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Файл:Теоретическая фонетика английского языка. Курс лекций и практикум. Учебно-методическое пособие
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times be quite subjective. The higher the frequency of a sound, the higher its pitch will
be. The human ear can detect sound with frequencies between 20-20,000 Hz, but most
speech sounds are within the range of 100-6000 Hz. To put this into perspective, an average male would speak with a lower pitch, therefore his frequency would be towards
the lower end of that spectrum (approximately 120 Hz on average).
Nearly all objects, when hit or struck or plucked or strummed or somehow disturbed, will vibrate. If you drop a meter stick or pencil on the oor, it will begin to
vibrate. If you pluck a guitar string, it will begin to vibrate. If you blow over the top of
a pop bottle, the air inside will vibrate. When each of these objects vibrate, they tend to
vibrate at a particular frequency or a set of frequencies. The frequency or frequencies
at which an object tends to vibrate with when hit, struck, plucked, strummed or somehow disturbed is known as the natural frequency of the object. If the amplitude of
the vibrations are large enough and if natural frequency is within the human frequency
range, then the object will produce sound waves which are audible. [11]
Certain sound waves when played (and heard) simultaneously will produce a particularly pleasant sensation when heard, are are said to be consonant. Such sound
waves form the basis of intervals in music.
The intensity of a sound wave is measured in decibels (dB) and represents the
power and loudness of the wave. Intensity is correlated with the amplitude of the
wave, or how high above (compression) or below (rarefaction) the baseline the wave
reaches in each cycle. In this case, amplitude is an objective measurement of loudness, which is a more subjective measure of sound. Humans can typically hear from 0
dB to 120 dB, at which point sound is painfully perceived. Loudness of sound can be
affected by distance as well as the composition of the propagating medium - the more
efcient the propagating medium, the louder the sound. For example, think about the
difference in loudness between shouting in air versus shouting underwater. One practical use for this concept is sound proof rooms, which would be built using highly efcient materials to absorb as much noise as possible, decreasing both the loudness of
a sound and it’s distance travelled.
Тimbre (also known as “tone”) refers to the shape/pattern of the waveform. Each
speech sound has a unique shape responsible for giving it a unique sound. That is, the
timbre of a sound is what makes it possible for us to differentiate one sound from the
next and combine different sounds to communicate different meanings using language.
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All objects have a natural frequency or set of frequencies at which they vibrate.
Some objects tend to vibrate at a single frequency and they are often said to produce a pure tone. A ute tends to vibrate at a single frequency, producing a very pure
tone. Other objects vibrate and produce more complex waves with a set of frequencies
which have a whole number mathematical relationship between them; these are said to
produce a rich sound. When a meter stick or pencil is dropped on the oor, a vibrates
with a number of frequencies, producing a complex sound wave which is clanky and
noisy. The actual frequency at which an object will vibrate at is determined by a variety
of factors. Each of these factors will either effect the wavelength or the speed of the
object.
Some computer programs allow you to view sound waves recorded with a microphone [11]. These waves below were recorded with a free downloaded wave editing
program.
Airplane
Telephone
Ring
Clock
Ticking
Bell
Fig.2. Soundwaves of Common Objects.
Screenshot of the Soundblaster Wave Studio
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It is due to quality of sound that we can differentiate one musical instrument
from another, or likewise one voice from another when dealing with speech. The
quality of a sound depends on the shape and material of the propagating and closing
media. Using music as an example, the trumpet, a brass instrument, sounds different
compared clarinet, a wooden instrument, or the vocal tract (as used by singers), but the
saxophone, another brass instrument, has a similar sound. Thus, the material of the apparatus can create a distinct sound class that can be further divided by shape. Different
shapes lead to different harmonics. We learned that the fundamental frequency underlies the harmonics of a sound and provides the basic frequency of a sound. Thus, different harmonics, caused by different apparatus shapes, create different sounds. These
changes are are considered to be changes in quality.
There is also some evidence that varieties of English have habitual settings for
voice quality: that is, speakers belonging to certain sociolinguistic groups share a common voice quality. None the less, there remains much work to be done on the function
and use of voice quality in English.
Breathy voice is produced by incomplete closure along the length of the vocal
folds as they vibrate. There is an opening which allows air to ow out during voicing,
generating both voicing and some friction noise.
Breathy voice impressionistically is ‘soft’, and tends to be quieter than modal
(‘normal’) voicing. In English-speaking cultures it is often associated with female
speakers, and is often exploited in e.g. adverts for chocolate or cosmetics. Many people
(of either gender) regularly use a slightly breathy setting in their ordinary speech. [9]
Creaky voice can be produced in a number of ways. It involves closure along the
vocal folds leaving an opening at the front end; the folds are loosely pressed together
and are thicker than in other settings. The subglottal pressure is often low. Creak often
leads to a more irregular pattern of vibration, and always to a slower one than is normal
for the speaker.
