Теоретическая фонетика английского языка

Теоретическая фонетика английского языка.

Билет № 1

Компоненты интонации:

- Мелодика: ведущая роль в различении коммуникативных высказываний, изменение в направлении движения голосового тона.

- Темп: выражение различной степени важности высказываний, эмоциональное настроение. Темп ускоряется при передаче бурных эмоций и замедляется при подавленном состоянии.

- Пауза: делят речевой поток на отдельные единицы – делимитативная функция. Средство объединения частей высказывания в единое целое. Роль экспрессивного выделения слова, как до него так и после. Темпоральный компонент интонации. Интонация ассоциируется, прежде всего, со звуком, участием голоса.

- Громкость (интенсивность): определение семантического центра в звучащих текстах (менее значимые части высказывания произносятся с пониженной громкостью), членение речевого потока. Зависит не только от силы звука, но и от высоты (частоты основного тона) и долготы (длительности).

- Качество голоса (тембр): различные тональные изменения голоса. Постоянные индивидуальные особенности голоса говорящего, а соответственно они считают, что качество голоса не может являться предметом изучения лингвистики. Другие исследователи относят качество голоса к области эмоционального.

- Фразовое ударение: организующая, цементирующая роль, ритмообразующая функция, выделительная функция. Просодический признак.

- Ритм: средство эмоционального воздействия на слушающего, организующая роль. Способствует выражению смысловых отношений. Формируется из единиц сложных воспринимаемых качеств, мелодики, темпа, паузы, громкости, качества голоса фразовой акцентуации. Чередование ударных слогов примерно через равные промежутки времени.

Просодическое средство.

Каждому компоненту интонации должно соответствовать изначальное субстанциональное просодическое начало – частота основного тона, интенсивность, длительность, спектр, отсутствие речевого сигнала. При отсутствии той характеристики то или иное фонетическое явление относим не к компонентам интонации (просодическим средствам), а к просодическим признакам.

Под фразовой интонацией понимается сложное единство взаимосвязанных между собой просодических средств (компонентов интонации – мелодики, громкости, темпа, паузы, качества голоса), а также просодических признаков (фразовой акцентуации и ритма), функционирующих в фразе и передающих различные интеллектуальные (логические) и модально-эмоциональные отношения.

Phonological and non-phonological features:

A phoneme can only perform its distinctive function if it is opposed to another phoneme (or to no sound) in the same position. Such an opposition is called distinctive, or phonological. The classification is based on the number of distinctive articulatory features underlying the opposition (single, double, triple, multiple). Establishment of the phonemic system of a language is actually the establishment of all the single phonological oppositions existing in it.

Each sound is characterized by a number of features, some of them are relevant (значимые) (distinctive), others are irrelevant (incidental). Relevant features are affected by phonetic context. Irrelevant may be of two kinds: - indispensable (обязательный), (they are always present at allophones), - incidental (случайный).

Relevant

- the type of obstruction (occlusive/constrictive, plosive/fricative/affricate/nasal)

- the active organ (labial, bilabial, labio-dental/lingual/glottal)

- the force of articulation, work of local cords (fortis/lenis)

Irrelevant

- two foci

- the shape of narrow (oral, nasal, lateral articulation)

- place of obstruction (пассивный орган)

- presense or absense of voice

- aspiration

- palatalisation

In the system of English vowels the only relevant feature is the position of the tongue (ряд, подъем).

Билет № 2

Each language has a limited number of sound-types, that are shared by all the speakers of the language and are linguistically important because they distinguish meaning or meaningful units, differentiate words or their grammatical forms – phonemes.

The phoneme has several aspects and functions and it’s very difficult to give a formal definition n a single sentence. The segmental phoneme is the smallest (further indivisible into smaller consecutive segments) language unit (sound type) that exists in the speech of all the members of a given language community as such speech sounds which are capable of distinguishing one word from another word of the same language or one grammatical form of a word from another grammatical form of the same word.

Speech sounds can perform this distinctive function only when they are opposed to each other or to no sound in one and the same position (phonetic context, environment).

The actual speech sounds pronounced by the speaker or reader are variants, allophones (the actual speech sounds) of phonemes – are incapable of differentiating words or the grammatical forms of one and the same word (eight/alveolar-eighth/dental). Differ from each other in some degree. With the exception of free variants – no variant can normally occur in the position in which any other variant occurs, they are in complementary distribution (дополнительная дистрибуция). They are divided into:

principal (typical)

- is free from the influence of neighboring speech sounds

- it has the greatest number of articulatory features

subsidiary

- combinatory (assimilation, accommodation, adaptation)

- positional – in definite positions are used traditionally (clear-dark variant /l/ in RP and GA)

The behavior of allophones in phonetic context, their ability to occur in certain definite positions – distribution.

