articulatory (or organic) basis;
Intonational (prosodic) basis.
Articulatory basis has 2 aspects:
the static aspect;
the dynamic aspect.
The static aspect is the position of the organs of speech provided a person does not speak (or when he is about to speak)
and when an isolated sound is uttered. This position of the organs of speech is usually called ARTICULATOTY SETTING.
General tendencies of the articulatory setting of English:
The lips are spread and pressed tightly against the teeth.
The tip of the tongue is slightly curled back and is opposite the alveoli (but does not touch them!).
So the tongue is drawn back from the teeth.
The middle and the back parts of the tongue are flattered and lowered (the back part in particular!).
The soft palate is raised, as in yawning. Such a position of the soft palate in combination
with the lowered position of the back part of the tongue contributes to the increase of the mouth resonator.
General tendencies of the articulatory setting of Russian:
The lips are slightly rounded and with some speakers even protruded. The lips are not pressed against the teeth.
The tip of the tongue is put forward and touches the teeth.
The middle and the back parts of the tongue are slightly raised.
These differences in the articulatory settings of English & Russian are quite obvious,
and Russian learners of English must be constantly aware of them when speaking English.
The dynamic aspect of the articulatory basis is the manner of transition from a consonant to a vowel or from a vowel
to a consonant within a syllable or at the junction of syllables/words.
This aspect also suggests the dynamics of the articulation of vowels in stressed and unstressed syllables.
For ex., the manner of transition from a consonant to a vowel may be characterized either as loose or as close.
In different languages it is difficult. In English it is loose, while in Russian it is close. Cf.: “niece” (n + i : s) and “низ” (нис).
Of in the English the first pretonic vowel has a high degree of reduction, while in Russian it has a very low degree of reduction. Cf.: “suppose” – “сапок”.
Prosodic basis suggests a number of the most typical prosodic (intonational) patterns as well as the rhythmical contour,
most characteristic of the language under consideration.
It is common knowledge, for ex., that the complex falling-rising tone is quite frequent in English,
but this tone can never be heard in Standard Russian Pronunciation.
PRINCIPAL AND SUBSIDIARY VARIANTS OF ENGLISH PHONEMES
There are 2 types of allophones:
principle;
subsidiary.
The actual speech sounds are allophones or variants of the phoneme.
Allophones of one and the same phoneme are phonetically similar. They don’t contrast with one another.
F.e. English phoneme [d] when not affected by the articulation of the preceding or following sounds is a plosive,
fore-lingual apical, alveolar, lenis stop. This is how it sounds in isolation or in such words as door,
darn, down, etc., when it retains its typical articulatory characteristics. In this case the consonant [d] is called the principal allophone.
Principle allophones don’t undergo any distinguishable changes in speech.
They aren’t positionally determined. They are most representative of the phoneme as a whole.
Principle A. = stressed vowels + consonants before them.
Subsidiary allophones presupposes quite predictable changes in the articulation of allophones
that occur under the influence of the neighbouring sounds in different phonetic situations.
Subsidiary allophones consist of 2 types:
combinatory – occur as a result of assimilation [eitθ] close to dental /t/ for /θ/ is interdental.
positional – traditionally used in some fixed positions. The clear and dark variants /l/ and /t/
Билет 11
The main approaches to the description of melody( British and American schools).
Speech Melody –most meaning carrying component of the Intonation; the variation in the pitch of the voice in connected speech.
Major approaches to the form of melodic units.
Contour A. worked out by British phonetic school( Johns, Dalmer, Armstrong, Ward, Kingdon, O’Connor).
Based on the assumption that the melodic form of an utterance is a unity of funct-ly independent components.
Melodic configuration is studied within a sense –group(smallest unit of sense in speech).
Structure and functions. The melodic contour of a sense gr.includes: a scale, a nuclear tone, a head, a prehead, a tail.
N.T- a tone which is used within the nucleous of the utterance, the highlighting part carrying max.informational load.
Scale – a part of the utter.starting with the first stressed syl-l(head) and going as far as the last unstr.syl-l before the nuclear tone.
A prehead – includes the initial unstressed syl-l before the head.
Apart from melodic contour melody contains: 1) range( overall width of pitch change or the interval b/the highest
and the lowest pitches in a sense group. Narrow/ wide range). 2)register (the hight of pitch range. Low/mid/high).
Acc to British scientific tradition the melodic form of a sense gr. is a contour possessing both horiz and vertic components each performing its specific function.
Pitch-level A. American phonet.tradition( Gleason): the melodic structure of a sense group
is analysed in terms of pitch levels. These pitches are relative.