Whisper is produced by narrowing the vocal vocal folds so that the glottis is not
closed, and the folds do not vibrate; none the less the glottis is narrow enough so that
when air passes through it, the airow becomes turbulent. Whisper is used by speakers
as a way to speak ‘quietly’, or ‘secretively’: this seems to be a very widespread practice
among linguistic communities.
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Falsetto involves the raising of a speaker’s average f0 to way beyond their normal
range. To produce falsetto, the vocal folds are stretched and lengthened and the
glottis is not completely closed. Falsetto can be used in singing, but also occurs in
conversational speech.
There are some differences in ‘articulatory settings’ – that is, in the habitual postures
that speakers use throughout their speech. Here we list some of the main ones. Male
speakers have overall a more nasalized setting than female speakers: they keep the
velum slightly lowered, allowing nasal escape of air. Working-class speakers tend to
speak with a more open jaw, with a more raised and backed tongue body, perhaps also
with their tongue roots more retracted: this gives the auditory effect of a constriction
in the throat and makes speech sound lower in pitch and harsher in tone. Middle-class
speakers have no particular traits, just an absence of working-class ones. Voice quality,
then, can be used as a sociolinguistic marker. [9]
Units of Phonetic System
The phonetic system of a language is a set of units arranged in an orderly way to
replace each other in a given framework. Phonetics in general is divided in two subsystems: segmental phonetics which is concerned with minimal segments of speech
and suprasegmental phonetics
which deals with larger speech units.
Segmental units of phonetics include phonemes and their allophones as the
representation of individual sounds. Suprasegmental units are syllables, word-stress,
and prosodic (intonational) phenomena (pith, stress, tempo, rhythm, pauses). Both
segmental and suprasegmental units are used to form words, phrases and utterances
in connected speech. The phonetic system of any language comprises 4 components:
phonemic, syllabic, accentual and intonational. The rst is the phonemic component. It
is the basic component represented by the system of segmental phonemes of a language
existing in the material form of their allophones. It may have manifestations in:
— the system of phonemes as discrete isolated units;
— the distribution of allophones of different phonemes;
— the methods of joining speech sounds.
The second component is the syllabic structure of words. It has two manifestations
which are inseparable from each other: syllable formation and syllable division. The
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third component is the accentual structure of words when pronounced in isolation. Its
main manifestations are:
— the acoustic nature of word stress;
— the stress position in disyllabic and polysyllabic words;
— the degrees of word stress.
The fourth component is the intonational structure of utterances with
the following manifestations:
— the prosodic components of intonation;
— the structure of intonation patterns;
— the representation of patterns in intonation groups.
All the components of the phonetic system of the language constitute its
pronunciation.[3, c.14-15]
Linguistic Concept of the Phoneme. Allophones. Phones
In human language, a phoneme (from the Greek: φώνημα , phōnēma, “a sound
uttered”) is the smallest posited structural unit that distinguishes sounds. Phonemes are
not the physical segments themselves, but, in theoretical terms, cognitive abstractions
or categorizations of them.
An example of a phoneme is the /t/ sound in the words tip, stand, wate r, and
cat. (In transcription, phonemes are placed between slashes, as here.) These instances
of /t/ are considered to fall under the same sound category despite the fact that in
each word they are pronounced somewhat differently. The difference may not even be
audible to native speakers, or the audible differences not perceived. That is, a phoneme
may encompass several recognizably different speech sounds, called phones. In our
example, the /t/ in tip is aspirated, [tʰ], while the /t/ in stand is not, [t]. (In transcription,
speech sounds that are not phonemes are placed in brackets, as here.) In many
languages, such as Korean and Spanish, these phones are different phonemes: For
example, /tol/ is “stone” in Korean, whereas /tʰol/ is “grain of rice”. In Spanish, there
is no aspirated [tʰ], but the phone in American English writer is similar to the Spanish
r /ɾ/ and contrasts with Spanish /t/.
A phoneme is the unit of functional phonetics, which serves communicative
purposes.
The phoneme as a functional unit performs the distinctive function. It distin-
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guishes different sounds in a contrastive sense and serves as the smallest language unit
that discriminates between larger language units. Thus, the opposition of phonemes in
the same phonetic environment differentiates the meaning of morphemes, words and
even sentences.
E.g., sleeper — sleepy;
bath — path, light — like;
He was heard badly — He was hurt badly.
The phoneme is a material, real and objective unit that performs the constitutive
function. The phoneme is realized in speech in the form of its variants or allophones,
which do not make meaningful distinctions and serve to constitute the material form
of morphemes.
The phoneme is also an abstract and generalized unit, which performs the recognitive function. The phoneme serves to distinguish and understand the meaning,
because the use of the right allophone in the certain phonetic context helps the listener
to understand the message
and thus facilitates normal recognition.
