теор.фонетика

16-2 Syllable division in Eng & Russ.Languages differ in syllable structurestheyallow,in terms of how many consonants can begin or end a syllable,whether vowels can begin syllables and whether both open and closed syllables are possible . English and Russian have almost an equal number of syllable models 23 vs 21.the maximum number of consonants that can make up an Eng onset is three(the first can only be s) like splayed,strayed skewed.to this we can add that russian enjoys greater freedom and the russian syllable onset may have four(встряхнуть).In coda the number is reserved : the maximum for the russian lang is three,while Eng coda consits of root+ affixes may have four consonants(sixths)Eng and Russ also permit zero-consonant onsets(end ox он ухо).

But the basic difference consists in the dominance of an open syllable in Russian(CV) , and closed syllable in English (CVC) in actual speech.According to russian scholars’ research 78% of Russian syllables are open. There is a close contact in the russian syllable between the onset consonants and the following vowels(CV) which affects the quality of vowels.In English there is a close contact between the vowel and the coda consonants(VC) which affects the lenght of vowels.

17-1.Tones&heads meanings

Now every tone is viewed as a combination of relatively independent total features each of which contributes to the total meaning of the text in its own way. Each tone has 2 cardinal points:1)the end point.- responsible for definiteness/indefiniteness, completeness/incompleteness;the lower the end point the more categoric it sounds2)the onset point- signals the degree of the speakers involvement in the situation(interest)the higher the onset- the higher the interest. The independal character of tonal meanings is born out by the intonation misfits in which a free variation of tones is impossible. We can conclude that tones have independent meanings but these mean-gs are nebulous in character.within the contour the combination of gr lex ans situation brings out the local meaning of a tone. What is said about tones is true about scales- high –involved,low- not involved. All the mean-s described – attitudinal. Discoursal mean-s of tone:Brazil distinguishes between proclaiming tone (fall)and a reffering tone(fall-rise):proclaiming tone introduces new info, the referring tone refers to the common background knowledge. The use of the rise and rise-fall is conditioned by the speaker-listener relationship. The dominant speaker has the right to choose any tone;non-dominant- only the fall and the fall-rise not to sound aggressive. A mid termination anticipates passive agreement,high termination – an active response,low termination – closes matters. Theat correlates with key;mid-key- separate pieces of info, high key- a surprise, low key – predictable info.

17.2There are 20 vowel sounds which have a distinctive function in Standard British English called RP or BBC English (GA & Standard Scottish English – 15 or 16 only)

A list of words that illustrates the contrasts established by replacing 1 vowel for another in the phonologically identical structure. This will give us 17 vowel phonemes

bead/i:/, bid/ı/, bed/e/, bad/æ/, bard/a:/, bod/þ/, board/o:/, booed/u:/, bud/^/, bird/з:/, bayed/eı/, bide/aı/, buoyed/oi/, bowed/aυ/, beard/ı∂/, bared/e∂/

+3

Fool – full /υ/; except – accept /∂/; pair-poor/υ∂/

Basic classifying features of English vowels:

1. Quality: depends on the height & the front-back position of the tongue. Acc to the vertical position- high (close), low (open), mid-high (mid-open) vowels; acc to the horizontal position of the tongue – front, back, central

2. Stability of articulation: provides for a relatively homogeneous vowel quality throughout its production in case of a monophthong; a change in quality results in a diphthong; however, most of the long vowels are in between, and they are called dipthongoids.

3. Vowel length: gives us 2 groups of vowel sounds – long & short, which are distinct in a number of features, such as

4. Tenseness: long vowels, including diphthongs are tense; short vowels are lax

5. Energy discharge: long – unchecked (free); short – checked, i.e. produced with accompanying glottal activity, involving a rapid energy discharge in a short time interval

6. Position of the lips: rounded and unrounded vowels

7. Position of the soft palate: all English vowels are oral; other languages, like French par example peuvent avoir 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’s allophonic

All the 20 vowels phonemes can be distinguished by quality alone, and that makes the feature PHONEMIC

Thus the 20 RP English vowels are grouped in the following way: 12 monophthongs (7 short vowels and 5 short ones) and eight diphthongs

