Intonation

In Russian, the pattern of direct address, from the point of view of an English ear sounds as a command, pronounced with a High Fall. Indeed, try to implement it: \Irini. \Pass it to me please (with HF)

But in the American variant the direct address will sound for Russian ear as a warning, pronounced with rising intonation to show respect and friendliness: /Irini. /Pass it to me please.

I have some examples from my own experience. Once working with Irish people I was talking to Fintan (the name of a man and wanted a thing that joins the things together, especially paper.) what do you think I asked him for: give me a clue. He was surprised and asked: a clue to what? I explained and he said – oh yes a glue

My favorite story about our students travelling to the USA and asking tea for three please: free vs three.

And there is an endless number of such examples.

2. Language acquisition: how speech sounds are learned.

This point is also worth discussing from the point of view of phonetics. How the skills of producing the sounds are obtained? Phonetics is everywhere around us.

It is interesting to know that intonation patterns emerge first. Children are able to distinguish intonation as earl as 6 months old. They appear to perceive intonation differences before the differences in phonetic segments. Though of course these patterns are not fully formed. For example children born in English speaking environment are able to distinguish between rising and falling intonation when they are 8 moths old, because these terminations are meaningful and may signal the difference in meaning.

The order of acquisition of sounds goes by manner of articulation: first nasals, the last ones are fricatives. Then by place of articulation: labials, then vowels, then consonant-vowel type of syllable.

All the children go through the stage of babbling, then one-word period and then constructing sentences – telegraphic style. It is amazing they can do so quickly and easily. They do not seem to learn the language, they pick it up, and less than in 5 years a child can talk as an adult. A child can learn any language of the world he/she is exposed to.

There’s a general rule for children- perception goes ahead of productivity. At first a child can recognize more sounds than he can produce.

The critical period for a language acquisition is from the birth to the puberty during which time a child must be exposed to human speech communication.

In second language learning there also seem to be a critical age for language acquisition, after which it is difficult to acquire the pronunciation of the language. The time is uncertain and it also depends upon the person but yet they say that every year counts.

IPA or International Phonetic Alphabet also called transcription – is a system of symbols in which one sound corresponds to one symbol. It has been devised by a body of linguists, International Phonetic Association (also IPA) of phoneticians to represent the sounds of all human languages. It is used in dictionaries and manuals to represent the pronunciation of words.

3. By very large steps we are approaching another point of our today’s lecture and it is Acoustics. How the sounds are processed and described.

Speech technologies is such a fast thing nowadays and the are of applied phonetics is a fast developing now. It is hard to predict what will happen tomorrow. Speaking about the modern technologies today, we are risky to know that they are outdated already.

At present we analyze speech using computers. So we deal with the acoustic analysis.

Acoustic analysis is a method of speech signal processing. We can observe and take measurements of the wave on display. We can see acoustic patterns for different classes of sounds.

Acoustic spectral analysis gives the picture called spectrogram with frequency bands and Formants.

Prosodic analysis is carried out along the parameters of fundamental frequency (changes in the voice – rising or going down), intensity (loudness of the utterance) and duration or time of speaking.

Speech analysis and synthesis are two basic ways to explore speech sounds.

II. And now let me pass to a very complicated thing, th esecon major topic of our work today literary language, orthoepy, norm and its variations, social and geographical variability of phonetics.

Norm is realized in the literary language. The main feature of literary norm as well as of pronunciation norm is its codification or reflection of accepted rules of language units’ usage in grammar reference books, dictionaries and different literary works. If we remember main theses of the Prague School about literary norm, it will be the claim about the variability of a literary norm.

At the phonetic level of the language system variability has its own specific features. First of all it leads to the replenishment of phonemic units’ inventory. Second thing that should be mentioned here is that on the phonetic level the distribution of possible norm variations is higher than at any other level of the language , and is coursed (brought up) by territorial and social (age, profession, education and so on) characteristics. Before we start investigating the pronunciation norm and its variants we should understand, realize, determine and define what is norm?

Shakhbagova in her book says that at the sound system level of a language norm is presented as a polished pronunciation form of a literary language, which answers all the rules and laws and because of that is accepted implicitly in a certain language society. It definitely should be mentioned that orthoepy norm determines the inventory of variants, limits or boundaries of variation, and also accepted and unacceptable variants of pronunciation.

From this point we will make a connection with the term orthoepy and its meaning.

Orthoepy is a branch of linguistics that studies different variants of pronunciation existing in a language, and singles out those which are relevant to the existed standards and tendencies of the language development and language system.

And of course

Orthoepy is a system of pronunciation norms accepted in a language, or a type of pronunciation which is relevant to the accepted pronunciation norms, existing in the language.

Taking this into account the terms “literary norm” or “orthoepy norm” are often used as synonyms.

Coming back to the norm itself.

It’s a well-known fact that norm exists at all the levels of the language – phonetics, grammar and vocabulary. Its peculiar features include socio-linguistic and historical dependence, obligation and stability.

