2. The articulatory classification of the English consonants.

In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the upper vocal tract. Consonants contrast with vowels.

Rus phenetitians classify con-s according to the following principles:

1work of the vocal cords and the force of exhalation

2active organs of speech and the place of obstruction

1. Accoring to the work of the vocal cords and the force of exhalation cons-s are subdevided into voiced and voiceless. Voiced: [b, d, g]; voiceless: [p, t, k,]. The force of exhalation and the degree of muscular tension are greater in the production of voiceless cons-s. Therefore they are called by the Latin word fortis, which means strong, energetic. Voiced cons-s are called lenis, which means soft, weak. Because the force of exhalation and the degree of muscular tension in their articulation are weaker, e.g.fortis: [p] – pipe, [t] – tight, Lenis: [b] – Bible, [d] – died.

The Eng cons-s [h, m, n, , l, w, j, r] don’t enter into fortis-lenis oppositions.

2) According to the position of the active organs of speech consonants are classified into: labial, lingual, glottal.

Lab cons – s are subdivided into:

a) Bylabial; b) Labio-dental.

a) are produced with both lips, they are the Eng [p, b, m, w], the Rus [п, п`, б, б`, м, м`].

b) are articulated with the lower lip against the edge of the upper teeth. They are The E [f, v], the R [ф, ф`, в, в`].

Lingual cons – s are subdivided into:

forelingual; b)mediolingual; c)backlingual

a) are articulated with the tip or the blade of the tongue, acc to the position of the tip of the tongue they maybe: dorsal, apical, cacuminal. Acc to the place of obstruction forelingual cons – s may be: interdental, dental, alveolar, post – alveolar, palato – alveolar.

b) Mediolingual are produced with the front part of the tonque. They are always palatal. palatal consonants are articulated with the front part of the tonque raised high to the hard palate, [j].

c) Backlingual consonants are called velar, they are produced with the back part of the tonque raised towards the soft palate [k,g,h,], [х,х’, г,’].

The glottal consonant [h] is articulated in the glottis.

3. English word stress: notions, types, functions.

In linguistics, stress is the relative emphasis that may be given to certain syllables in a word. The term is also used for similar patterns of phonetic prominence inside syllables.

The ways stress manifests itself in the speech stream are highly language dependent. In some languages, stressed syllables have a higher or lower pitch than non-stressed syllables – so-called pitch accent (or musical accent). There are also dynamic accent (loudness), qualitative accent (full vowels), and quantitative accent (length, known in music theory as agogic accent). Stress may be characterized by more than one of these characteristics.

Stressed syllables are often perceived as being more forceful than non-stressed syllables. Research has shown, however, that although dynamic stress is accompanied by greater respiratory force, it does not mean a more forceful articulation in the vocal tract.

Some languages have fixed stress. That is, stress is placed always on a given syllable, as in Finnish and Hungarian (stress always on the first syllable) or Quechua and Polish (stress always on the penult: one syllable before the last). Other languages have stress placed on different syllables but in a predictable way, as in Classical Arabic and Latin (where stress is conditioned by the structure of the penultimate syllable). They are said to have a regular stress rule.

There are also languages like English, Italian, Russian and Spanish, where stress is (at least partly) unpredictable. Rather, it is lexical: it comes as part of the word and must be memorized, although orthography can make stress unambiguous for a reader, as is the case in Spanish and Portuguese. In such languages, otherwise homophonous words may differ only by the position of the stress (e.g. incite and insight in English), and therefore it is possible to use stress as a grammatical device.

Degrees of stress

'Primary' and 'secondary' stress are distinguished in some languages. English is commonly believed to have two levels of stress, and in some treatments has even been described as having four levels, primary, secondary, tertiary, and quaternary, but these treatments often disagree with each other. It is possible to describe English with only one degree of stress, as long as unstressed syllables may occur without vowel reduction.

Stress and vowel reduction

In many languages, such as Russian and English, vowel reduction may occur when a vowel changes from a stressed to an unstressed position. In English, many unstressed vowels reduce to schwa-like vowels, though the details vary with dialect. Other languages, such as Finnish, have no unstressed vowel reduction.

The rules of word stress in English

1. in words of 2-3 syll, the primary str mostly falls on the 1 syl.

2. in prefixal words the primary str falls on the syl following the prefix, recall.

3. in prefixal words with prefixes having their own meaning the place of str is on the prefix, exminister

4. in prefixal verbs which are distinguished from similarly spelled nouns and adjs have their str on the initial syl (‘increase-to in’crease)

5. in compound words the 1^st element is stressed when: 1 they are written as 1 word,2 nouns are compounded of a verb and an adv(make up),3 nouns in the possessive case are followed by another noun (a doll’s house).

In compound words the 2^nd element is stressed when: 1food items have the 1^st elem which is of a material used in manufacturing the whole (appletree), 2names of roads, parks,squares, 3 parts of the house – kitchenwindow, 4 adj-s with past participles, characterizing person, 5 comp nouns ending in –er or –ing are followed by an adv (passer’by)

2 equal str-s are observed in compositive verbs: give up,in numerals 13-19