Лекция по "Английскому языку"

   GA vowels do not exhibit consistent relationships between vowel length and quality as are found in RP. AE vowels are not divided into historically short and historically long monophthongs.

   Many differences involve the pronunciation of individual words or group pf words.

   The major point of accentual differences concerns the distribution of stress within the stress pattern to which a given word belongs. The differences comprise two-, three-, four-, five-syllable words.

   Intonational divergencies between GA and RP mainly concern the emotionally neutral speech. Here the nomenclature of pitch contours display structural differences which lead to functional differences, namely, in the attidunal function  of intonation.

L E C T U R E  8 PHONOSTYLISTICS  AS  A  SCIENCE

   Variety of pronunciation depends on many factors (political, social, cultural, educational, etc) having no connection with linguistics proper. Phonostylistics is a branch of linguistics which includes the analysis of various extra-linguistic factors instead of systematically excluding them.

To extra-linguistic factors scholars refer firstly different personal characteristics of the speaker  (his age, his educational and social status, his occupation), as well as different voice qualities (dry, flat, husky, etc.) together  with different features of voice dynamics (loudness, tempo, continuity, rhythmicality, register) and, secondly, the factors belonging to the situation proper which is bound to determine this or that variation of usage (the form of speech, the degree of formality or spontaneity, etc.) – that is all those forming the extra-linguistic context.

   The range of concepts phonostylistics includes is as follows: the phonetic norm and deviation from the norm; phonetic synonyms; euphonology; sound symbolism, etc.

   It is only in the context of a communicative situation that the essential properties of the linguistic system can be discovered and analysed.

   The extra-linguistic situation can be roughly defined by the following factors: purpose, participants and setting. It is also important to consider the speaker’s attitude to the situation. 

L E C T U R E  9

PHONETIC  FUNCTIONAL  STYLES

   From the point of view of the purpose of communication we may distinguish the following main intonational styles: informational, academic, publicistic, declamatory, conversational.

   In oral speech we realize different types of information (intellectual, emotional, volitional) which may be rendered by different prosodic means. In every stylistic register there must exist a certain invariant – an ideal norm of speech behaviour in a certain situation.

   The most neutral among styles is informational style (formal, neutral) which is employed in educational descriptive narratives, press reporting and broadcasting.

   Academic style characterizes lectures, scientific discussions, conferences, classes to entertain. It is used to deliver this message to the audience, to establish a contact with the listeners. The speaker must sound self-assured, authoritative, instructive.

   The aim of the speaker using publicistic style is to persuade and influence the audience, to substantiate his arguments. Oratorical skills need special training. Speech of this kind is always prepared.

   Declamatory Style (artistic, stage style) mostly concerns theatrical activities, screen productions, TV and all sort of recitations.

   Though speech on the stage seeks to be familiar but spectators perceive it as a bit artificial, exaggerated. A great variety of intonation property is characteristic of declamatory reading.

   Conversational style is very frequent because a lot of English speaking people use it in their everyday speech. It is often called informal, as we use it in family circles, among friends and acquaintances. The speakers are comparatively free, they do not control their linguistic behaviour, they sound natural, use non-standard forms of speech. Much depends on their social background, their social status. This kind of speech greatly depends on the situation and the complex study of conversational style is important from the didactic point of view, though the emotional part of conversational style is equally important.

                                                      ВАРИАТИВНОСТЬ И НОРМА 

   Норма  реализуется в литературном языке.  Отличительной чертой литературной  нормы, в том числе и произносительной нормы, является ее кодификация, то есть отражение сложившихся правил употребления языковых единиц в грамматических справочниках, словарях и всевозможных литературных трудах.

   Одним  из основных теоретических положений  Пражской лингвистической школы является утверждение о вариативности литературной нормы.

   На фонетическом  уровне языковой системы вариативность  имеет свои специфические особенности.  Во-первых, она ведет к обновлению  инвентаря фонематических единиц. Так, каждая фонема языка может  реализоваться в виде нескольких вариантов, среди которых время от времени происходит сдвиг в сторону «приоритета» одного из них. Во-вторых, характерной чертой фонетической вариативности является то, что распределение допустимых нормой вариантов больше, чем на других уровнях, обусловлено территориальными и социальными (возрастными, профессиональными, образовательными и т.д.) характеристиками.