At the sound level of the language, norm is a pretty abstract phenomenon. It is a certain set of constitutive features (elements) of English language phonetic system spread at any territory where it is spoken. As well as a phoneme finds its realization in allophones, pronunciation norm of the indivisible literary English language is realized in the national pronunciation variants, accepted and fixed, which in their turn form variants of pronunciation norm. These variants are British, American, Australian and Canadian English.

Thus international pronunciation norm is a deliberate (сознательный) choice and the realization of phonetic means of the language, based on the principals of mutual understanding, structural likeness and common literary language.

Regional standard or regional pronunciation norm can be described as a variant of national pronunciation norm, which has more common features than differences with the norm itself. Regional pronunciation norms is spread in a certain area and characterizes speech of educated people of this region.

So the pronunciation of a certain variant of English language is a complex unity of the national pronunciation norm, regional standards and dialects.

It is hard to deny that the status of the pronunciation norm and its type are characterized by certain social and historical conditions of the nation using it, cultural level of the nation and social structure of the community.

In Great Britain, for example, there exists a common pronunciation norm while in other English speaking countries pronunciation norm exists in several variants. Thus, the existence of several norms in the USA has historical roots and backgrounds.

Let’s see how pronunciation norm is realized in the different variants of English language.

At the territory of Great Britain, only 3-5% of population speaks according to the orthoepy pronunciation norm. This is the pronunciation of aristocratic people, who received aristocratic education. The rest of the population speaks with an “accent” which to a certain extent reflects geographical peculiarities of the norm, so they use already known to us one of the regional standards – Scottish. Irish, welsh). These regional standards do not possess the same status as RP (Received Pronunciation). More than that the opposition “dialect – pronunciation norm” is still very strong in Great Britain.

It is also worth mentioning that RP is not strictly unificated norm and accepts certain variability in its area. Thus Gimson points out three types of RP: conservative, general (it is also known as BBC English) and advanced or modern the usage of each of these types depends on the age, sex, education level, social status of the speaker.

In comparison with British pronunciation, American pronunciation has a greater variety of pronunciation norms. More than that, in America we can hardly find such a prestigious and common standard as RP. In the USA phoneticians differentiate three main pronunciation norms: General American (GA) also known as North American, Eastern American, and Southern American which practically are not in conflict or live in peace with each other.

The status of General American is not simple and rather interesting. First of all it is the most widely spread pronunciation norm, almost deprived, as well as RP, of local coloring. And the second interesting point. Thanks to its neutral status of the pronunciation norm and to its popularization over radio and television, General American is obtaining the status of the national pronunciation norm. Phonetic and phonological deviations from the norm in the USA are not the markers of the social status of the speaker. None of the types of the pronunciation mentioned above possesses such a status as RP and according to Myers they are three phonetic systems in which common features prevail over differences.

Linguistic situation in Australia is completely different if not to say unique with no analogy found in any other English speaking country. The researchers of the Australian pronunciation speak about two pronunciation norms in AuE: Cultivated Australian or literaturnii iazik and a so-called General Australian. Australia has neither dialects nor regional standards. The two variants mentioned above are spread all over the country. Variability of pronunciation in Australia depends on the situation of communication and also on other different factors (age, level of education, social status).

Cultivated Australian is very close to RP and is usually associated with high education level and social status of the speaker. As well as RP, Cultivated Australian is used by the minority of the population. General Australian as General American is widely spread. Australian researchers Mitchell and Delbridge point out that the two variants of pronunciation in Australia have no strict borders and are characterized by a high level of resemblance.

Absolutely different situation can be observed in Canada. McConnell in his work: “Our own Voice Canadian English and how it came to be” points out that the status of the Canadian variant of pronunciation as well as a status of its pronunciation norm is quite problematic.

Some researchers believe that Canadian variant of English possesses no individual national status, the others, on the contrary, consider Canadian variant to be a “hybrid” of British and American variants of the English language. Ideas on that point could be found in the works of Pean, Hamilton, Hughes, Trudgill and others.

In fact, the latest researches in this area, give us the ground to believe that Canadian variant of pronunciation now occupies an intermediate position between BE and AE, the latter prevailing. Because of that it received a term “gliding (intermediate) areole”.

As for Canadian pronunciation norm, which is accepted as a common orthoepy norm and is called General Canadian, it is on its way to standardization. It possesses phonetic features of RP and GA, the latter dominating. In respect to this we can’t but mention that the higher the social status of the speaker, the more resemblance we can find between CnE and RP.

As for regional standards and dialects they were not registered in Canadian variant. Variability of the norm can be observed mainly in cities.

Strevens highlights the main and very substantial feature of all the national variants of English pronunciation which is the process of minimization of regional differences and also the process of their generalization.

This process is supported by the whole range of such facts as:

• development and democratization of education;

• high level of popularization of pronunciation norm by means of mass media (radio, television and so on);

• co-operation and co-influence of national pronunciation variants through different forms of modern culture, and pop culture first of all, with the privilege of American variant.

Lecture 2.