- Contrastive (контрастная)- allophones of different phonemes occur in the same position distinguishing the meaning of different words (bad/mad)

- Complimentary(дополнительная)- allophones of one and the same phoneme never occur in identical positions (clear-dark /l/)

- free varianrs (свободное варьирование)- allophones of one and the same phoneme which do occur in the same position but are incapable of differentiating meaning.
The phoneme is a dialectical unity of its three aspects reflected in its definition (aspects):

- material, real and objective – it exists in the form of concrete variant (Daniel Jones “a family of sound”)

- abstractional and generalized character (Baudouin de Courtenay mentalist view, «психический эквивалент звука», the phoneme is regarded as a physical image of a sound or one common to several sounds; Хомский, Трубецкой, Halle, Jackobson, Hejemslev).

- functional – discriminatory (разлчительная)

- the objective reality of the phoneme was denied by American linguists (Twaddel)

-constitutive (make up more complicated units) and recognitive (identificatory), distinctive (смыслоразличительная) functions (Васильев)

materialistic conception – Щерба

The difference between RP and GA (consonsnts)

Билет № 12

Phonological analysis:

The two main problems:

the establishment of the phonemic inventory for a language (буквы, что фонема, что аллофон)

Methods:

Distributional – is based on the phonological rule, that different phonemes can occur in one and the same position, while allophones of one and the same phoneme occur in different positions (cat-rat/ cat-skate). It’s possible to establish the phonemic status of any sound just by contrasting it with the other sound without knowing the meaning of the words.

Semantic – attaches great importance to meaning. It’s based on the assumption that a phoneme can distinguish words only when opposed to another phoneme or zero in an identical phonetic context (ask”0”-asks). Pairs of words differing only in one sound are called minimal pairs.

the establishment of the inventory of phonologically relevant elements for a given language.

L. Blomfield (American descriptive linguist) considered it impossible to identify the phonemes of a language without recourse to meaning in the ordinary sense of word.

Great phonemic dissimilarity – entirely or greatly different sounds, such as a vowel and a consonant cannot be allophones of the same phoneme.

Conditioned allophonic similarity – the more or less similar sounds which are at the same time more or less different, are allophones of the same phoneme if the difference between them is clearly due to the influence of purely external phonetic factors, such as neighbouring sounds, stress, etc..
Билет № 13

В самом общем виде интонация может быть определена как сложное единство взаимосвязанных между собой просодических явлений, способных выражать различные интеллектуальные, логические и модально-эмоциональные отношения. Интонация и просодия связаны между собой самым тесным образом, но тем не менее это разные объекты.

Просодия – постоянные сверхсегментные свойства речи (частота основного тона, интенсивность, длительность, громкость (сила, амплитуда); синоним интонации (учение о принципах и средствах членения речи и соединения расчлененных частей, таких как повышение и понижение основного тона (мелодия), расстановка более и менее сильных ударений (динамика), относительное ускорение и замедление речи (темп) и разрыв произнесения (паузы). Так что просодия некотором смысле уже является интонацией. Просодия – явление субстанциональное, то есть состоящее из материальных средств звучащей речи: частоты основного тона, интенсивности, длительности (акустический уровень). Считаем, что следует также учитывать и такой акустический показатель, как отсутствие речевого сигнала, что на уровне восприятия соответствует перерыву в звучании.

Просодические средства не накладываются на сегментные единицы, но заключены в самих звуках. Поэтому понятие просодии входит в спектр, который является примарной акустической характеристикой отдельно произносимого звука и сопутствующей акустической характеристикой слога, синтагмы, фразы и т.д.

Просодия и интонация состоят из одного и того же «строительного материала» - частоты основного тона, интенсивности, длительности, а также спектра и такого показателя, как отсутствие речевого сигнала. На уровне восприятия указанные параметры соотносятся со следующими понятиями: высота тона/ мелодика, сила/громкость, долгота/темп, тембр/качество голоса, перерыв в звучании/пауза. Prosody and intonation are similar because they are composed of the same phonetic phenomena. But on the other hand they are different and the difference lies in their sphere of their usage.

