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1. The phonetic system of a language.
2 Phonetics as a Branch of Linguistics.
3. Aspects of speech sounds.
4. Phonetics as a science.
5. Branches of phonetics and methods of investigation.
The R. P. is spoken all over Britain by a comparatively small number of Englishmen who have had the most privileged education in the country- public school education. Children are sent there to live at the age 11. They acquire the so–called “ public school accent”, or R.P. As almost all the leading positions in the Cabinet, the armed forces, the judiciary are occupied by those who have had public school education. R. P. is actually a social standard pronunciation of English. It is often referred to as the “prestige accent”. Though R.P. is carefully preserved by the public schools the R.P. of to – day differs in some respects from R.P. used half a century ago. The main changes are as follows: 1. The diphthongization of R.P.[i:] and [u;], see, who. 2. The monophthongization of [ai] and [au], tower, fire. 4. The assimilation of [sj.>s], [zj>z], [tj>ts], [dj>dj]: issue, crozier, situation. 4. The final [b,d.g] are now partially devoiced, but [p, t, k ]] are fortis. 5. The use of intrusive [r], which was carefully avoided before “Asia (r) Africa”, “drama(r) and music”.
They have become well-established nowadays. A. Gimson distinguishes 3 varieties of R.P. to- day. 1) The Conservative R.P., used mainly by the older R.P. speakers. 2) The General R.P. heard on the radio and T.V. that is less conservative and has received all these changes. 3) The Advanced R.P. mainly used by the younger R.P. speakers, (glottal stop). R.P. has accepted many features of the Southern regional type and it is the teaching norm in our country. But there are many educated people in Britain who do not speak R.P., though their E. is good and correct. They speak Standard English with a regional type of pronunciation.
Dialects of England. Roughly speaking dialects of England may be grouped in the following way: Southern dialects (Greater London, Cockney, Kent, Essex and others); 2. Eastern dialects; 3. Northern dialects; 4. Scottish dialects; Western dialects; 5. Dialects of Ireland.
One of the main differences between southern and northern regional types is in the phoneme inventory- the absence or presence of particular phonemes. In most regions there is the ”rhotic”accent. This |r| sound is post-vocalic and is most often heard in Scotland, Ireland and in Southwest of England. In most regions the glottal stop is more widely used than in RP. Many non-speakers use |n| in the suffix “ing “. In most regions “j “is dropped after |t, s|: student,suit, news, tune. Cockney dialect Cockney is a social accent- the speech of working class areas of the Greater London. It has the following peculiarities: lady |laidi|, bag |beg|; city |siti:|; blood |bleid|; oh, no |eu neu|. The sound |h|is very often absent but sometimes appears where they don’t use it in RP: horse |o:s|, have |ev|, but |h| atmospere , honest; the contrast between |th| and |f| , |th| and |v| , |th| and |d| is practically lost ; the sound |l| is often replaced by |v|, in the suffix “ing” they use |n|. the sounds |p,t,k| are strongly aspirated. The sound |t|is strongly aspirated: top |tsop|.
American English Pronunciation.
1 .The spreading of English in the world and reasons for that.
2. The history of the development of English in America.
Over 300 million people now speak English as their first language. It is the national language of Great Britain, the USA, Australia, New Zealand and Canada (part of it).
The American variant of English has been thoroughly described by many prominent scholars both in our country and in the USA.The sociolinguistic situation in the United States is very complicated. It is moulded by certain linguistic, cultural, historic, demographic, geographic, political and other factors.
The American variant of English underwent the influence of many languages, but the starting point was the English language of the early 17 th and 18th centuries. There are certain varieties of educated American speech. In the U.S.A. 3 main types of cultivated speech are recognized: the Eastern type, the Southern type, the Western or General American. General American pronunciation is known as the Standard Pronunciation of the U.S.A. It is the form of speech used by the radio and T.V. It is used in scientific, cultural and business intercourse. American English may be analyzed from 3 points of view: 1. Peculiarities Vowels and Consonants; 2. Stress Differences. 3. Intonation Differences.