They are not related to any particular fundamental frequency band. Pitchlevels are distinctively relevant – pitch phonemes.
Meaning is ascribed to a sequence of pitches, a contour. Usually they distinguish 4 pitch-levels:
1.mid pitch (marked by 2)- corresponds to a quiet unemotion.pitch of voice.Normal pitch of the voice
2.low pitch(1)- is lower 2or 3 notes below mid p.
3.High pitch(3)-is higher than 2 as much as 2 is above 1.
4.Extra high- higher than 3, is less frequent than the other three. In intense emotions, express.surprise.
The (2)31↘ intonation contour can indicate a statement, but commonly used with questions.
E.g. I’m going home.- When are you going home↘?
(2)31 ↗- is more polite: What are we having for dinner↗?
The influence of the Russian articulatory setting on the pronunciation of English sounds.
Mistakes which occur as a result of the differences in the articulatory setting of English & Russian.
См. билет 13 у Шуры
Articulatory basis has 2 aspects:
the static aspect;
the dynamic aspect.
The static aspect is the position of the organs of speech provided a person does not speak (or when he is about to speak)
and when an isolated sound is uttered. This position of the organs of speech is usually called ARTICULATOTY SETTING.
General tendencies of the articulatory setting of English:
The lips are spread and pressed tightly against the teeth.
The tip of the tongue is slightly curled back and is opposite the alveoli (but does not touch them!).
So the tongue is drawn back from the teeth.
The middle and the back parts of the tongue are flattered and lowered (the back part in particular!).
The soft palate is raised, as in yawning. Such a position of the soft palate in combination with the
lowered position of the back part of the tongue contributes to the increase of the mouth resonator.
General tendencies of the articulatory setting of Russian:
The lips are slightly rounded and with some speakers even protruded. The lips are not pressed against the teeth.
The tip of the tongue is put forward and touches the teeth.
The middle and the back parts of the tongue are slightly raised.
These differences in the articulatory settings of English & Russian are quite obvious,
and Russian learners of English must be constantly aware of them when speaking English.
Mistakes.
- palatalization of Eng consonants (influence of Rus): кон-конь, стол-столь. Palatalization is typical for Russian;
- Rus voiceless consonants are weak, Eng – strong
- learners of Eng don’t aspirate, in Rus there’s no aspiration
- Rus fore-lingual consonants are dorsal dental (дорсальный), dorsal – sounds articulated with the back of the tongue.
Eng – apical alveolar, an articulation involving the tip of the tongue and the alveolar ridge, as in Eng [d] in die;
- Russian substitute back-lingual [h], Eng [h] is glottal, weak. Rus has no glottal sounds;
- Rus has no diphthongs, Eng – 8 diphthongs;
- Rus has no tenseness of long vowels;
- Rus open vowels are not so open as they are in Eng, it is difficult for learners to make vowels open enough;
- mispronunciation of front [ı]-[ī]-[ıə]: Rus make them too close with the Russian [и]
Билет 12
THE DEFINITION OF PROSODY. FUNCTIONS OF PROSODY (29)
By prosody the majority of linguists mean constant physical or acoustic characteristics
of speech (spectrum) and absence of speech signal. P. is something that organizes our speech.
Prosody is “a term used in suprasegmental phonetics and phonology to refer collectively
to variations in pitch, loudness, tempo and rhythm”. (Crystal). Recently voice quality has been added to the list of prosodic features.
Functions
Structural function
The speaker has to organize and the listener has to identify the hierarchy of information units starting
from the most prominent syllable in a word, the most prominent word in an intonation group,
the varying prominence and the cohesion of intonation groups in longer utterances, such as speech paragraphs or the whole text.
Pitch, length and loudness help to restore the key concepts of the situation posited in speech act, to get the structural vision of the speech act.
In a dialogue or polilogue the speaker – listener interaction is reflected in the unity of one topic
for discussion shared by all the participants, with key words brought out by prosodic means,
followed by special boundary tones, pitch range and tempo variation to signal transition to a new topic.
Information structuring is more evident in radio newsreading, sports commentary (changes in prosody reflect the progress of the action).
It is subdivided into:
constitutive function. It presupposes the integrative function on the one hand when intonation
arranges intonation groups into bigger syntactic units: sentences, texts.
If it were not for this function, we would hear separate words at the same pitch.
intergrative.
delimitative. It manifests itself when intonation divides texts, syntactic wholes and sentence units that is intonation groups.
ex. He ¢washed and ¢brushed his \hair.
He -> washed and brushed his \hair.
Social function
Our oral speech can give info to the listener about his gender, age, education, place – domain of prosody.
