Come and see me tomorrow. Read and retell text 5.

These regular stress-timed pulses of speech seem to create the strict abrupt and spiky effect on English rhythm. Russian – more flexible and smooth. In order to bring the meaning of the utterance the stress syllables of the notional words are given more prominence and the unstressed (form words) are left very weak. So speech rhythm is traditionally defined as recurrence of stressed syllables at more or less equal intervals.

Professor Антипова: «the basic rhythmic unit is a rhythmical group. It’s characterized by one stressed syllable + one/ two/ more unstressed, attached to it.”

Unstressed have a tendency to clin to the preceding stressed. They are called enclitics. Or they have a tendency to the following – proclitics.

Each sense group is pronounced at approximately the same period of time. Normally unstressed are pronounced more rapidly. A rhythmic group may comprise a whole phrase like “I can’t do it” or a single word: “unfortunately” or even a one-syllable word “yes”.

There are some differences between the rhythmic patterns of speech realization, rhythmic organization of:

1. Disapproving monologue – is different form a familiar emotional conversation.

2. Informal spontaneous dialogues reveal a rich variety of rhythm organization and the change of rhythmic patterns. The beginning of the rhythmic unit is said on a higher level, louder, slower than the end of it.

They painted the table pale grey Come and see me tomorrow That’s the very man who had a felt hat on

The phenomenon of rhythm is closely connected with phonetic nature of stress and sentence stress.

SENTENCE STRESS

Sentence stress – a greater prominence of words which are made more or less prominent in an intonation group. Under the rhythm stress may undergo alternations. Some rules concerning words which are usually stressed (un) in this or that utterance.

Stressed:

• verbs

• nouns

• adjectives

• numerals

• interjections

• demonstrative pronouns

• indefinite (sb or sth) used as subject

• indefinite negative (no one)

• all, each, every, other, either, both

• much, more, little, few

• notional verbs

• auxiliary verbs (negative contracted forms)

• only, also, too, even, just

Unstressed:

• personal pronouns

• reflexive pronouns

• relative pronouns

• possessive pronouns

• indefinite (sb or sth) – used as object (I want to tell you sth)

• auxiliary verbs (affirmative)

• prepositions

• conjunctions

• articles

• particles

• modal verbs (with the exception of negative forms and in general questions)

• weak forms of the words

The influence of rhythm in flow of speech is very important. Under it words which are normally pronounced with 2 stresses may lose one.

Read text sixteen

I like Piccadilly Circus

Stresses in an utterance provide the basis for identification and understanding of the context. A rhythmically organized speech is easily perceived. It’s capable of expressing different degrees of emotional influence on the …

How did you found out about that row?

VOILITIONAL FUNCTION OF RHYTHM

Rhythm is functioning as a frame work of speech organization and is very effective means of expressiveness. Rhythm is a difficult thing to teach/ learn. ER is the stumbling block for Russians. Faulty rhythm (intonation) make your speech poor, unnatural, highly intelligible.

The Phoneme conceptions in our country and abroad

scholar

psychical

fictitious

dental

to exaggerate

underestimate (over)

The conceptions of phoneme put forward at various times in our country and abroad are really too numerous and various. Many of them have common features which provide a basis for classifying this conceptions into certain groups according to which aspect of the phoneme is denied, ignored or underestimated.

Most linguists consider the phoneme to be one of the basic language units. But not all of them have described it in the same way. Some of them define the phoneme in purely “psychological” terms. Others prefer physically grounded definitions. Some scholars take into consideration only the abstractional aspect of the phoneme. Others stick to its material aspect. This has divided the various schools of phonology.

1. “The mentalistic (psychological) view” regards the phoneme as an ideal mental image or a target at which the speaker aims. It is characterized by the denial of the material aspect and the exaggeration of the abstractionally generalized aspect of the phoneme.

This view was originated by the founder of the phonetic theory – Иван Александрович Бодуэн де Куртене. According to his conception, phonemes don’t exist objectively. To his understanding, they only exist in the mind of the speaker and actually pronounced speech sounds are just imperfect realizations of ideal psychical images.

So the phoneme is defined as “психологический эквивалент звука”.

His conception has a clearest psychological colouring. Thus, “a phoneme doesn’t exist objectively, it exists in the mind of the speaker as a complex perception of articulatory movements and muscular sensations. He views phonemes as fictitious units. Just like an invention of scientists and nothing else.

It’s an idealistic conception, since it treats phoneme as a mental units, existing in the mind but not in the reality.

2. Anyway, his theory was developed by Щерба, his decipal. He was under his influence and at first shared his conception. But later (middle 30^th) he gave a truly materialistic conception.

Thus, he was the first to define the phoneme as a real independent distinctive unit which manifests itself in the form of phonetic variants – that is allophones.

3. But Professor Васильев who was an admirer of Щерба's conception developed his theory and finally presented a detailed definition. He states that “a phoneme is a dialectical unity of three aspects. The phoneme serves to perform the following functions: constitutive, distinctive and recognitive”. He writes that the phoneme is material, real and objective because it really exists in the material form of speech sounds – allophones. It is an objective reality existing independently from our will or intention. It is an abstraction because we make it abstract from concrete realizations. It functions to make one word or its grammatical form distinct from the other. It constitutes words and helps to recognize them.

4. The, so-called, “functional view” regards the phoneme as the minimal sound unit by which meanings may be differentiated without much regard to actually pronounced speech sounds, but mining differentiation should be a defining characteristic of phonemes. Thus, the absence of palatalization in [] and palatalization in [L] don’t differentiate meanings.

Лet – let (phonetic mistake; doesn’t change a meaning)

Therefore dark  and L cannot be assigned to different phonemes, because both form allophones of the phoneme [L]. If we turn to the Russian language, the same articulatory features of the Russian Л and ЛЬ do differentiate meaning, thus they must be assigned to different phonemes in Russian.

Пыл – пыль

мол – моль

Лог – лёг