The Eastern type is spoken in New England and in New York city. It bears a remarkable resemblance to Southern English with some slight differences.
The Southern type is used in the South and South-East of the USA. It possesses a striking feature- vowel drawl, which is a specific way of pronouncing vowel, consisting in the diphthongization of some pure vowels and monophthongization of some diphthongs by prolonging their nuclei and dropping the glides.
General American, also known as Northern American or Western American spoken in the central Atlantic States: New York, New Jersey, Wisconsin and others.
Some peculiarities: 1. there is no division into long and short vowels; 2. the number of diphthongs varies from 3 to 12 phonemes. Following D.A. Shakhbagova we distinguish 5 diphthongs: |ei|, |ai|, |oi|, |au|, |ou|. 3. Usually vowels and diphthongs have |r| sound between a vowel and consonant or between a vowel and a silence: TURN, BIRD, STAR. 4. American English is characterized by nasalization, when vowels are preceded or followed by a nasal consonant (SMALL, NAME). Nasalization is often called an American twang….5.The sound |l| in all positions is always dark. 6. Intervocalic |t| is normally voiced. In words like TWENTY, LITTLE |t| is dropped. 7. The “wh” is represented in GA by |^^| or |hw| sound. 8. The sonorant |j| is usually weakened or omitted between consonants: Tuesday |tu:zdi|, suit |su:t|, stupid |stu:pid|. 9. The pronunciation of many words is different: Asia |eiже|, lever |lever|, schedule |skedjel|, tomato |te’ meitou|, vase |veiz|. 10 Words like HOSTILE, MISSILE, REPTILE have final |el|.
Stress differences. 1. In words of French origin GA tends to have stress on the final stllable: BAL’LET |lei|, BE’RET |rei|. 2. Some words have stress on the first syllable in GA: ‘ADDRESS, ‘CIGARETTE, ‘MAGAZINE, ‘RESEARCH. 3. Some compounds have their stress on the first syllable too: ‘WEEKEND, ‘ICECREAM, ‘NEW YEAR. 4. Polysyllabic words ending in –ary, -ory, -mony have secondary stress: ‘LABORA’TORY, ‘TESTI’MONY, ‘DICTIO’NARY.
Intonation differences.1. They use a medium Level Head instead of Descending ScaleKI don’t want to go to the \theatre. 2. In emphatic sentences Mid-Wavy-Level Head is used. 3. Rise-Fall is used in GA instead of Low FallK| Come and see me to\morrow. 4. The Mid-Rising tone is used instead of in general questions. 4. In the Fall- Rise nuclear tone the rise is higher than in RP. 5. Requests are pronounced with a Fall- Rise: Open the door. 6. Leave-takings are often pronounced with a high-pitched Fall-Rise in GA: Good night. 7. They use High Rise instead of Low –Rise in many cases.
Lecture 6.
