Лекции по "Теоретической фонетике английского языка"

     (a)  a consonant to a following vowel (C + V), as in the word [mi:] me;

     (b)  a vowel to a following consonant (V + C), as in the word [σn] on;

     (c)  two consonants (C + C), as in the word [bləυ] blow:

     (d)  two vowels (V + V), as in the word [riæləti] reality.

     Merging of stages, as compared with interpenetration of stages, is a simpler and looser way of joining sounds together. It usually takes place if two adjacent sounds of a different nature are joined together. In this case the end of the preceding sound penetrates into the beginning of the following sound. In other words, the end of the first sound and the beginning of the second are articulated almost simultaneously. Interpenetration of stages usually takes place when consonants of a similar or identical nature are joined. In this case the end of the first sound penetrates not only into the beginning but also into the middle part of the second sound, as in [ækt] act, [begd] begged.

     The modifications are observed both within words and word boundaries. There are the following types of modification: assimilation, accommodation, reduction, elision, and inserting. The adaptive modification of a consonant by a neighbouring consonant in a speech chain is assimilation. Accommodation is used to denote the interchanges of VC or CV types. Reduction is actually qualitative or quantitative weakening of vowels in unstressed positions. Elision is a complete loss of sounds, both vowels and consonants. Inserting is a process of sound addition.

     MODIFICATIONS OF CONSONANTS 

     1.   Assimilation

     1.1. Place of articulation

     •    t, d > dental before [ð, θ]: eighth, at the, said that

     •    t, d > post-alveolar before [r]: tree, true, dream, the third room

     •    s, z > post-alveolar before [∫]: this shop, does she

     •    t, d > affricates before [j]: graduate, could you

     •   m > labio-dental before [f]: symphony

     •      n > dental before [θ]: seventh

     •      n > velar before [k]: thank

     1.2. Manner of articulation

     •    loss of plosion: glad to see you, great trouble

     •    nasal plosion: sudden, at night, let me see

     •    lateral plosion: settle, at last    

     1.3. Work of the vocal cords

     •    voiced > voiceless: newspaper, gooseberry (and in grammatical …)

           has, is, does > [s]; of, have > [f]

     Notice: In English typical assimilation is voiced > voiceless; voiceless > voiced is not typical.

     1.4. Degree of noise

     •    sonorants > are partially devoiced after [p, t, k, s]

     2. Accommodation

     2.1. Lip position

     •    consonant + back vowel: pool, rude, who (rounded)

     •    consonant + front vowel: tea, sit, keep (spread)

     3. Elision

     3.1. Loss of [h] in personal and possessive pronouns and the forms of the auxiliary verb have.

     3.2. [l] lends to be lost when preceded by [o:]: always, already, all right

     3.3. In cluster of consonants: next day, just one. mashed potatoes

     4. Inserting of sounds

     4.1. Linking [r] (potential pronunciation of [r]): car owner

     4.2. Intrusive [r]: [r] is pronounced where no r is seen in the spelling china and glass: it is not recommended to foreign learners. 
 
 
 

     MODIFICATION OF VOWELS

     1.   Reduction

     1.1.     Quantitative

     1.2.     Qualitative

     2.   Accommodation

     2.2 Positional length of vowels: knee - need - neat

     2.3.   Nasalization of vowels: preceded or followed by [n, m]: never, then, men 

 

      The syllabic structure in English

     Outline

     1.  Theories on syllable formal ion and division.

     2.  The structure and functions of syllables in English

     1.  Theories on syllable formation and division

     Speech can be broken into minimal pronounceable units into which sounds show a tendency to cluster or group. These smallest phonetic groups arc generally given the name of syllables. Being the smallest pronounceable units, syllables form morphemes, words and phrases. Each of these units is characterized by a certain syllabic structure. Thus a meaningful language unit phonetically may be considered from the point of view of syllable formation and syllable division.

     The syllable is a complicated phenomenon and like a phoneme it can be studied on four levels - articulatory, acoustic, auditory and functional. The complexity of the phenomenon gave rise to many theories.

     We could start with the so-called expiratory (chest pulse or pressure) theory by R.H. Stetson. This theory is based on the assumption that expiration in speech is a pulsating process and each syllable should correspond to a single expiration. So the number of syllables in an utterance is determined by the number of expirations made in the production of the utterance. This theory was strongly criticized by Russian and foreign linguists. G.P. Torsuyev, for example, wrote that in a phrase a number of words and consequently a number of syllables can be pronounced with a single expiration. This fact makes the validity of the theory doubtful.