E.g., take it — tape it
— the difference in two phrases is understood by two different phonemes. [3]
Phones that belong to the same phoneme, such as [t] and [tʰ] for English /t/, are
called allophones. A common test to determine whether two phones are allophones or
separate phonemes relies on nding minimal pairs: words that differ by only the phones
in question. For example, the words tip and dip illustrate that [t] and [d] are separate
phonemes, /t/ and /d/, in English, whereas the lack of such a contrast in Korean (/tʰata/
is pronounced [tʰada], for example) indicates that in this language they are allophones
of a phoneme /t/. An allophone (from the Greek: ἄλλος állos, “other” and φωνή,
phōnē, “voice, sound”) is one of several similar speech sounds (phones) that belong to
the same phoneme. A phoneme is an abstract unit of speech sound that can distinguish
words: That is, changing a phoneme in a word can produce another word. Speakers of
a particular language perceive a phoneme as a distinctive sound in that language. An
allophone is not distinctive, but rather a variant of a phoneme; changing the allophone
won’t change the meaning of a word, but the result may sound non-native, or be unintelligible.
There are two types of allophones: principal and subsidiary. If an allophone
retains the typical articulatory characteristics of the phoneme, it is called a principal
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allophone. But when certain changes happen in the articulation of an allophone under
the inuence of the phonetic environment, an allophone is called subsidiary. For example, an English phoneme [d] presents a principal variant when it is taken in isolation
or in words like door, darn, down, and retains its typical characteristics of an occlusive,
forelingual, apical, alveolar, lenis consonant. But the same phoneme [d] may undergo
changes under the inuence of other phonemes, and thus present subsidiary variants.
It may be:
— slightly palatalized before front vowels and sonorant [j] (deal, day, dew);
— pronounced without any plosion before another stop (bedtime,
good dog);
— pronounced with nasal plosion before [n], [m] (sudden, admit) or lateral plosion
before [l] (idle);
— post-alveolar followed by [r] (dry, dream);
— dental followed by [θ], [d] (good thing, lead the way);
— labialized followed by [w] (dweller).
Still all the allophones retain the invariant of phoneme [d] and possess its three basic articulatory features: they are forelingual lenis stops. The actual realization of allophones in the speech chain is exercised through phones. These units are not predicted
by phonetic context but modied by phonostylistic, dialectal and individual variations.
That’s why no speech sounds are absolutely alike. [3, с. 22]
To represent the sounds and the sound patterns of a language in accurate, consistent
terms, a special system of symbols and conventions for using these symbols is needed.
An auditory style of transcription, in which the transcriber attempts to write exactly
what he or she hears (whether or not it is fully understood) is called phonetic transcription. In phonetic transcription, the individual phonemes are written as alphabetic
symbols, in addition to other kinds of symbols or diacritic markings between square
brackets. Prosody is represented by marks and lines which are written above the segmental transcription. This type of trascription, which provides special symbols for all
the phonemes of a language is also called broad or phonemic trascription. There is another type, the narrow or allophonic transcription, which suggests special symbols including some information about articulatory activity of particular allophonic features.
As developed by the International Phonetic Association, phonetic transcription
is a kind of uniform and universal way of writing based strictly on sound. It is very
useful for describing, analysing and contrasting languages. Since writing systems vary
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widely in the way of representing the sounds of a language, it is essential to have a
common writing system one that can be abstracted from actual languages for the description of sounds. Besides teaching you how to represent sounds correctly, transcription also helps you train your ear so that you can pick up more detail from whatever
stream of speech you are listening to.
Principles of Classication of Speech Sounds
Every nation that speaks a certain language has denite and quite obligatory ways
of the articulation of the sounds. Sometimes these ways coincide in different languages
but more often they are different. The habitual way of the articulation of all the sounds
of a denite language is called by the term the articulation basis of the language. The
articulation basis of English differs from that of Russian: voiced consonants are less
energetic, whereas voiceless ones are much more energetic; the lips do not protrude;
the tongue is slightly drawn back. The phonation habits of the native speakers of
different languages may differ depending on character of sounds. In all languages
speech sounds are traditionally divided into two main types – vowels and consonants.
From the articulatory point of view the main principles of the division are as
follows: 1. the presence or absence of obstruction; 2. the distribution of muscular
tension; 3. the force of the stream of air coming from the lungs. Vowels are speech
sounds based on voice which is modied in the supralaringeal cavities. There is no
obstruction in their articulation. The muscular tension is spread evenly throughout the
speech organs. The force of the stream of air is rather weak. Consonants are speech
sounds in the articulation of which there is an obstruction, the removal of which
causes noise, plosion or friction. The muscular tension is concentrated at the place of
obstruction. The stream of air is strong. The articulatory boundary between vowels and
consonants is not well- marked. There exist speech sounds that occupy an intermediate
position between vowels and consonants. These are sonorants [m,n,n,l,w,r,]. The wide
passage for the stream of air in the articulation of sonorants means that the oral and
nasal cavities are active.