1. The Principle Theories on Syllable.
2. The Syllable Construction in English.
3. Functions of a Syllable in Speech.
Speech can be broken into minimal uttered units, where sounds show a tendency to cluster or group themselves. These smallest phonetic groups are generally given the name of syllables. Being the smallest pronounceable units, the syllables form language units of greater magnitude that is morphemes, words and phrases. Each of these units is characterized by a certain syllabic structure. Thus, we may say that a meaningful language unit has two aspects: syllable formation and syllable division which form a dialectical unity. The syllable can be studied on four levels: acoustic, articulatory, auditory and functional. On the articulatory level, we could start with the so-called expiratory theory of R.H. Stetson. For him expiration in speech is a pulsation process and each syllable corresponds to a single expiration, so the number of syllables in an utterance is determined by a number of expirations. Another theory is put forward by O. Jesperson. It is called the sonority theory. According to it, each sound is characterized by a certain degree of sonority which is understood as acoustic property of a sound that determines its perception, so the most sonorous sounds tend to form the centre of the syllable and the least sonorous- the marginal segments. There exist a great number of other theories, such as F. de Saussure’ theory, A. Rosetti’s, Hala’s. The problem is still under discussion. In our country there has been adopted L.V. Scerba’s theory of muscular tension. The energy increases within the range of prevocalic consonants and then decreases within the range of postvocalic consonants. However, the majority of linguists treat the syllable as the smallest pronounceable unit which can reveal some linguistic function. So, a syllable is a chain of phonemes of varying length; it is constructed on the basis of contrast of its constituents, which is usually the vowel- consonant type; the nucleus of a syllable is a vowel, the presence of consonants is optional; the distribution of phonemes in the syllabic structure follows the rules which are specific enough for a particular language. Syllable formation in English is based on the phonological opposition vowel- consonant. Vowels are usually syllabic while consonants are not, with the exception of [l], [m], [n], which are syllabic in some cases [garden]. The other aspect of the dialectical unity is syllable division. The linguistic importance of syllable division in different languages is in finding typology of syllables and syllabic structure of meaningful units of a language that is morphemes and words… There are two functions of the syllable.
The constitutive function. It lies in the ability to be a part of a word or a word itself.
4. Functions of stress.
The nature of stress in different languages is different. According to A.Gimson, the effect of prominence is achieved by four factors: force, tone, length and vowel colour. The dynamic stress implies greater force with which the syllable is pronounced. It means that the greater muscular energy is produced by the speaker. European languages such as English, German, French, Russian posses dynamic word stress. The musical word stress is observed in Chinese, Japanese, and Vietnamese. It is effected by the variations of voice pitch in relation to the next syllables. The English linguists (D. Crystal, A. Gimson) agree that in English word stress is a complex phenomenon, marked by the variations in force, pitch, quantity and quality. The dynamic and the tonic features of English word stress prevail over the others. The accent is also influenced by the vowel length and quality. The vowel of the stressed syllable is never reduced and it is longer than in the unstressed one. Languages are also differentiated according to the place of word stress. It may be fixed and free. In languages with a fixed stress its place is on the particular syllable. In French the stress falls on the last syllable, in Finnish and Czech it is fixed on the first one, in Polish on the last but one. The word stress in English is not only free but it may be shifting, performing the semantic function of differentiating lexical units. There are as many degrees of stress in a word as there are syllables. The American scientists B. Blokh and G.Trager ind four degrees of word stress: primary, secondary, tertiary and weak stress. The English word stress is limited by two tendencies: Recessive and Rhythmical due to their origin. In Germanic languages the word stress originally fell on the initial syllable or the second syllable, the root syllable in the English words with prefixes. This tendency was called Recessive. Most English words of Anglo-Saxon origin as well as the French borrowings are subjected to this tendency. (mother, daughter, brother, swallow).; in French borrowings( reason, colour, restaurant). It also marks English words with prefixes (foresee, begin, withdraw, apart). A great number of words of A.-S. origin are monosyllabic or disyllabic, they tend to alternate in the flow of speech, e. g. I don’t believe he is right. The alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables gave birth to the Rhythmical tendency in the present-day English which caused the appearance of the secondary stress in the multisyllabic French borrowings (revolution, organization, assimilation). It also explains the placement of primary stress on the third syllable from the end in three- and four- syllable words (cinema, articulate, situates). The interrelation of both – the recessive and the rhythmical tendencies is traced in the process of accentual assimilation of the French – borrowed word –personal; (personal –personal-personal). Nowadays we see a great number of variations in the accentual structure of many English words with a strong influence of rhythmical tendency: ‘ hospitable- hos’pitable, aristocrat- aristocrat. The numerous variations of English word stress are systematized in the typology of accentual structure of English words worked out by Torsuev G. P. He distinguishes more than 100 stress patterns, which he grouped into 11 types. The tempo of speech may influence the accentual pattern of words too. Word stress in a language performs 3 functions: 1. It constitutes a word, it organizes the syllables of a word into a language unit having a definite accentual structure, so it performs the constitutive function. 2. Word stress enables a person to identify a succession of syllables as a definite accentual pattern of a word. The function is identificatory. 3. Word stress alone is capable of differentiating the meaning of words or their forms, thus performing its distinctive function. (im’port –‘import, billow-bellow).