     Another theory of syllable put forward by O. Jespersen is generally called the sonority theory. According to O. Jespersen, each sound is characterized by a certain degree of sonority which is understood us acoustic property of a sound that determines its perceptibility. According to this sound property a ranking of speech sounds could be established: <the least sonorous>  voiceless plosives à voiced fricatives àvoiced plosives à  voiced fricatives à sonorants à close vowels àopen vowels <the most sonorous>. In the word plant for example   we may use the following wave of sonority: [pla:nt]. According to V.A. Vasssilyev the most serious drawback of this theory is that it fails to explain the actual mechanism of syllable formation and syllable division. Besides, the concept of sonority is not very clearly defined.

     Further experimental work aimed to description of the syllable resulted in lot of other theories. However the question of articulatory mechanism of syllable in a still an open question in phonetics. We might suppose that this mechanism is similar in all languages and could be regarded as phonetic universal.

     In Russian linguistics there has been adopted the theory of syllable by LV Shcherba. It is called the theory of muscular tension. In most languages there is the syllabic phoneme in the centre of the syllable which is usually a vowel phoneme or, in some languages, a sonorant. The phonemes preceding or following the syllabic peak are called marginal. The tense of articulation increases within the range of prevocalic consonants and then decreases within the range of postvocalic consonants.

     Russian linguist and psychologist N.I. Zhinkin has suggested the so-called loudness theory which seems to combine both production and perception levels. The experiments carried out by N.I. Zhinkin showed that the arc of loudness of perception level is formed due to variations of the volume pharyngeal passage which is modified by contractions of its walls. The narrowing of the passage and the increase in muscular tension which results from it reinforce the actual loudness of a vowel thus forming the peak of the syllabic. So the syllable is the arc оf loudness which correlates with the arc of articulatory effort on the speed production level since variations in loudness are due to the work of all speech mechanisms.

     It is perfectly obvious that no phonetician has succeeded so far in giving an adequate explanation of what the syllable is. The difficulties seem to arise from the various possibilities of approach to the unit. There exist two points of view:

     1.  Sоme linguists consider the syllable to be a purely articulatory unit which lacks any functional value. This point of view is defended on the ground that the boundaries of syllables do not always coincide with those of morphemes.

     2.   However the majority of linguists treat the syllable as the smallest pronounceable unit which can reveal some linguistic function.

     Trying to define the syllable from articulatory point of view we may talk about universals. When we mean the functional aspect of the syllable it should be defined with the reference to the structure of one particular language.

     The definition of the syllable from the functional point of view tends to single out the following features of the syllable:

     a) a syllable is a chain of phonemes of varying length;

     b)  a syllable is constructed on the basis of contrast of its constituents (which is usually of vowel - consonant type);

     c)   the  nucleus  of a  syllable  is a  vowel,  the  presence of consonants  is optional; there are no languages in which vowels are not used as syllable nuclei, however, there are languages in which this function is performed by consonants;

     d) the distribution of phonemes in the syllabic structure follows by the rules which are specific enough for a particular language.

     2. The structure and functions of syllables in English

     Syllable formation in English is based on the phonological opposition vowel - consonant. Vowels are usually syllabic while consonants are not with the exceptions of [l], [m], [n], which become syllabic in a final position preceded by a

     noise consonant: bottle [bσtl], bottom [bσtm], button [b/\tn] and [r] (in those accents which pronounce [r]) perhaps [præps].

     The structure of English syllables can be summarized as follows:

     •    Many   syllables   have   one   or   more   consonants   preceding   the nucleus.   These   make   up   the   syllable   onset:    me, so, plow.

     •    Many   syllables   have   one   or   more   consonants, following the nucleus. They make up the syllable coda. They are traditionally known as closed syllables: cat, jump.

     •   The combination of nucleus and coda has a special significance, making up the rhyming property of a syllable.

       

     The English language has developed the closed type of syllable as the fundamental one while in Russian it is the open type that forms the basis of syllable formation.

     The other aspect of this component is syllable division. The problem of syllable division in case of intervocalic consonants and their clusters, like in such words as city, extra, standing and others.

     Let us consider the first word ['sit.i]. There exist two possibilities:

     a) the point of syllable division is after the intervocalic consonant:

     b) the point of syllable division is inside the consonant.

     In both cases the first syllable remains closed because the shot vowel should remains check  The result of instrumentally analyses show, that the point of syllable division in such words is inside the intervocalic consonant. EPD indicates the point of division after the consonant.