Просодия является в определенном смысле понятием более емким и широким, чем интонация, поскольку она организует самые разные звуковые последовательности (от слога до целого текста). Термин же «интонация» применим к речевым единицам, не меньшим синтагмы. Prosody may be applied to both smaller units (syllable, rhythmic group, text, phrase) and larger units. The notion of prosody is larger than the notion of intonation, but prosody only organizes the speech and intonation is related in meaning.

Интонация в некотором отношении – явление более высокого уровня, чем просодия, так как в понятие интонации входит и содержательный аспект. Просодия же заключает в себе лишь средства организации речевых единиц. Таким образом, интонационные признаки соотносятся с абстрактным, фонологическим; просодические признаки же – с более частным, нефункциональным. Целесообразно поэтому различать термины «просодия» и «интонация» применительно к различным функциям, а именно: конститутивная (организующая речевых единиц в одно целое) и делимитативная (сегментирующая речевой поток) функции просодии и коммуникативная, модально-эмоциональная, кульминативная (тема-рематическая), синтаксическая, семантическая функции интонации. Prosody Is reasonable only in constitutive aspect of speech. It’s reasonable to apply the term intonation to the logical and emotional aspects of speech.

By prosody the majority of phoneticians mean constant physical acoustic characteristics of speech (mainly fundamental frequency, intensity, duration and also spectrum and absence of speech (pause).

Spectrum is a basis acoustic feature of a separate sound but it’s a secondary feature of a larger unit (of a syllable, phrase).

On the perceptive level these parameters are related to the following components:

Intensity- loudness / duration – tempo / spectrum – voice quality

Prosodic features – rhythm, sense stress.

All these characteristics are quite frequently called prosodic means.

Intonation is a complex unity of closely related prosodic means (components of intonation)

- melody

- loudness

- tempo

- pause

- voice quality

and of prosodic features (sentence accentuation, rhuthm), which convey different intellectual (logical) modal and emotional attitudes.

Functions

Prosody:

-constitutive (structural) separate words, pronounced on the same level - normal communication is impossible/ “voice in machine” 1)integrative (связывание) 2) delimitative (расчленение) – the same words, but a different translation, because of the way we pronounce them.

- stylistic, each functional style and each function of speech has its own characteristics in melody, tempo, loudness, voice quality, pause. Official style (frequent use of the gradually descending scale, greater degree of loudness, slower tempo of speech), colloquial style (lowered degree of loudness, great number of hesitation pauses).

- aestatic, general impression from the person’s speech. Harmony (благозвучие).

- social, information about gender, age, education, the place one lives

Intonation:

- communicative, type of utterance (command, request)

- expressive:

culminative – difference between the new and the given information (theme-rheme)
highlighting – singing out words according to the degree of their semantic importance
attitutional – in order to express his attitude the speaker changes the melody, tembre of voice, loudness (I love you, Mid-Fall/Rise-Fall). Change in melody can lead to the change of the meaning of the whole utterance.

Scottish English.

English has been spoken for as long as it has been spoken in England. Some linguists say that it’s a national variant, others say that it’s a dialect. In the Highlands and Islands of northern and western Scotland, however, Gaelic is still the native language of thousands of speakers of these regions.

Incidentally a number of writers and poets like R. Burns retained their native language (Scots), although after Reformation it was gradually replaced by English.

Nowadays educated Scottish people speak a form of Scottish Standard English which grammatically and lexically is not different from English used elsewhere, but with an obvious Scottish accent. At the moment there is a strong movement in Scotland for the revival of Scots.

Vowels:

since Sc. English is rhotic it preserves post-vocalic /r/ (beer => /bir/; hurt => /h^rt/)
Length is not a distinctive feature in Sottish vowels (pool=pull). But in final stressed open syllables vowels are longer than elsewhere.
Monophthongs are pure, there’s no trace of diphthongization with the exceptions of /ai-i/, /au-u/, /oi/.
The RP /æ – a(a:)/ distinction doesn’t exist (hat /a/, danse /a:/)
/i/, /U/, /^/, /э/ may be central
accent /u:/ often occurs when RP has /au/ (hause /hu:s/)
/o/ and /Эu/ may not be contrasted (not=note)
do, to are pronounced as /dэ/, /tэ/
/e/ instead of /i/ (city)

Consonants:

Sc. English preserves a destinction between /hw/ and /w/ (witch)
Initial /p,t,k/ are usually non-aspirated
/r/ is most usually a flap
non-initial /t/ is always realized as aglottal stop /?/
/l/ is dark in all positions
the velar fricative /x/ occurs in number of words: loch
-ing is /in/
/h/ is present
A specific Scottish feature is the pronunciation of /θr/ as /ςr/ (through)

Билет № 8

Major approaches to the form of melodic unit:

1). Contour approach (контурный подход). The most traditional and widespread is the approach worked out by the British phonetic school (Sweet, Jones, Armstrong, Ward, Kingdon, Gimbson, O’Conner). The approach is based on the assumption that the melodic of utterance is a unity of functionally independent components.

