12. Articulatory differences betw vow, cons, sonorants.

Articulatory differences between vowels, cons, and sonorants depend on the 3 articulatory criteria:

1the presence or absence of an articulation abstraction to the air stream in the larynx or the super glottal cavities.

2The concentrated or defused character or muscular tension

3The force of exhalation.

On the basis of this criteria cons-s may be defined as sounds in the production of which:

1 there is an articulatory abstraction to the air stream

2 muscular tension is concentrated in the place of abstraction

3 exhaling force is rather strong.

Vowels may be defind as sounds in the production of which there is:

1. no artic abstraction to the air stream

2. muscular tension is defused

3. the exhalation force is rather weak.

Sonorants are sounds intermediate between noise cons-s and vowels, because they have features common to both. There is an obstruction but not narrow enough to produce noise. Muscular tension is concentrated in the place of obstruction but the exhaling force is rather weak. E sonorants are: [m, n, l, r, w, j, ŋ].

13. Phonemic variants or allophones

Shcherba stated that in actual speech we utter a much greater variety of sounds than we are aware of, which are capable of distinguishing the meaning and the form of words. These sound types should be included into the classification of phonemes and studied as differentiatory units of the lang. The actually pronounced speech sounds are variants or allophones of phonemes. Allophones are realized in concrete words. They have phonetic similarity, at the same time they differ in some degree and are incapable of differentiating words, e.g. in speech we pronounce not the sound type [t] which is asperated, alveolar, forelingual, apical, occlusive, plosive, voiceless-fortis – according to the classificatory definition, but one of its variants, e.g. labialized in the word twice, dental in the word nineth, post-alveolar in try and so on.

Phonemic variants or allophones are very important for lang teaching, because they are pronaunced in actual speech and though they their mispronounciation doesn’t influence the meaning, their misuse makes a person’s speech sound as foreign.

The variants used in actual speech are called subsidiary. Susidiary allophones can be positional and combinatory. Posit alloph are used in certain positions traditionally, e.g. the Eng [l] is realized in actual speech as a positional alloph: it is clear in the initial position and dark (твердый) in terminal position, e.g. let and mill. Combinatory allophones appear in the process of speech and result from the influence of the phoneme upon another.

14. Sentence stress, or accent

Sentence stress is a greater prominance of words which are made more prominant in the intonational group. The prominance of accented words is achieved through the greater force of utterance and changes in the direction of voice pitch.

The difference between stress and accent is based on the fact that in the case of str, the dominant perceptual component is loudness. In the case of accent it is pitch.

Nuclear sress is the strongest- it carries the most important information. Non-nuclear stresses are subdivided into full and partial. Full stress occurs only in the head of intonational group, partial stress occurs also in the prehead and tail.

Nouns, adj, numerals, interjections, demonstative pronouns, emphatic pronouns, possesive Притяжательный pronouns (absolut forms), interrogative вопросительный pronouns, indefinite pronouns: somobody, someone, something (used as subject), indef negat pronouns: no, none, no one nobody, indef pronouns some, any (expressing quality), deferminatives: all, each, every, other, either, both, proclitics: much, many, a little, a few, notional verbs, auxiliary вспомогательный verbs (negat contracted forms), two-word prepositions, two-word conjunctions, particles:only, also, too, even, just are usually stressed.

The words that are usually unstressed: personal pronouns, reflexive pronouns, relative pronouns, possesive pronouns(conjoint form), indef pronouns: somebody, someone, something, anyone ( used as object), indef pronouns some, any ( when expressing quantity), auxiliary verbs (affirmative form), one-word prep and conjunctions, articles, particles: there, to., modal verbs (contracted forms and general questions are exceptions).

The meaning of the verbs may, should must changes depending on whether they are stressed or unstressed: you may go.

Stress in utterance providethe basis for understanding the content, they help to perform constitutive, distinctive, indentificatory function of intonation.