     The second case. There are two syllables in the word extra but where should the boundary between them fall?

     1) [e - kstrə]. It is unlike that people would opt for a division between [e] and [kstrə] because there are no syllables in English which begin with consonant sequence [kstr].

     2) Similarly, a division between [ekstr] and [ə] would be unnatural.

     3) [ek - strə], [eks - trə], [ekst - rə] are possible. People usually prefer either of the first two options here, but there no obvious way of deciding between them.

     In some cases we may take into account the morphemic structure of words. For example, standing consists of two syllables; on phonetic grounds [stæn - diŋ). on grammatical grounds [stænd - iŋ].

     Now we shall consider two functions of the syllable.

     The first is constitutive function. It lies in its ability to be a part of a word itself. The syllables form language units of greater magnitude that is words, morphemes, and utterances. It this respect two things should be emphasized. First, the syllable is the unit within which the relations between distinctive features of phonemes and their acoustic correlates are revealed. Second, within a syllable (or syllables) prosodic characteristics of speech are realized, which form the stress pattern of a word and the intonation structure of an utterance. In sum, the syllable is a specific minimal structure of both segmental and suprasegmental features.

     The   other   function   is   distinctive   one. In   this   respect   the   syllable   is characterized by its ability to differentiate words and word-forms. One minimal pare has been found in English to illustrate the word distinctive function in the syllabic: nitrate — night-rate. There analogical distinction between word combinations can be illustrated by many more examples: an aim - a name; an ice house - a nice house, etc. Sometimes the difference in syllable division may be the basic ground for differentiation in such pairs as I saw her rise.- I saw her eyes; I saw the meat — I saw them eat.

 

      Lecture 8

     Word stress in English

     Outline

     1.   Nature of word stress

     2.   Place of word stress in English. Degrees of stress

     3.   Functions and tendencies of the English stress

     4.  Typology of accentual structures

     1. Nature of word stress

     The sequence of syllables in the word is not pronounced identically. The syllable or syllables which are uttered with more prominence than the other syllables of the word are said to be stressed or accented. Stress in the isolated word is termed word stress; stress in connected speech is termed sentence stress.

     Stress is defined differently by different authors. B.A. Bogoroditsky, for instance, defined stress as an increase of energy, accompanied by an increase of expiratory and articulatory activity. D. Jones defined stress as the degree of force, which is accompanied by a strong force of exhalation and gives an impression of loudness. H. Sweet also stated that stress, is connected with the force of breath. According to A.C. Gimson, the effect of prominence is achieved by any or all of four factors: force, tone, length and vowel colour.

     If we compare stressed and unstressed syllables in the words contract ['kσntrækt], to contract [kən'trækt], we may note that in the stressed syllable:

     (a) the force is greater, which is connected with more energetic articulation;

     (b)  the pitch of voice is higher, which is connected with stronger tenseness of the vocal cords and the walls of the resonance chamber;

     (c) the quantity of the vowel [æ] in [kən'trækt] is greater, the vowel becomes longer;

     (d) the quality of the vowel [æ] in the stressed syllable is different from the quality of this vowel in the unstressed position, in which it is more narrow than ['æ].

     On the auditory level a stressed syllable is the part of the word which has a special prominence. It is produced by a greater loudness and length, modifications in the pitch and quality. The physical correlates are: intensity, duration, frequency and the formant structure. All these features can be analyzed on the acoustic level. Word stress can be defined as the singling out of one or more syllables in a word, which is accompanied by the change of the force of utterance, pitch of the voice, qualitative and quantitative characteristics of the sound, which is usually a vowel. In different languages one of the factors constituting word stress is usually more significant than the others. According to the most important feature different types, of word stress are distinguished in different languages.

     1) If special prominence in a stressed syllable or syllables is achieved mainly through the intensity of articulation, such type of stress is called dynamic, or force stress.

     2) If special prominence in a stressed syllable is achieved mainly through the change of pitch, or musical tone, such accent is called musical, or tonic. It is characteristic of the Japanese, Korean and other oriental languages.

     3)  If special prominence in a stressed syllable is achieved through the changes in the quantity of the vowels, which are longer in the stressed syllables than in the unstressed ones, such type of stress is called quantitative.

     4) Qualitative type of stress is achieved through the changes in the quality of the vowel under stress.

     English word stress is traditionally defined as dynamic, but in fact, the special prominence of the stressed syllables is manifested in the English language not only through the increase of intensity, but also through the changes in the vowel quantity, consonant and vowel quality and pitch of the voice.