Lecture 8.
Assimilation in English.
1.Modifications of phonemes in speech.
2.Assimilation and adaptation in English.
3.The direction of assimilation.
4.The degree of assimilation.
5.The historical and living assimilation.
6. Established and accidental assimilation.
There are some remarkable differences between the pronunciation of a word in isolation and of the same word in a block of connected speech. These changes are mostly quite regular and predictable. The modification of a consonant under the influence of the adjoining consonant in the flow of speech is known as assimilation. The term accommodation is often used to denote the interchanges of “vowel + consonant” type or “consonant + vowel” type. Assimilation may affect the work of the lips, tongue, soft palate walls of the pharynx. Consonants may be modified according to the place of obstruction, to the manner of articulation, to the lip position, the position of the soft palate. According to the direction of assimilation, it may be regressive and progressive. Regressive a. is most common in both languages: English and Russian. According to the degree a. may be complete, incomplete. Assimilation may be also historical, in cases when its process is already fixed in present-day English and living, when it acts in living speech of speakers of to-day. Some cases of a. are considered to be obligatory, functioning according to the accepted norm of the language, used by the educated people, while the other are met only in the speech of the illiterate part of the population of the country.
Assimilation is the likening of two adjoining sounds. The adaptive
modification of a consonant by a neighbouring consonant in the
speech chain is known as assimilation. Assimilation may affect all the
features of the articulation of a consonant phoneme or only some of
them. Assimilation may affect: 1) the place of obstruction ( in them,
all that, his thoughts-alveolars are replaced by dentals); 2) the active
speech organ (congress, concrete, conquest-the alveolar sonorant |n|
is replaced by the back-lingual sonorant; ) ; 3) the work of the vocal
cords (goose and berry- gooseberry |guzberi|) 4) the position of the
lips (quick, twenty, language) -labialized variants of the phonemes
|k|,|g|,|t| are used under the influence of the bilabial sonorant |w|.
The term accommodation is often used by linguists to denote the interchanges
of “vowel + consonant type” or “consonant + vowel type.(too, loose-an
unrounded variant of |t| is replaced by a rounded |t| under the influence
of a rounded sound |u|. One of the wide-spread sound changes is vowel
reduction. Elision or complete loss of sounds, both vowels and consonants,
is often observed in English.( knight, talk, walk, column, dumb, whistle,
garden, all right |orait|).Vowel elision is very frequent in informal
conversational style. It often goes with other processes involving assimilation
and elision of consonants. Elided neutral sound |e| is very common in
the unstressed syllables of polysyllabic words, like : COLLECTIVE, DIFFERENT,
POLLITICAL-|klektiv|,|difrent|
Lecture 9.