Prosody is an important marker of personal or social identity: lawyers, preachers, newscasters, army sergeants
are readily identified through their distinctive prosody. For example: I higher and wider pitch range
accompanied by slower tempo with perfect timing is a sign of dominance, while a faster tempo
and a narrow pitch range is a feature of submissiveness. It is also customary to demonstrate deference
to higher rank and older age by varying one’s tempo and loudness, using specific, culturally accepted pitch patterns.
Among the conventional formulae (‘Ladies and gentlemen…’) there are prosodic patterns of greetings,
leave talks, thanks, apologies, etc. (Thanks, Dad. Morning. Give me a minute. No problem.)
which all suit the common pattern fall + rise or fall + level, the obvious connotations being to keep contact with the listener.
Aesthetic
It means general impression from the person’s speech (harmony (благозвучие) or not).
Stylistic
Each functional style and each function of speech has its own characteristics in melody, tempo, loudness, voice quality, pause.
Official style (frequent use of the gradually descending scale, greater degree of loudness, slower tempo of speech),
colloquial style (lowered degree of loudness, great number of hesitation pauses).
Degrees of stress in English & Russian. Differences in the articulatory bases in English & Russian in terms of the accentual structure of words
Languages are also differentiated according to the place of word stress.
The traditional classification of languages concerning place of stress in a word is into those
with a fixed stress and those with a free stress. In languages with a fixed stress the occurrence
of the word stress is limited to a particular syllable in a polysyllabic word.
For instance, in French the stress falls on the last syllable of the word (if pronounced in isolation),
in Finnish and Czech it is fixed on the first syllable, in Polish on the one but last syllable.
In languages with a free stress its place is not confined to a specific position in the word.
In one word it may fall on the first syllable, in another on the second syllable, in the third
word — on the last syllable, etc. The free placement of stress is exemplified in the English
and Russian languages, e.g. English: 'appetite - be'ginning - ba'lloon; Russian: озеро - погода - молоко.
The word stress in English as well as in Russian is not only free but it may also be shifting,
performing the semantic function of differentiating lexical units, parts of speech, grammatical forms.
In English word stress is used as a means of word-building; in Russian it marks both
word-building and word formation, e.g. 'contrast — con'trast; 'habit — habitual 'music — mu'sician; дома — дома; чудная — чудная, воды — воды.
There are actually as many degrees of stress in a word as there are syllables.
The opinions of phoneticians differ as to how many degrees of stress are linguistically
relevant in a word. The British linguists usually distinguish three degrees of stress in the word.
A.C. Gimson, for example, shows the distribution of the degrees of stress in the word examination.
The primary stress is the strongest, it is marked by number 1, the secondary stress is the second strongest marked by 2.
All the other degrees are termed weak stress. Unstressed syllables are supposed to have weak stress.
The American scholars B. Bloch and G. Trager find four contrastive degrees of word stress, namely: loud, reduced loud, medial and weak stresses.
Other American linguists also distinguish four degrees of word stress but term them: primary stress, secondary stress, tertiary stress and weak stress.
The difference between the secondary and tertiary stresses is very subtle and seems subjective. The criteria of their difference are very vague.
The second pretonic syllables of such words as libe'ration, recog'nition are marked by secondary stress in BrE,
in AmE they are said to have tertiary stress. In AmE tertiary stress also affects the suffixes -ory, -ary, -ony of nouns
and the suffixes –ate, -ize, -y of verbs, which are considered unstressed in BrE, e.g. 'territory, 'ceremony, 'dictionary; 'demonstrate, 'organize, 'simplify.
British linguists do not always deny the existence of tertiary stress as a tendency to use a tertiary stress on a post-tonic syllable in RP is also traced.
Typology of accentual structures
(из лекций): Degrees of stress
1) primary (strong)
2) secondary (alw preceeds the primary stress: e*xami*nation);
3) tertiary (alw follow the primary stress: *terri*tory, *dictio*nary, *cere*mony);
4) weak (unstressed)
In Russian: 2 degrees of stress:
- primary
- unstress
The dictionary of accents marks some long words with 2 stresses.
The differences in the number of stresses → differences of the rhythm.
1) omission of the secondary stress (examination)
2) omission of the tertiary stress (dictionary)
3) degree of reduction of the pretonic vowel (in Rus this vowel is not reduced)
4) reduction of unstressed posttonic vowel in all E words without exceptions (*photogr[а:]ph)
Билет 13
The specific character of English prosodic basis as compared with Russian.
Prosody is “a term used in suprasegmental phonetics and phonology to refer collectively to variations in pitch, loudness, tempo and rhythm”. (Crystal).
