Lecture 2. Phonostylistics

1. Problems of phonostylistics.

2. Classification of phonetic styles.

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Phonetics studies the way phonetic means are used in this or that particular situation which exercises the conditioning influence of a set of factors, which are referred to as extralinguistic. The aim of phonetics is to analyze all possible kinds of spoken utterances with the main purpose of identifying the phonetic features, both segmental and suprasegmental, which are restricted to certain kinds of contexts, to explain why such features have been used and to classify them into categories, based upon a view of their function.

Style-forming and style-modifying factors:

Style forming factor is the aim or purpose of the utterance. The aim is the strategy of the speaker.

1. the form of communication (monologue or dialogue);

2. the speaker’s attitude to the situation (emotions, thoughts, etc);

3. the degree of formality ( formal – informal);

4. the degree of spontaneity or of preparedness, the speaker’s educational background played a great role.

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Styles of speech according to the purpose of communication.

1. Informational

2. academic (scientific)

3. publicistic (oratorical)

4. declamatory(artistic)

5. colloquial (familiar)

1. Using the informational style the speaker ought to be careful not to distract the listener by what he is saying (TV-announcers). Written representation of oral and prepared speech.

2. Scientific style is used in lectures or science subjects or when reading out loud a piece of scientific prose. The purpose is to attract the listener’s attention to what is the most important in the lecture.

3. Publicistic style is used by politicians, the purpose is to except the influence of the listener to convince him of something, and make him accept the speaker’s point of view.

4. It is used in reading poetry, prose aloud, in stage speech to appeal to the feelings of the listener.

5. Conversational formulae familiar of everyday communication are used in speech of friends within similar groups. It can have a wide range of intonation patterns.

Questions:

1. What are basic problems of phonostylistics?

2. How can you characterize oral speech?

3. Name the factors which result in phonostylistic varieties.

4. Give the list of the phonetic styles. Characterize them.

5. What are the style forming factors?

Lecture 3. Phoneme

1. The phoneme theory.

2. The conception of the phoneme in this country and abroad.

3. The material aspect of the phoneme.

4. The abstract aspect of the phoneme.

5. The functional aspect of the phoneme.

6. Pronunciation errors in relation to meaning.

7. Semantic and distributional methods.

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The definitions of the phoneme vary greatly.

L.V. Shcherba: the phoneme may be viewed as a functional, material and abstract unit.

V.A.Vassilyev: The phoneme is a smallest unit capable of distinguishing one word from another word, one grammatical form of word from another.

B. Bloch: phoneme is a class of phonemically similar sounds contrasting and mutually exclusive with all similar classes in the language.

R. Jacobson: phoneme is a minimal sound by which meaning may be discriminated.

Views of the phoneme seem to fall into 4 main classes:

1. the “mentalistic” or “psychological” view regards the phoneme as an ideal “mental image” or a target at which the speaker aims.

2. The so-called “functional” view regards the phoneme as the minimal sound unit by which meanings may be differentiated without much regard to actually pronounced speech sounds.

3. A stronger form of the “functional” approach is the so-called “abstract” view of the phoneme, which regards phonemes as essentially independent of the acoustic and physiological properties associated with them, that is of speech sounds.

4. The “physical” view regards the phoneme as a “family” of related sounds satisfying certain conditions, notably:

1. the various members of the “family” must show phonetic similarity to one another, in other words, be related in character;

2. no member of the “family” may occur in the same phonetic context as any other.

Nowadays the phoneme is characterized from the point of view of its three aspects (functional, material, abstract): the phoneme is a minimal abstract linguistic unit realized in speech in the form of speech sounds, opposable to other phonemes of the same language to distinguish the meaning of morphemes and words.

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The Russian linguist, I.A. Baudauin de Courtenay, was the first to use the term “phoneme”. Later “Shcherba – Courtenay” approach appeared. It considered phoneme as a psychic equivalent of a sound.

L.V. Shcherba, the Russian scholar (St.-Petersburg school), was the first to introduce the material aspect. He stated that phoneme is a sound that we can hear.

The abstract aspect was supported by the scholars of the Prague school. The best representative of that school is N. Trubetskoy. He is the linguist who wrote the book “The Basics of Phonology”. He was the first to develop the system of oppositions. He was the first who divorced phonetics from phonology.