The classication of English consonants. In the English consonant system there
are 24 consonants. The quality of the consonants depends on several aspects: 1. the work
of the vocal cords; 2. what cavity is used as a resonator; 3. the force of the articulation
and some other factors. There are some principles of consonant classication: 1. the
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type of obstruction and the manner of production of noise. We distinguish 2 classes
of consonants: a) occlusive c., in the production of which a complete obstruction is
formed; b) constrictive c., in the production of which an incomplete obstruction is
formed. Each of the two classes is subdivided into noise consonants and sonorants.
Noise consonants are divided into plosives (or stops) and affricates and constrictive
sounds. Sonorants are divided into occlusive and constrictive sounds. Constrictive
sonorants may be medial and lateral. Another principle is the place of articulation.
Consonants are classed into 1) labial, 2) lingual, 3) glottal. The rst class is subdivided
into a) bilabial; b) labio- dental; the second class is subdivided into: a) fore lingual, b)
mediolingual, c)back lingual. The next principle is the presence or absence of voice
which depends on the work of the vocal cords. All voiced consonants are weak (lenis)
and all voiceless c. are strong (fortis). The next principle is the position of the soft
palate. According to this, E. consonants can be oral and nasal.(m,n,n). According to the
stability consonants are monophthongs, diphthongs and diphthongoids.
The classication of English vowels. In the English vowel system there are 12
vowel monophthongs and 8 or 9 diphthongs. The quality of a vowel depends, rst
of all, on its stability, on the tongue position, lip position character of the vowel end,
length, tenseness. 1. According to this principle English vowels are subdivided into
monophthongs, b) diphthongs, c) diphthongoids.[ I ], [ u ]. According to the position of
the tongue vowels are classed from vertical and horizontal planes. From the horizontal
plane vowels are divided into : 1. front; 2. front-retracted ; 3.central ; 4. back ; 5. backadvanced. From the vertical plane English vowels are divided into: 1. close; 2. mid; 3.
open. Each class has wide and narrow variations. According to the lip rounding vowels
have 3 positions: spread, neutral, rounded. The next point is checkness. All E. short
vowels are checked when stressed. The degree of checkness depends on the following
consonant. All long vowels are free. According to the length E. vowels are traditionally
divided into short and long vowels, it is a historical phenomenon. Besides, there exists
the positional length of vowels, depending on the position of a vowel in a word. From
the point of view of tenseness all historically long vowels are tense, while short vowels
are lax.
The diphthong theory. The phonemic status of English diphthongs is still a
question of discussion. Diphthongs are complex units of the two elements which
are closely blended together. They are syllabically indivisible,the length of diphthongs
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is the same as that of English long vowels. In Russian there are no diphthongs, only
combinations of sounds where both elements are equally energetic and distinct. English
diphthongs consist of two elements, the rst of which is a nucleus, strong and distinct;
the second is a glide, which is very weak and indistinct. There exist languages where
the second element of a diphthong is a nucleus, being strong and distinct, while the rst
element is weak and indistinct.(Italian, Latvian- piano, ruoka). Such diphthongs are
considered to be false and rising, while English diphthongs are considered to be true
and falling. There are 8 English diphthongs: close |ie|, |ue|; mid |ou|, |ei|; open |ea|,
|oi|, |ai|, |au|. They are characterized according to the tongue position and the position
of the lips.
Phonetic Phenomena: Sound Alternations and Modications
In modern English consonants undergo various qualitative changes in the chain
of speech. All speech sounds inuence each other and modify the process of sound
production.
Phonemic variations are generally termed ‘sound alternations’.
They include changes between related phonemes and have great phonological
value.
Allophonic variations in the phonetic sequence are called ‘sound modications’.
Accommodation is the adaptive modication of a consonant under the inuence of
a neighbouring vowel which includes the following changes:
— labialization of consonants under the inuence of the following back vowels
[ o:, u, u:, a:], resulting in lip rounding (pool, rude, ball, car);
— labialization of consonants under the inuence of the following or preceding
front vowels [i:], resulting in lip spreading (tea — eat, feet — leaf , keep — leak, pill
— tip);
— palatalization of consonants under the inuence of front vowels [ı, i:] (cf: part
— pit, top — tip, far — feet, hard — hit, chance —cheese).
Elision is a complete loss of sound in the word structure in connected speech. The
following examples of consonant elision are observed in modern English:
— loss of [h] in personal and possessive pronouns he, his, her, hers and the forms
of the auxiliary verb have (What has he done?);
— loss of [l] when preceded by [o:] (always);
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