Short vowels	Long vowels	Diphthongs
I E æ ^ Þ Υ ∂	I: a: з: o: u:	eı aı oı aυ ∂υ ı∂ e∂ υ∂

18-1. Intonation and prosody(correlation). The term intonation has been used interchangeably with that of prosody. Prosody/prosodic feature a term used in suprasegmental phonetics and phonologyto refer collectively to variations in pitch, loudness, tempo and rhythm+voice quality. Intonation is a term used in the study of suprasegmental phonology referring to distinctive use of patterns of pitch or melody/the use of pitch variation to convey meaning. In british tradition intonation is associated with pitch variation or melody and it has a function of conveying meaning. Intonation starts with a phrase while prosody has a wider domain;from syllable – tj the whole text. In R intonation includes a greater number of components(speech melody, word accent, rate/rhythm, voice tamber even voice quality). Although there’s no correspondence between intonation and prosodic features we can correlate speech melody with tone and pitch range; accent with loudness;tempo as a linguistic phenomenon with prosodic features of tempo and pause; timbre with voice quality. Intonationoperates at the linguistic level and prosody – at the acoustic level(fundamental frequency, intensity,duration,spectral characteristics) and at the perceptual level(of pitch loudness length and voice quality), so that prosody deals with certain physical and perceptual features starting from a syllable to the whole text. What they have in common is pitch variation ranking highest among all the components. Each prosodic feature is a system in itself:tones- simple, complex, compound; pitch range- normal, wide and narrow and soooo on.

linguistic	perceptual	Acoustic
Intonation proper	Pitch(tone/pitch range	Funadamental frequency
accent	loudness	intensity
tempo	length	Duration
Voice timbre	Voice quality	Spectrum
rhythm	Regularity of all prosodic features

18-2. Sound symbolism is based on associations between speech sounds and qualities of things and the way people utilize them. The aesthetic aspect of sounds is employed by writers and poets, and even by ordinary people in selecting their children’s names for euphony. Front/back, close/open, rounded/unrounded features of vowels as well as the plosive and fricative noises of consonants may motivate the choice. In prosody there are conventional forms of pitch range widening and narrowing, tempo slowing down or speeding up, voice quality becoming more resonant or husky. Prosodic and segmental style-forming means are graded according to the degree of formality and aim of communication.

Reading verse, for instance, is conventionally slow in the rate of delivery with exaggerated rhythmic beat of accents, leveled out tones and pauses to mark off the lines which are also shaped by pitch declination; voice quality is normally husky. Classical verse may have as many as 15 features which create rhythm, while free verse may only three of which lines, feet and pauses are obligatory.

Styles pronunciation: full and non-full, or colloquial (Russian tradition).

Functional styles classification is applicable to the written variety of the language: belles-letters style (prose, verse, drama), publicistic style, newspaper style, the style of official documents.

Most of British and American oral style classifications include: familiar colloquial, formal colloquial, public speaking. Thus the classifying principles are formality of the situation and social relations between speakers. Discourse (text) linguistics addresses the problems of oral forms of communications as public speaking, mass media interview, spontaneous conversation. The principles of spontaneity and speech monitoring are particularly focused on. Linguistics is exploring the ways our mind works in creating texts. Natural human conversation, therefore, is bound to occupy the central position in recent research.

19-1.Prosody-functions. Prosody/prosodic feature a term used in suprasegmental phonetics and phonologyto refer collectively to variations in pitch, loudness, tempo and rhythm+voice quality. 1)structural function – the speaker has to organize/listener to identify the hierarchy of info 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. In a dialogue/polilogue the speaker-listener interaction is reflected in the unity of one topic with key words brought out by prosodic means, followed by special boundaries tones,pitch range,tempo variation to signal translation to a new topic. 2)social function- prosodic means of signaling social rels between speakers may correlate with the permanent social status/with the situational social role. Prosody is an important markerof personal/social identity: different occupations – lawyers, sport commentators are readily identified through their distinctive prosody( a higher and wider pitch range+ slower tempo – sign of dominance/a faster tempo+narrow pitch range – submissiveness; in people’s introductions on a formal occasion pitch level and loudness level increase.