    Исследование  статуса произносительной нормы  национальных вариантов английского  языка предполагает прежде всего  определение понятия «произносительная норма», а также уточнение вопросов общелингвистического плана, как то:

1. Соотношение произносительной нормы и нормы литературного языка;
2. Статус произносительной нормы в системе отдельно взятого национального варианта английского языка;
3. Тип произносительной нормы;
4. Количество произносительных норм в системе национальных вариантов английского языка.

На уровне звуковой системы языка норма  определяется как обработанная произносительная форма единого литературного  языка, которая подчиняется законам и правилам, и поэтому принята в определенном языковом коллективе.

   В англо-американской  специальной литературе при адекватной  передаче понятия нормы используется  термин Standard English. При этом «стандарт» употребляется для обозначения межнационального и внутринационального общения на английском языке. Стандартный английский язык имеет ряд характерных признаков:

1. Он не принадлежит ни к одной территории и используется везде, где пишут и говорят по-английски;
2. Его носители могут говорить с «регионально-стандартным акцентом, являющимся нормой для данной территории

   На уровне  звуковой системы английского  языка норма существует только  как абстракция. Это – некий  набор инвариантных конститутивных  признаков, присущих фонетической  системе английского языка на любой территории его распространения. Подобно тому, как фонема реализуется в аллофонах, произносительная норма единого литературного английского языка реализуется в виде национальных, принятых и установившихся, произносительных вариантов – BE, AE, AuE, CnE, которые, в свою очередь, образуют варианты произносительной нормы.

                                             
 
 
 
 
 

  GLOSSARY   OF   PHONETIC   TERMS

Accent – a variety of a language which is distinguished from others exclusively in terms of pronunciation: Cf. dialect.

Acoustics – the study of the physical properties of sound.

Allophone – a variant of a phoneme. One of the possible realizations of a phoneme.

Articulation – the approach or contact of two speech organs, such as the tip of the tongue and the upper teeth.

BBC accent – the accent used by most English-born announcers and newsreaders on serious BBC radio and television channels; proposed as a standard accent for the description of the English spoken in England: cf. Received Pronunciation (RP).

Breathy voice – another name for murmur, a type of phonation in which the vocal folds are only slightly apart so that they vibrate while allowing a high rate of airflow through the glottis.

Broad transcription – a transcription that does not show a great deal of phonetic detail, often a simple phonemic transcription.

Flap  - a very brief speech sound in which the tongue tip is drawn back, then flicked forward against the alveolar ridge.

Intensity – the amount of acoustic energy in a sound; often used informally as synonymous with amplitude, to which it is closely related.

International Phonetic Alphabet  (IPA) – a set of symbols and conventions adopted by the International Phonetic Association (IPA) as a universal system for the transcription of speech sound.

Linguistic phonetics – an alternative name for phonology; the name suggests a more phonetically oriented field of study than the rather abstract subject of phonology.

Narrow transcription – a transcription that shows phonetic details (such as, in English, aspiration, length, etc.) by using a wide variety of symbols and, in many cases, diacritics.

Phonation – an alternative name for voicing, the vibration of the vocal folds.

Phoneme – a speech sound which can be identified as a minimal linguistic unit capable of distinguishing the sound shapes of words. It is one of the set of distinctive sounds of a particular language.

Phonemic – see ‘transcription’, ‘phonology’. The study of the distinctive sound units of a language, the patterns they form, and the rules which regulate their use.

Phonology – the description of the systems and patterns of sounds that occur in a language.

Received Pronunciation (RP) – a name given to the accent used as a standard for describing British English pronunciation for most of the 20^th century and still in use: cf. ‘BBC accent’.

Retroflex – an articulation involving the tip of the tongue and the back part of the alveolar ridge.

Rhotic – a form of English in which /r/ can occur after a vowel and within a syllable in words such as ‘car, bird, early’. Most forms of Midwestern American English are rhotic, whereas most forms of English spoken in the southern part of England are non-rhotic.

Suprasegmental features – phonetic features such as stress, length, tone, and intonation, which are usually a property of stretches of speech longer than the individual segment.

Tap – a very brief speech sound in which the tongue is flicked up against the roof of the mouth, interrupting the flow of air.

Transcription, phonemic – the representation of speech in written form using only the agreed symbols for the phonemes of the language being transcribed.

Transcription, phonetic – the representing of speech in written form by the use of phonetic symbols.