- •1. Phonetics as a linguistic science. Branches of phonetics. Phonetics and phonology
- •2. Articulatory classification of speech sounds
- •3. The phoneme as a linguistic unit. Its definition and functions
- •4. Manifestation of phonemes in speech. Phoneme and allophone
- •5. Methods of the identification of phonemes in a language
- •6. The distinctive and non-distinctive features of English vowels
- •7. The distinctive and non-distinctive features of English consonants
- •8. Problems of the phonemic inventory of English vowels
- •9. Problems of the phonemic inventory of English consonants
- •10. Types of phonetic transcription
- •11. The syllable as a phonetic, phonological unit. The functions of the syllable. Structural peculiarities of the English syllable
- •12. Theories of syllable formation and syllable division
- •13. The emergence of a pronunciation standard. Received Pronunciation (rp). Present-day situation
- •14. National and regional variants of English pronunciation
- •15. American English pronunciation. Peculiarities of General American pronunciation compared to British English
- •16. The syllable as a prosodic unit. Word stress, its nature and functions. Linguistically relevant types of word stress
- •17. The accentual tendencies in English. Basic word stress patterns in English
- •18. Speech prosody. Its perceptible qualities and acoustic properties
- •19. Prosody and intonation. Utterance prosody and its linguistic functions
- •20. The components (subsystems) of utterance prosody and units of its analysis
- •21. The tonal (pitch) subsystem of utterance prosody. Units of its analysis. Tones and tonal contours
- •22. The structure of a prosodic contour (intonation group) in English. The functions of its elements
- •23. Basic types of prosodic contours in English
- •24. Utterance stress in English, its phonetic nature and function. The relationship between utterance stress and word stress in English
- •25. Types of utterance stress. Factors conditioning the location of utterance stress
- •27. The basic unit of the rhythmic organization of speech and the problem of its phonetic delimitation in an utterance
- •28. The phonetic nature and types of speech rhythm in different languages.
- •29. Speech tempo and pausation
- •30. The notion of speech style. Phonetic style-forming means in English
3. The phoneme as a linguistic unit. Its definition and functions
PHONEME - the smallest linguistically relevant unit of the sound structure of a given language which serves to distinguish 1 word from another. The phoneme is a minimal abstract linguistic unit realized in speech in the form of speech sounds opposable to other phonemes of the same language to distinguish the meaning of morphemes and words.
1. The phoneme isa functional unit. In phonetics function is usually understood as the role of various units of the phonetic system in distinguishing 1 morpheme from another, one word from another or one utterance from another - DISTINCTIVE FUNCTION.
2. The phoneme is material, real and objective. That means it's realised in speech in the form of speech sounds, its allophones. The phonemes constitute the material form of morphemes - CONSTITUTIVE FUNCTION.
3. The phoneme performs the RECOGNITIVE FUNCTION because the use of the right allophones and other phonetic units facilitates normal recognition.
4. Manifestation of phonemes in speech. Phoneme and allophone
The British phonetician Daniel Jones said: "We think in phonemes and speak in allophones". So in speech all the phonemes are manifested in their allophones.
ALLOPHONES of a certain phoneme are speech sounds which are realizations of one and the same phoneme and which can't distinguish words.
Allophones can be:
1. POSITIONAL - are used in certain positions traditionally; can be dialectal or individual.
2. COMBINATORY - appear in the result of assimilations, adaptation, accomodation - 1 sound is influenced by another.
Allophones of the same phoneme, no matter how different their articulation may be, function as the same linguistic unit. Phonemes differentiate words like "tie" and "die" from each other, and to be able to hear and produce phonemic differences is a part of what it means to be a competent speaker of the language. Allophones, on the other hand, have no such function: they usually occur in different ostions in the word (i.e. in different environments) and hence can't be opposed to each other to make meaningful distinctions.
5. Methods of the identification of phonemes in a language
The 1st problem of phonological analysis is to establish the number and system of phonemes in the language. There are 2 methods of analysis:
1. DISTRIBUTIONAL METHOD - states that the sounds can be groups of phonemes (allophones of 1 phoneme occur only in different context because they can't perform distinctive function). It is purely formal method of identifying the phonemes of a language.
2. SEMANTIC METHOD - is based on the phonological rule that a phoneme can distinguish words (the meaning or the form) when it is opposed to another phoneme in identical phonetic contexts (so-called minimal pairs).
6. The distinctive and non-distinctive features of English vowels
Vowels have 2 main characteristics: length and quality. Quality is the distinctive feature of a vowel, regardless of the position of the vowel. It components:
1. stability of articulation (monophthongs, diphthongs, triphthongs, diphthongized vowels)
2. the position of the tongue (horizontal and vertical movement of the tongue, lip rounding)
Other components are:
1) lip position
2) tenseness
3) checkness
They are considered non-distinctive as they have no phonological value. Vowel LENGTH os also a non-distinctive feature. It is dependent on the phonetic context, in the particular on the following consonant. It is the so-called "positional length". Vowels are the longest in the open syllable, slightly shorter before a sonorant or a voiced consonant and they are the shortest before the voiceless consonant:
be [i:] - the longest
beed [i:d] - a bit shorter
beat [i:t] - much shorter