19.2allophones

actual units of speech, allophones of one and the same phoneme are similar and don’t contrast with each other.

Allophones may be PRINCIPAL (don’t undergo any distinguishable changes, not positionaly determined. Most representative of the phoneme team – the principal variant of /t/) or SUBSIDUARY (positional determined). Subsiduary allophones may be COMBINATORY (result of assimilation eighth) or POSITIONAL (traditionally used in a fixed position e.g. – dark &clear /l/)

Distribution of allophones:

-Contrastive (krowka Wevchenko lubit – parallel or overlapping) – allophones of diff phonemes are said to be in contrastive distribution – they occur in the same position distinguishing the meaning of words

-Complementary – allophones of the same phoneme that never occur in the same position (aspiration, dark & clear L)

-Free variation – elements of the same phoneme which occur in the same position but are not able to differentiate meanings (poor –/ по:/ или /пуэ/)

20.1

Approaches to the definition of phoneme

1. Mentalistic point of view (introduced by the Kazan school – крошка И. А. Бодуэн де Куртэнэ)

Phoneme – “ideal image” a psychological equivalent of a sound

Sounds – imperfect realization of phonemes => phoneme – a target at which the speaker aims

2. Physical view (London school – D. Jones)

Phoneme – a family of related sounds

3. Abstract view (The Genève school of Linguistics – крошка Фердинанд де Соссюр)

Phoneme – abstract concept existing in the mind independent of acoustic & physiological properties & different from any other language unit

4. Functional view (Prague Linguistic Circle – крошка Трубецкой, Jacobson, Halley + Lionel Bloomfield)

Phoneme - a minimal language unit differentiating meaning. A bunch of distinctive features. (Jacobson made a list of 12, but for English - 9)

Distinctive feat are binary – e.g. /t/ -voiced ; /d/ +voiced

LINEAR representation of the phoneme’s distinctive features:

Demonstrates the way utterances are generated from the deep structure to the surface structure through the operation of certain rules (e.g. deep structure /д+у+б/ surface structure /дуп стоит/)

NON LINEAR

Established in the course of analysis of tone languages in which the tone of the vowel differentiates the meaning of words.

So it’s a phonetic feature antonymous, independent of the vowel segment – when a vowel disappears the tone spreads to the next segment

20-2.GA vs RP word stress prosody

Word stress1)the differences in stress are also lexically determined and are hard to generalize: RP a’ddress ‘adult prin’cess ‘detail ,maga’zine ,week’end

GA ‘address a’dult ‘princess de’tail ‘magazine ‘weekend 2)one group of ws ending in suffixes –ary –ory –ery – ony –berry is pronounced with one primary stress in RP while in GA there is an additional secondary stress(tertiary- weaker than the one preceding primary stress): RP ‘dictionary ‘ceremony ‘strawberry; GA ‘dictio,nary ‘cere,mony ‘straw,berry 3) French borrowings are assimilated in RP and have one primary stress on the initial syllable. In GA they are still stressed as in French on the final syllable or have two stresses: RP ‘ballet ‘café ‘garage ‘matinee GA ba’llet ca’fe ga’rage ,mati’nee

Prosody. American rhythm is due to a great amount of secondary& tertiary stress compared with RP which together with a narrowed pitch range produce the effect of smoothly flowing monotonous slurred speech/RP speech is described as clipped, pointed, contrastive in the length of accented and unaccented syllables. The length contrast is supported by pitch contrast in which again the British RP group scored highest. Intonation. The monotony of American speech is created by regular recurrence of similar pitch patterns: mid-level wavy head + high-fall/level-rise. Compared to RP the in GA the intonation group starts at a lower level but the pitch configuration is specifically English: sliding on each accent group within a a narrow range until it comes to the terminal fall with an initial rise, similar to an RP fall or rise-fall and that’s where the most info point is located: RP ‘What are you ‘going to “do about it GA ‘What’re u ‘gonna “do about it? The rising tone in GA is directed at the listener. The timbre in GA is husky and low compared to RP.