F. de Saussure gave many definitions of the phoneme and the main of it is: «Фонема не есть нечто звучащее, но нечто бестелесное, образуемое не своей материальной субстанцией, а исключительно теми различиями, которые отделяют ее образ от других». He supported the points of view of N. Trubetskoy.

L. Bloomfield (American scientist) considers phoneme to be a bundle of distinctive features.

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The material aspect of the phoneme is reflected in the definition that the phoneme is the minimal abstract unit realized in speech in a form of speech sounds. It exists in speech of all people who belong to a given language community in a form of speech sounds, but as it occurs in different positions in the word (e.g. in different environments), the phonemes may slightly differ.

Compare the sound [t] in the phrase “let us” and “let them”, they are not the same. The [t] of “let us” is alveolar while the [t] in “let them” is dental. They are the variants of the phoneme [t] and are called “allophones”. Allophones of the same phoneme need the following requirements:

1. though they possess some similar features they may show difference.

2. They never occur in the same phonetic context.

The allophone which is heard in isolation or stands in the position where it is not the subject (in such words as door, dark, etc.) and doesn’t undergo any distinguishable changes in the chain of speech is called “principal”. The allophones which are influenced by the neighbouring sounds and change the articulation are called “subsidiary”.

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The native speaker is aware of the phonemes of his language but much less aware of the allophones: he will not hear the difference between two allophones like the alveolar and dental consonants [d] in the words “wide” and “width”. The reason is that the phonemes have an important function in the language: they differentiate words like “tie” and “die” from each other. Allophones on the other hand have no such function, they usually occur in different positions in the word and hence, cannot be opposed to each other to make meaningful distinctions. Hence, the allophones of the phoneme do not obstruct the listener and the speaker to understand each other.

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In linguistics function is generally understood as the role of the various elements of the language in distinguishing the meaning. The function of the phonemes is to distinguish the meaning of morphemes and words. The native speaker doesn’t notice the difference between the allophones of the same phoneme because this difference does not distinguish meanings.

But at the same time they realize, that allophones of each phoneme possess a bundle of distinctive features that makes the phoneme functionally different from all other phonemes of the language concerned. This functionally relevant bundle of articulatory features is called the invariant of the phoneme. None of the articulatory features that form the invariant of the phoneme can be changed without affecting the meaning. All the allophones of the phoneme [d] are occlusive, forelingual, lenis (if occlusive articulation is changed for constrictive one, [d] will be replaced by [z] – e.g. breed – breeze; [d] will be replaced by [g] if the forelingual articulation is replaced by the backlingual one: dear – gear; the lenis articulation of [d] cannot be substituted by the fortis one without changing the meaning: dry – try). The articulatory features which form the invariant of the phoneme are called distinctive or relevant. To extract relevant features of the phoneme we should oppose it to some other phoneme in the same phonetic context. If the opposed sounds differ in one articulatory feature and this difference brings about changes in the meaning of the words the contrasting features are called relevant (e.g. port – court, both sounds are occlusive and fortis, the only difference is that [p] is labial and [k] is backlingual. So it is possible to say that labial and backlingual articulations are relevant in the system of English consonants. The articulatory features which do not serve to distinguish meaning are called non-distinctive, irrelevant or redundant; for instance, it is impossible in English to oppose an aspirated [p’] to a non-aspirated one in the same phonetic context to distinguish meanings. That is why aspiration is a non-distinctive feature of English consonants.

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Any changes in the invariant of the phoneme affect the meaning. Of course all students make mistakes in the articulation of particular sounds. According to L.V. Shcherba the pronunciation errors may be:

1. phonological

2. phonetic

1. If an allophone of some phoneme is replaced by an allophone of a different phoneme the mistake is called phonological, because the meaning of the word is affected. It happens when one or more relevant features of the phoneme are not realized (e.g. [i:] in “beat” becomes more open, more advanced and is no longer diphthongized, it changes into [i] in “bit”).

2. If an allophone of the phoneme is replaced by another allophone of the same phoneme the mistake is called phonetic. It happens when the invariant of the phoneme is not modified and the meaning of the word is not affected (e.g. if the aspirated [p’] in “part” is replaced by non-aspirated one, the meaning doesn’t change.

It is better not to make any of these mistakes because in that case the degree of foreign accent will be an obstacle to the listener’s perception.

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There are 2 ways of analyzing speech sounds:

1. articulatory

2. phonological

The aim of the phonological analysis of language is the identification of the phonemes and finding out the patterns of relationship into which they fall as the sound system of that language.

