- •1) Phonetics as a science:
- •2)Experimental phonetics: Methods of investigation (The direct observation method; The experimental method; The distributional method; The semantic method).
- •3)The aspects of speech sounds.
- •4)Physical properties of sounds.
- •5)The organs of speech and their functions: Active and passive organs of speech; The articulatory mechanism and its work.
- •6)Articulatory and physiological classification of English vowels in the works of Soviet, British and American phoneticians.
- •7)Articulatory and physiological classification of English consonants in the works of Soviet, British and American phoneticians.
- •8)Segmental and suprasegmental phonemes: The definition of the phoneme; The aspects of the phoneme; The functions of the phoneme.
- •9) Phonemes and Allophones: The principal allophone; The subsidiary allophones (types); Distinctive and non-distinctive features of phonemes; The invariant of the phoneme.
- •10)Connected speech: Lexical and function words; Strong and weak forms; Neutralization; Assimilation (types); Dissimilation; Accommodation; Elision; Intrusion; Linking (Fillers).
- •11)Syllable: Definition; Parts of syllable; Types and functions of syllables; The structure of the syllable.
- •12)The principal theories of syllable formation and syllable division.
- •13)The accentual structure of English words: Word stress (its types and functions); Sentence stress; Degrees of word stress; The factors that determine the degree and the place of stress.
- •15) Transcription and transliteration. Types of transcription.
- •16)Phonostylistics: The components of extralinguistic situation; The factors which result in phonostylistic varieties.
- •17)Intonation: Definition; The components of intonation and their functions.
- •18)The methods for recording intonation patterns in writing and advantages and disadvantages of these methods.
- •19)The most important nuclear tones in English. Simple and complex tones. High and low falling tones. The types of scales in English.
- •20) The most important elements in the pitch-and-stress pattern of an intonation group (An intonation pattern; The characteristics of an intonation group).
- •21)The pitch and sentence stress components of intonation and their graphical representation on the staves or in the line of text itself.
- •22) Territorial Varieties of English pronunciation. The orthoepic norm. The national language of England. Literary English. Rp and ga.
- •23)Spread of English.
- •24)English-based pronunciation standards of English.
- •25)American - based pronunciation standards of English.
6)Articulatory and physiological classification of English vowels in the works of Soviet, British and American phoneticians.
The first linguist who tried to classify vowel sounds for all languages was D.Jones. He devised the system of 8 cardinal vowels. The basis of the system is physiological.
Cardinal vowel #1 corresponds to the position of the front part of the tongue razed the gradual lowering of the tongue lowest position gives another point for cardinal point #5. The lowest front position of the tongue gives the point for cardinal #4. The upper back limit for the tongue position gives the point for cardinal #8. This position for cardinal vowels #1, 4, 5, 8 were copied from x-ray photographs the tongue positions between this points x-ray and equidistant points for #2, 3, 6, 7 were found. The symbols for the eight cardinal vowels are: 1 -i, 2 - e, 3 - ε, 4 - a, 5 - ^, 6 - o, 7 – o:, 8 - u .
Acoustically vowels differ due to their tembral coloring, each vowel is characterized by its own formants. Russian phoneticians suggest a classification of vowels according to the following principals: 1) position of the lips; 2) position of the tongue; 3) degree of tenseness and the character of the end; 4) length; 5) stability of articulation.1. rounded u-u:; o-o: and unrounded; 2. Horizontal movements of the tongue: back vowels – when the bulk of the t moves backwards, the back part of the t is raised towards the soft palate: fully back (o-o:,u:, oi), back advanced (u, a: ); front vowels- when the bulk of the t moves forward, the front part of the t is raised towards the hard palate: fully front ( i:, e, ei), front- retracted ( I, au, ai), central (^). Vertical movements of the t: high: narrow variation (i:, u: )/ broad v (I,u); mid: n/b; low: n/b. 3. Long vowels – tense (when the muscle of the lips, tongue, cheeks, back walls of pharynx are tense) i: u: D. Jones. Short vowels – lax (when the organs are relatively relaxed). Acc to the character of the end: checked (occur in stressed syllables ending in a fortis voiceless cons /bet/ /ka:t/; unchecked – occur terminally/ are followed by a lenis voiced cons /a:/ in /ka:d/. 4. Long and short. Length may depend on the number of factors: position of a vowel in the word (tie-tied-tight); word stress- vowel is longer in stressed syllable than in unstressed (fOrecast-N, forecAst- V-shorter); the number of syllables in the word- in polysyllabic words vowels are shorter (verse-universe); the change of the syllabic structure- in words with open type of syll the vowels are longer than in words with closed type of syll; sonority- vowel of low sonority are longer than vowel of greater sonority (/I/ is longer than /o/, /i:/ is longer than /a:/); the tempo of speech- the higher the rate of sp, the shorter the vowels.5. Not singled out by Br and Am phoneticians. Monophthongs (simple vowels)- pure unchanging vowel sound, organs of sp don’t change the position. Diphthongs (complex vowels) – complex sound, which consists of 2 elements and the are pronounced to form a single syllable. The organs of sp start in the position of the 1st vowel and they glide to the position of the 2nd vowel.