Syllables can be also designated:
y by the position in the word:
– from the beginning: initial, medial, nal;
– from the end: ultimate, penultimate, antepenultimate;
y the position in relation to stress: pretonic, tonic, posttonic.
Any syllable which is not tonic is atonic.
Table 14. Syllables Positions
Position in
the word
Position in relation to stress Pretonic To n ic Posttonic
From the beginning Initial Medial Final
From the end Antepenultimate Penultimate Ultimate
tre - men - dous
The part of phonetics that deals with the rules according to
which the sounds of language can be grouped into syllables is
called phonotactics. The division of a word into syllables is called
syllabication.
The following rules of phonetic syllable division are adopted:
y a syllable boundary is found wherever there is a word boundary,
and also coincides with the morphological boundary between elements in
a compound, e. g.: displace [ˏdıs ′pleıs] (CVC-CSVC); become [bı ′kʌm]
(CV-CVS); countless [′kaʋnt ləs] (CVSC-SVC); hardware [′ha:d weə]
(CVC-SV);
y consonants are syllabied with whichever of the two adjacent vowels
is more strongly stressed, e. g.: farmer [′fa:m ə], agenda [ə ′ʤəndə].
If they are both unstressed, it goes with the leftward one, e. g.: cinema
[′sın əmə], delicious [dı ′lıʃəs], deliberate [dı′lıb ər ət];
y the English diphthongs are unisyllabic: they make one vowel
phoneme, while the so-called triphthongs are disyllabic, because they
consist of a diphthong + the neutral vowel / schwa, e. g.: table (CV-CS);
science (CV-VSC); ower (CSV-V );
y the English aricates [ʧ], [ʤ] cannot be split, e. g.: catching [′ k æʧ iŋ];
y when a syllable consists only of a consonant or consonants, such
a consonant is a syllabic consonant. The sign [.] shows syllabicity, thus
syllabic consonants may be shown [ṇ] [ḷ].
Phonetic syllables must not be confused with orthographic (written)
syllables, which are groups of letters in spelling. Syllables in writing are
called syllabographs. Parts of phonetic and orthographic syllables do
48
5.3. Functions of the Syllable
not always coincide, e. g.: worker [′wз:k.ə] (CVC-V) has two phonetic
syllables and one syllabograph.
5.3. Functions of the Syllable
As a phonological unit syllable performs several functions.
Constitutive function
The syllable forms language units of greater magnitude, that is
morphemes, words and utterances:
y the syllable is the unit within which the relations between
the distinctive features of the phonemes are revealed;
y within a syllable (or a sequence of syllables) prosodic characteristics
of speech are realized, which form the stress-pattern of a word and
the rhythmic and intonation structures of an utterance;
y the syllable is a specic minimal structure of both segmental and
suprasegmental features.
Distinctive function
The syllable dierentiates words and word-forms. For example the
distinction in the minimal pair [′naı-treıt] nitrate – [′naıt-reıt] night-rate
lies in:
y the degree of aspiration of [t]: the sound is greater in the rst member
of the opposition than in the second;
y allophonic dierence of [r]: in the rst member of the opposition it
is slightly devoiced under the inuence of the initial [t];
y the length of the diphthong [aı]: in the second member of
the opposition it is shorter because the syllable is closed by a voiceless
plosive [t].
Identicatory function
The listener can understand the meaning of the utterance only when
the correct syllabic boundary is perceived, e. g.:
y an ice house – a nice house;
y I saw the meat – I saw them eat.
The system of syllable formation and syllable division in Russian
has some peculiarities in contrast with English. In Russian the single
intervocalic consonant between two phonetic syllables belongs to the next
vowel, in English it tends to belong to the preceding one. In the system
49
Unit 5. Word as a Phonetic Phenomenon. Syllables and Word Stress
of the Russian language all consonants can begin a syllable, while in
English there is an exception – [ŋ]. In Russian open syllables occur three
times more often than closed ones.
There are some restrictions on the possible consonant clusters in
English and in Russian. Final clusters in English are much more complex
than initial ones. The structure of the Russian syllable is characterized by
more complex and numerous initial clusters.
5.4. Word Stress in English. The Nature of Word Stress
In English word stress can be dened as the singling out of one or
more syllables in a word which is accompanied by the change of the force
of utterance, pitch of the voice, qualitative and quantitative characteristics
of the sound which is usually a vowel. A particular combination of varying
prominence of syllables in a word forms its stress pattern.
Stress is dened dierently by dierent scientists. B.A. Bogoroditsky
denes stress as an increase of energy, accompanied by an increase of
expiratory and articulatory activity. D. Jones denes stress as the degree
of force, which is accompanied by a strong force of exhalation and gives an
impression of loudness. H. Sweet also states that stress is connected with
the force of breath. A.C. Jimson admits that a more prominent syllable
is accompanied by pitch changes in the voice, quality and quantity of
the stressed sounds.
The nature of word stress can be studied from the point of view of
production and perception.
The production of stressed syl lables requires more muscular energy.
Greater muscular eort and muscular activity produce higher subglottal
pressure and an increase in the amount of air expelled from the lungs.
On the acoustic level this extra articulatory activity leads to
the increase of intensity, duration and fundamental frequency of the
stressed syllable. On the perception level it corresponds to the increase
of loudness, length and pitch.
The eect of prominence of the stressed syllable is achieved by
a number of phonetic parameters such as pitch, loudness, length, vowel
quality. As a result, there appears a contrast between stressed and
unstressed syllables. These four factors work together in combination,
though syllables may sometimes be made prominent by means of only
one or two of them. Experimental work has shown that these factors
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