For the articulatory description we need the information of what sort of narrowing is formed by the tip of the tongue and the alveolar ridge, what is the shape of the tongue when the obstruction is made, etc. So if the speech sounds are studied from the articulatory point of view it is the differences and similarities of the production that are in the focus of attention, whereas phonological approach suggests studying the sound system which is actually a set of relationships and oppositions which have functional value.

So, the aim of phonological analysis is:

1. to determine which differences of sounds are phonemic and which are non-phonemic;

2. to find the inventory of the phonemes of this or that language.

Phonemic opposability depends on the way the phonemes are distributed in their occurrence. That means that in any language certain sounds don’t occur in a certain position: [h] never occurs in a word finally, [ŋ] – initially.

The 2 sets of phonetic context are complementing each other and the 2 sounds are classed as allophones of the same phoneme. They are said to be in complementary distribution.

We should remember that the allophones of the same phoneme possess similar articulatory features, they may frequently show considerable phonetic differences.

There are 2 mainly used methods of phonological analysis: the distributional and the semantic method. The distributional method is used by “structuralists”. They group all the sounds pronounced by native speakers into phonemes according to the 2 laws of phonemic and allophonic distribution:

1. Allophones of different phonemes occur in the same phonetic context.

2. Allophones of the same phoneme never occur in the same phonetic context.

Thus two conclusions follow:

1. If more or less different sounds occur in the same phonetic context they should be allophones of different phonemes. Their distribution is contrastive.

2. If more or less similar speech sounds occur in different positions and never occur in the same phonetic context they are allophones of one and the same phoneme. Their distribution is complementary.

There are also free variants of a single phoneme (e.g. шкаф – шкап in Russian). We could explain the difference on the basis of “dialect” or on the basis of sociolinguistics. It could be that one variant is a “prestige” form that the speaker uses when he is constantly “monitoring” what he says while the other variant of pronunciation is found in casual or less formal speech. If all explanations fail then we have truly free variants.

Another method of the phonological analysis, widely used in Soviet linguistics, is the semantic method. It is based on a phonemic rule, that phonemes can distinguish words and morphemes when opposed to one another. The semantic method attracts great significance to meaning. It consists of the systematic substitution of the sound for another in order to ascertain in which cases where the phonetic context remains the same such substitution leads to a change of meaning. This process is called the communication test. It consists in finding minimal pairs of words and their grammatical form. By a minimal pair we mean a pair of words or morphemes which are differentiated by only one phoneme in the same position (e.g. [p] –in [pin], [b] – in [bin], [s] – in [sin] – allophones of different phonemes; [p’] – [p’in] – wrong pronunciation but an allophone of the same phoneme).

The phonemes of a language form a system of oppositions in which any phoneme is usually opposed to other phonemes in at least one position, in at least one minimal pair. All the sounds should be opposed in word-initial, word-medial, and word-final positions.

There are three kinds of oppositions:

1) single, if members of the opposition differ in one feature (e.g. pen – ben. Common features: occlusive – occlusive, labial – labial. Differentiating features: fortis – lenis.

2) double, if 2 distinctive features are marked

(e.g pen – den. Common: occlusive – occlusive,

Dif.: labial – lingual, fortis voiceless – lenis voiced).

3) triple, if three distinctive features are marked

(e.g. pen – then. Dif.: occlusive – contrastive, labial – dental, fortis voiceless – lenis voiced).

The features of the phoneme that are capable of differentiating the meaning are termed relevant or distinctive. The features that do not take part are irrelevant, or non-distinctive. The latter may be of two kinds:

1. incidental or redundant (aspiration of voiceless plosives, presence of voice in voiced consonants, length of vowels),

2. indispensable or concomitant (tenseness of English long monophthongs, the checked character of stressed short vowels, lip rounding of back vowels).

A single opposition remains single if its members differ from each other not only in a distinctive feature alone, but also in distinctively irrelevant features.

The phonological analysis of the sounds of a language is based on one more notion, that is of native speaker’s knowledge. We should take into account the native speaker’s feelings about his language as far as this is possible.

Questions:

1. Define the notion “phoneme”.

2. Is there any difference between a sound and a phoneme?

3. Give characteristics of allophones of one phoneme, of different phonemes.

4. What are the main distinctive features of two phonological methods?