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13. Contemporary English pronunciation: geographical, social and stylistic variation.

Nowadays Phonetics is defined as an independent branch of Linguistics which studies the sound matter of the language, its semantic functions and the lines of its development. Phonetics began to be developed as a science in the 19th century.

The English language is the mothertongue of several countries, such as – GB, the USA, Australia and New Zeland. The English language is also used by greater part of the population of ‘Canada and the Republic of South Africa. The variants of the English language spoken in this countries have very much in common, but the differ from Standard English in pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar. The variants of a national language should not be confused with its regional types. In the British Isles the regional types of the English language are the following:

1) The Southern English (is known as Received English Pronunciation or orthoepic norm – is the standard pronunciation, adopted by native speakers as the right and proper way of speaking. It is used by the most educated part of the population, at the leading position in the Cabinet, the armed forces, the judiciary, BBC English, taught to foreigns)

2) The Northern English ( one of the main differeneces between Southern and Northern – the absence or present of particular phonemes, Northern English represents the earlier type of London English that was the standard in early 18^th century. This type were carried to America that is why there are many features in common between American and Nothern English accent)

3) The Standard Scottish.( there are also some Irish dialects in Nothern Ireland)-importanr differences: rolled R, (born), the sound L is dark in all positions, non-existed in RP back-lingual phoneme similar to the Russian Х, (Koxt, HwitS).

Dialects of GB may be grouped in the followin way:

1) Southern dialects( Greater London, Cockney, Kent, Essex…)

2) Eastern dialects

3) Northern d

4) Scottish d

5) Western d

6) Dialects of Ireland

Cockney – is a social accent, the speech of the working class areas of the Greater London. Peculiarities – blood –через звук ЭЙ блейд, lady – через АЙ лайди; the sound H id often abscent: horse чит. как ОЗ, to have как ЭВ; the suffix – ing they use sound N; Initial sounds P, T, K are strongly aspirated (top).

In the USA the regional types of the American variant of the English language are the following:

1) The Eastern type( is spoken in Boston, Eastern New England and in NY. One of the difference between Eastern and RP – is the use of more advanced allophone of the sound a: than in RP. This vowel sound a: intermediate beween Э and a:, similar to the nucleas of the dipthong АЙ.

2) The Southern type(самый сложный) –Вирджиния, Техасб Флорида Луизиана). It posses a striking feature: vowel drawl( растянутость) – diphthongiazation of some pure vowels and monophthogazation of some diphtongs by prolonging the nucleus and dropping the glides.( that pronounced зИЕт, this – зИЕс, fine – фАан, high – хаа)

3) The General American type (also known as Western American) – is known as The Standard pronunciation of the USA. It is the form of speech used by the radio and TV, used in cultural, business and scientific intercourse. Spoken in the central Atlantic states – Огайо. It is the most widespread type of pronunciation. Peculiarities:

1) there is no division into long and short vowels

2) The number of diphthongs varies

3) Usually vowels and dipthongs have sound R between a vowel and a consonant (bird, force, star)

4) Naselization, when vowels are preceded or followed by a nasal consonant ( small, name)- this phenomena is also called an American twang

5) The sound L in all position is always dark(strong)

6) Intervocals sound T is usually voiced and it is often dropped (tweny)

7) The cluster of consonants WH pronounced like HW

8) The sonorant J is usually weekend or omitted between consonants (stupid – чит. стУпид)

9)The pronunciation of many words and their stress may be different (vase – вЕЙз, tomato –томейто, Asia – эйдж, balet – белЕй, wEekend

10) in intonation they use Medium level head instead of the descending steping head; midrising tone instead of the lowrising tone in general questions)

It is accepted that in British Isles and in the former British colonies the teaching norm is Received Pronunciation(RP). It is also called Standard English Pronunciation. RP is the teaching norm at schools and higher learning establishments in a great number of countries all over the world.

In the USA and Latin America the teaching norm is General American Pronunciation(GA).

Any national language has 2 material forms:

-written- the literary language

-spoken- the speech of the nation

The written form of a national language is usually a generally accepted standard and is the same throughout the country. But spoken language may vary from locality to locality. Such distinct form of a language are called dialects. These dialects may differ from others in following aspects:

1) in grammar

2) in vocabulary

3) in pronunciation

The inventory of the phonemes may be slightly differs. They may have phonemes not found in other dialects.