1. The definition of intonation in its problematic character.
2. Prosodic units.
3. Prosodic subsystems.
4. Functions of intonation.
5. Notation Systems
Intonation is a language universal. It is a powerful means of communication process. Some linguists define intonation as variations of melody, others as variations of stress and melody. From our point of view, intonation is a complex unity of melody, stress and tempo, which are closely related. Nowadays there is another term “prosody” which embraces the three prosodic components and substitutes the term “intonation.” It is widely used in linguistic literature .Each syllable of the speech chain has a special pitch colouring. Some of the syllables have significant moves of tone: up and down. Each syllable bears a definite amount of loudness. Together with the tempo of speech they form an intonation pattern which is the basic unit of intonation. An intonation pattern contains one nucleus and may contain other stressed or unstressed syllables normally preceding or following the nucleus. Intonation patterns serve to actualize syntagms in speech, which are called intonation groups. Each intonation group may consist of one or more syntagms. The nuclear tone is the most important part of the intonation pattern without which it cannot exist at all. According to R. Kingdon the most important nuclear tones in English are: Low Fall- No; High Fall – No; Low Rise – No; High Rise – No; Fall Rise – No. With the help of intonation groups intonation may convey different emotions and feelings, it exists in grammatical categories. Intonation manifests itself by means of prosodic units: a syllable, a rhythmic unit, an intonation group, an utterance. The smallest possible prosodic unit is a syllable. It may consist of one or two sounds.The syllable has no meaning of its own. The next prosodic unit is a rhythmic unit. The stressed syllables of a rhythmic unit form peaks of prominence, they tend to be pronounced in such Germanic languages as English and German, as well as in Russian, at regular intervals producing” beats” between every two stressed syllables. Such languages are called to be stressed- timed. Form words are usually unstressed ( prepositions, conjunctions, auxiliary and modal verbs, personal and possessive pronouns are pronounced in their weak forms). Notional words, such as nouns, notional verbs, adjectives, adverbs. The rhythmic unit also contains a number of unstressed syllables, which are called clitics. The initial unstressed syllables that precede the nucleus are called proclitics, those that follow the nucleus are called enclitics. The enclitic tendency is more typical of English. The rhythmic groups are not meaningful. The next prosodic unit is intonation group, which is very often referred as a “syntagm” or “sense- group” as it is meaningful. The intonation group is a stretch of speech which may have the length of the whole phrase. The boundaries of an intonation group may be marked by stops of phonation,(temporal pauses). Utterance, being the next group, is perceived as a rhythmically organized segment of speech. Minimally, the utterance may consist of a nucleus only, maximally, it consists of a Pre- Head, Head, Nucleus and Tail. All prosodic units are arranged taxonomically, while Pre- head, Head, Nucleus and Tail are autonomous. Prosodic subsystems are the components of intonation. The pitch (melody) is the main component of intonation. It manifests itself through the pitch variations upwards and downwards. The leading role in differentiating communicative types of utterances belongs to the terminal tone. Various combinations of the characteristics of the Pre-head, Head, (scale) and the terminal tone (Nucleus) form complicated and numerous melodic structures (intonation patterns). In English there are ten basic melodic tone – groups (O.Connor, G. Arnold ) A special prominence given to one or more words in an utterance is called u. stress. The distribution of stresses in an utterance depends on several factors. G. Torsuev points to the following factors: semantic, grammatical and rhythmical. The semantic centre of the utterance is singled out by the nuclear stress, where notional words are stressed and form- words are unstressed. The grammatical structure of the utterance also determines its accentual structure. The distribution of stresses in an u. is also affected by the rhythmical laws of the English language. All these factors are closely connected with one another, the semantic factor being the main one. Rhythm has been defined as regularity of stressed and unstressed syllables. As it has already been mentioned English has a stress –timed rhythm, it performs important linguistic functions, and it is the most important organizing factor. The tempo of speech is the rate at which utterances and their smaller units are pronounced. Tempo of speech may be determined by different factors. It may depend on the size of audience, the acoustic qualities of the room, the individuality of the speaker and extra linguistic factors. It also depends on changes in meaning. The tempo can also be used to express the speakers’ attitude or emotions. Everybody’s speech has some norms of tempo, duration, which affect the meaning. The speech is divided into units of different length and by means of pauses. Its function is to segment connected speech into utterances and intonation groups to delimit them from one another. Pauses are closely related with tempo. Phoneticians distinguish 3 main types of pauses: silent pauses, pauses of perception and voiced p. Intonation perform a number of functions. 1. The constitutive function. Intonation forms utterances as communicative units. It forms all communicative types- statements, questions, imperatives, exclamations and modal types. 2. The distinctive function manifests itself in several particular functions, depending on the meaning. These functions are: communicative- distinctive, modal – distinctive, culminative, syntactical- distinctive. 3. Identificatory function is to provide a basis for the hearer’s identification of the communicative and modal type of an utterance.
The notation systems.