Recently voice quality has been added to the list of prosodic features.
The range of the voice in English is much wider than in Russian.
Comparing English and Russian we pay attention to following characters:
English falling tone is steeper and reaches the bottom of the voice range.
It sounds like an angry Russian tone of voice. Cf.: English ‘Do. Russian «Да». English rising tone is slow and starts as a level tone before it rises to the middle of the pitch range.
In case of polysyllabic realization the stressed syllable remains on the bottom line while the unstressed
syllables go up and reach the medium level. It sounds implicator even menacing to a Russian ear.
Russian rise is more abrupt, and starts on a higher level. In a polysyllabic word the stressed syllable goes up while the unstressed syllables go down. Cf.:
RP gradually descending stepping head is composed of each stressed syllable going down a little with the unstressed syllables,
ideally, keeping up or, actually, going slightly down. It is more natural for a Russian speaker to drop the unstressed syllables down
to the bottom of the range right after the first stressed syllable or, in case of scandent series, let them drift up.
All these pitch movements of the Russian unstressed syllables create the flavor of Russian speech unattainable by foreign learners. Cf.:
There are structural constraints on how many syllables are necessary for the realization of a single tone.
The specific feature of English, as compared with other European languages, is the ability of English complex tones
to be realized on a single syllable. Thus English is characterized by compression of pitch change within one vowel,
for instance, which can be seen in the rise-fall-rise on a word No. It can sound playful and full of other connotations
thanks to pitch modulation in one vowel only. This phenomenon is unparalleled in Italian, for instance.
Italian needs at least two syllables to realize that tone.
Rhythm:The proportion of accented and unaccented syllables is:English (RP)1:2. RP speech is described
as clipped, pointed contrastive in the length of accented and unaccented syllables.Russian- 1:3.
PHONOLOGICAL AND NON-PHONOLOGICAL FEATURES IN THE SYSTEM OF ENGLISH VOWELS (11)
Substitution gives us a useful tool for establishing contrastive units, phonemes.
The basic method of establishing a phoneme inventory is finding a minimal pair of words which form contrast in one segment
only, like hot/cot.
Similarly, in word sets like heed, hid, head, had, etc, any 2 words can form
a minimal pair in which there’s contrast in respect of one vowel segment only.
There’re 20 vowel sounds which have a distinctive function in RP.
Here are the words illustrating the contrasts established by replacing one vowel for the other (this will give us 17 phonemes):
Features which distinguish the vowel sounds in the minimal pairs
The basic classifying features of English vowels are quality, length, position of the lips,
among which quality is the only phonemic one as a change in quality creates contrast and serves to distinguish words and their forms
Vowel quality which depends on the height and the front-back position of the tongue.
According to the vertical position of the tongue, vowels can be:
a) close (high):
- narrow [i:], [u:]
- broad [i], [u], [iə], [uə]
b) mid:
- narrow [e, 3:, ə, ei, 3u]
- broad [ə, Ù]
c) open (low)
- narrow [εə, o:, oi]
- broad [æ, ai, au, o, a:]
According to the horizontal position of the tongue, they are classified into:
front [i:], [e], [ei], [æ],[εə]
central [Ù], [3:], [ə ], [3u], [εu]
back [o], [o:], [u:], [a:]
Stability of articulation:
a) monophthongs,
b) diphthongs,
c) diphthongoids.
Monophthongs don’t change their articulation during the pronunciation (with the exception of [i:] – [u:]).
They are divided into short and long.
Vowel length gives us two groups of vowel sounds:
a) long;
b) short
which are distinct in a number of features, such as:
Tenseness – characterizes the state of the organs of speech at the moment of production a vowel.
Long vowels, including diphthongs, are tense, short vowels are lax,
Energy discharge – the quality depends on the character of the articulatory transition from a vowel to a consonant.
Long vowels are unchecked (free), and short vowels are checked, i.e. produced with accompanying glottal activity, involving a rapid energy discharge in a short time interval,
Position of the lips may distinguish:
a) rounded;
b) unrounded vowels
The higher the tongue raises the more rounded the lips are.
Position of the soft palate: all English vowels are oral; other languages, like French, for example, may have nasal vowels;
English vowels may be nasalized before a nasal consonant but the nasal quality change is not phonemic as it is not contrastive, it is allophonic.
All the 20 vowel phonemes can be distinguished by quality alone, and that makes this feature phonemic.
Thus the 20 RP English vowels are grouped in the following way: twelve monophthongs (seven short vowels and five long ones) and eight diphthongs:
υә