Thanks to economic, political and social factors one of the local dialects becomes the literary language of the country. And the pronunciation of other dialects begin to be regarded as uncultured, illiterated, substandard. But within the standard pronunciation of a language, there may be variants considered equally correct. A variant of standard pronunciation is used by educated native speakers, because it is this type of pronunciation, which they learn mainly at schools and colleges.

In Australia there is no geographical variations in pronunciation. But a great deal of variations can be classified according to the social criteria. They distinguish 3 groups of accents:

1) cultivated Australian (Used about by 10% of population – has considerable influence from RP)- самый культ)

2) broad Australian ( вульгарн) is used by about 30% of the speakers ( Australian twang)

3) General Australian- is spoken by the mainstream of educated Australian speakers and is treated as Australian Pronunciation Standard.

13. Word accent: its nature, types and functions.

Word-stress (accent) is a greater degree of a special prominent given to one or more syllables in the word in order to single them out among the other syllables of the same word.

Accentology – is a branch of linguistics which studies the nature and functions of the word-stress.

Word accent may be:

- constant

- shifting

Constant accent – is one which falls on the same morpheme in different words or grammatical forms of a word( wonder, wonderful, wonderfully)

A shifting accent – falls on different words or grammatical forms of a word. (Active – actIvity, садок-садівник)

In 25% of the languages word-accent falls on the initial syllable. In 20% of the languages it falls on the final syllable. In 18% of the languages it falls on the 2^nd syllable from the end of the word. In 33% percent of the languages word-stress is free.

Different types of word-accent are distinguished according to its degrees:

• the strongest stress is called primary stress

• the second strongest – secondary stress

• while all the other degrees of stress are grouped together under the term of weak stress

There are 4 phonetic components of stress. According to the prevailing component they identify the phonetic type of word-accent:

1. Loudness (force of articulation) – the affect of prominents is achieved by greater muscular energy. This type of accent is called dynamic;

2. Pitch – word-stress achieved by means of uttering(произнош-я) the stressed syllable on a different pitch level. This type of stress is called musical or tonic;

3. Length (кол-во звука) – word accent affected by means of lengthening the vowel of stressed syllable, it is called quantitative.

4. The vowel colour ( кач-во звука) word-accent achieved by preserving(сохр-я) the quality of the vowel phoneme in the accented syllable, is called qualitative.

13. Intonation: components and functions.

Intonation is treated as a complex unity of several components such as: speech melody, utterance stress, timbre of voice, tempo of speech, temporal characteristics and rhythm.

Speech melody is perceived as the variations in the direction of pitch, pitch level and pitch rainge.

The rhythm is based on the contrast of stressed and unstressed syllables. Rhythmic beat (такт) in English is the stressed syllable. The stressed syllables will field to occur at roughly equal intervals of time. The more organized the speech is, the more rhythmical it will be.

The term tempo implies the rate of the utterance and position. Tempo of speech may be normal (unmarked) or rapid, or slow (marked for attitude).

By pause the phoniticians mean a complete stop of phonation. Pauses may be short or long; fuctionally may distinguish syntactic, emphatic, hesitation. Hesitation pauses may be: - filled, - silent.

Speech timbre or voice quality conveys certain shades of attitudinal or emotional meaning.

The functions of intonation:

1. Intonation enables us to express emotions and attitudes as we speak and this adds a special kind of meaning to spoken language. This is called attitudinal function of intonation;

2. Int. has to produce the effect of prominence on syllables that need to be perceived as stressed. It is called the accentual intonation.

3. The listener is better able to recognize the grammar and syntactic structure of what is being said by using the information contained in the intonation- such things as: the placement of boundaries between phrases, the difference between questions and statements, the use of grammatical subordination may be indicated. This has been called the grammatical function of intonation.

4. Int. can signal to the listener what is to be taken as “new information” and what is already “given”, can suggest when the speaker is indicating some thoughts of contrast or link with the material in another tone unit. And in conversation can convey to the listener what kind of responds is expected. These are example of intonation’s discourse function.