Notation systems of prosodic phenomena are equally important both for research work and language teaching. There is a wide variety of notations that are used in printed matter ( paper, articles, textbooks….). Any system of notation is a generalization of a great variety of important sound phenomena, depending on which the notation may be broad or narrow. A broad notation reflects only the most important prosodic features by using the fewest possible symbols. A narrow notation is intended for a more detailed and precise analysis. There is a number of means to denote prosodic features: the musical notation(J.Fonagy and I.Magdics), interlinear staves with dots, dashes and arrows (L.Armstrong and I. Ward, D. Jones), the head and nucleus system (H.Palmer), the tonetic stress-mark system (R.Kingdon), the intonation-mark system (G.Trager and H.Smith, M. Halliday). Until recently intonation was defined as pitch movement (or melody) alone. Musical symbols are used even now. But such a notation is unsatisfactory for practical aims because it is difficult to read. The next important system was a notation within the lines of the text (H. Palmer), who used arrows to mark the pitch change in the nucleus. Small dots correspond to unstressed syllables and thick dots to mark the stressed syllables. H. Palmer’s tonetic system reflects his so-called | head- nucleus| approach to intonation, in which the central unit is the tone group consisting of pre-head, head, nucleus and tail. His notation system was accepted by many English scholars ( D. Jones, L. Armstrong, I.Ward and others. A rather accurate system was developed by R. Kingdon. It is known as the tonetic stress-mark system. R.Kingdon considers stress to be a very important factor. He distinguishes stressed syllables of two kinds: Static Tones and Kinetic Tones (the High Rising Tone, the Low Rising Tone, the High Falling Tone, the Low Falling Tone, Undivided- the Falling-Rising Tone, Divided- the Falling—Rising Tone, the Rising-Falling Tone, the Rising- Falling- Rising Tone.). The tonetic stress-mark system is economical, convenient and rather precise. An interlinear system uses a minimum of symbols (every syllable is represented by a dot, or a line or an arrow.). A notation system devised by D. Crystal Includes symbols to mark various degrees of pitch variation, pitch range, pause, loudness, speed, rhythmicality and tension. The symbols can be grouped into features noted in the text and features in the margin. But it is rather complicated. The American linguists have different notation systems. (K. Pike presents American English intonation in terms of 4 pitch levels, 3 terminal contours |kontuez| and 4 stress phonemes. D.Bolinger considers that the configurations of pitches are linguistically relevant.
1. The Problem of Styles;
2. Phonostylistics and its use:
a) Informational style;
b) Academic style;
c) Publicistic style;
d) Declamatory style;
e) Conversational style.
A person does not always pronounce the same words in the same way. The pronunciation of one and the same person may be different on different occasions, when delivering a lecture, speaking over the radio or giving a dictation, when talking to official persons or chatting with friends. These different ways of pronouncing words are called “styles of pronunciation”, they have peculiarities which may differ in different languages. Prof. D. Jones has classified pronunciation styles in the following manner:» Several different styles may be distinguished, such as the rapid familiar styles, the slower colloquial style, the natural style used in addressing a fair- sized audience, the acquired style of the stage or singing”. Some authors confuse styles of pronunciation with literary styles. They are represented in the following way: literary style – colloquial style – low colloquial style. The distinctive feature, according to Prof. Scerba is the degree of carefulness, with which words are pronounced. He differenciated the full style from the colloquial style. The full style is characterized by a moderately slow tempo and a careful pronunciation. The words are pronounced in their full form , without vowel reduction or loss of consonants, without non- obligatory assimilations. The colloquial style differs from the full style both in tempo and clearness. Prof. Scerba considers that it is useful to distinguish two main types of the colloquial style: 1) the careful colloquial style; 2) the careless colloquial style, which differs from the first in free use of non- obligatory assimilation and in tempo. (Ex.: I should like to meet her). Nowadays a new branch of phonetics “phonostylistics” has developed. The choice of an intonation style is determined by the purpose of communication and by a number of other extralinguistic and social factors. These are : 1.Informational Style; 2.Academic Style; 3. Publicistic Style; 4. Declamatory Style; 5. Conversational Style.