Melodic configuration is studied within a sense-group which is the smallest unit of sense in speech. In terms of its structure and function the melodic contour of a sense-group includes:

a nuclear tone – is a tone which is used within the nucleus of the utterance, that’s the highlightened part carrying maximum informational load
a scale- is the part from the fast-stressed syllable to the fast unstressed before the tone
a head – the first stressed syllable
a pre-head – the unstressed syllable before the head

The contour has two vertical parameters:

range (диапазон) – the interval between the highest and the lowest pitch in the sense-group (narrow, wide)
register – is height of pitch range (high, middle, low)

According to the British school: The melodic from of a sense group is a contour having both vertical and horizontal components each of which performs its specific function.

2). Pitch approach. According to the American phonetic school the melodic structure of a sense-group is analyzed in terms of pitches or pitch levels.

Pitch levels are distinctively relevant and are called pitch phonemes. Meaning is ascribed to a sequence of pitches such a sequence is called an intonation contour.

They distinguish 4 pitch levels:

Mid level (2) – quiet, unemotional
Low (1)
High (3)
Extra high (4) – strong emotions

An utterance must have the first 3 pitch levels. Inside each pitch bond here can be slight melodic ups and downs, which are considered semantically irrelevant. (I’m going home)
The two schools are hardly as incompatible (несовместимы) as it may seem on the face of it. The contour theory cannot ignore the significance of pitches (Low Fall, High Fall). On the other hand in American intonation pitch levels make up linear contours (уровни выстраиваются в линейный контур).

Northern Ireland English.

Naturally the pronunciation of these areas (Southern Ireland, Northern Ireland) retains features of western parts of England. But Northern Ireland is heavy Scots-influenced (as large numbers of settlers came there from the southwest of Scotland from the 17^th century.

Vowels:

- the vowel system is similar to that of the Scottish accent: post-vocalic retroflex frictionless sonorant /r/ being used as in Scotland.

in words like “bay, say” the vowel is monophthong /e/, preconsonantly it may be the diphthong of the type /eэ – iэ/ “gate”
/i/, /u/ are fairy central (pool /pul/, meet /mi:t/, meat /mi:t/, fur /fir/, bird /bird/)
/o:/ and /o/ contrast only before /p,t,k/ (nose /noz/, pour /por/, pole /pol/)
/ai/, /au/ are very variable, there isno /ei/ (tide, bout /baut/)
realization of /a:/ may vary considerably (hat /hat/, danse /dans/)

Consonants:

/l/ is mainly clear
intervocalic /t/ is often a voiced flap /d/ (city /`sidi/)
between vowels // may be lost (mother /`mo:Эr/
/h/ is present

Билет № 3

Rhythm – is understood as discipline of periodicity in time and space. We find rhythm everywhere (succession of seasons, breathing, walking). Speech production is closely connected with breathing and breathing is rhythmical. Any type of speech activity is characterized by rhythm because it is connected with breathing.

According to the most general definition of rhythm there must be in speech a similar unit (event), which is repeated casually at equal periods of time. It’s not the same in different languages. Two types of languages can be singled out in this respect.

languages with syllable-timed rhythm (слогочитающий ритм) – any syllable both stressed or unstressed is repeated in equal period of time (French, Spanish, Italian, Hungarian, Hindi)
languages with stressed-timed rhythm (такто-считающий ритм) – only stressed syllables are pronounced at equal periods of time (German, Russian, English, Arabic, Modern Greek)

English has stressed-timed rhythm. It implies that it has stressed syllables tend to occur at relatively equal period of time and it does not matter whether they are separated by unstressed syllable or not. The stress-timed theory says that the time period from each stressed syllable to the next one tends to be the same irrespective of the number of syllables that separate. We can define English speech rhythm as a regular recurrence of stressed syllables. This is traditional approach to rhythm which is most typical for the British phonetic school.