Topics for discussions:

1. What are the main stages of speech production? How can you describe the “relations” between the speaker and the listener?

2. What function does the respiratory mechanism fulfill? What are the main groups of organs of speech? What additional modifications are caused by their work?

3. What do we call “segmental” phonetics and “suprasegmental” phonetics? When does our speech become “alive”? Give your examples.

Lecture III. Phonemes and speech sounds.

Key words:

1. acoustic effect [q'kHstIk I'fekt] - акус- тический (звуковой) эффект 2. to utter ['Atq] - произнести 3. substitute['sAbstItjHt]– заменять, за- мещать 4. distinguish [dIs'tINgwIS]– различать, распознавать 5. characteristic features["kxrqktq'rIstIk 'fJCqz]– характерные черты, особенности 6. determine [dI'tWmIn] – определять, устанавливать 7. devoice [dI'vOIs] – оглушать (соглас- ные звуки)

8. predictable [prI'dIktqbl] – предсказуе- мый 9. invariant [In'veqrIqnt] – инвариант, неизменяемый 10. concise[kqn'saIs]– 1) краткий, сжа- тый; 2) четкий, выра- зительный 11. subsidiary[sqb'sIdIqrI]– вспомога- тельный, дополнитльный, второстепенный 12. simultaneously["sIml'teInIqslI]- од- новременно 13. obstacle['Pbstqkl]– препятствие, помеха.

I. Speech sounds: phones, phonemes allophones.

II. Functions of phonemes.

III. The place of allophones in the sound system.

I. Speech sounds: phones, phonemes allophones.

Phonetics is the study of speech sounds and their acoustic effect. Phonetics has nothing to do with the sounds produced by animals. It only deals with the sounds produced by human beings. Moreover not all sounds uttered by human beings are speech sounds. For example, a whistle stopping a horse or clipping the tongue.

Thus we can say that we are dealing with the system of the sounds that are used in speech. This causes another question, sometimes the sounds we make can not be recognized as speech sounds but nevertheless they substitute our speech.

For example, - Have you done your home tasks? - Угу.

A speech sound is an element of a speech sequence which is formed with the help of our speech apparatus. Speech sounds can be distinguished within a sequence. A sound becomes a speech sound if it has a certain set of basic characteristic features that make the sounds identifiable and recognizable in a speech flow, despite various changes a sound can undergo under the influence of its neighbours. Environment influences it and it is included in its definition (tone, emotions...). Sound taken isolated is not a system. We have to know its system, environment, and context. We would hardly be able to consider it because we would know next to nothing about is interrelations with its neighbours.

For example, Georgian “R” - is front in its system (a nephew can’t be without an uncle or an aunt).

A sound can be perceived only when any element features are being seen against the background of the neighbouring features. We can roughly define the system as the same total or set of units or elements where quality of each element is defined and shaped by the qualities and characteristics of the other units and elements. Unlike any other sounds speech sounds, if not taken separately, can form meaningful combinations like morphemes, roots, words, endings...

For example, to whistle (surprise, danger). Tone depends upon a situation.

Let’s compare such notions as phoneme, segment and a speech sounds. They all contribute to the producing sounds.

When we talk about the sounds of a language, the term “sound” can be interpreted in two different ways. In the first place, we can say

For example, that [t] and [d] are two different sounds in English, [t] being fortis and [d] being lenis and we can show how they contrast in different pairs: tie-die, seat-seed, etc.

For example, table – an ideal image. t has all its characteristics: forelingual, apical-

alveolar, occlusive, plosive, devoiced.

little – it’s an allophone of t. Lateral plosion.

At that – t becomes dental.

In the second example the sounds differ in one articulatory feature only. To avoid ambiguity, the linguists use two separate terms: “phoneme” is used to mean “sound” in its contrastive sense, and “allophone” is used for sounds which are variants of a phoneme: they usually occur in different positions in the word.

Phoneme – is an idea. It has some characteristics which manifest themselves in a context. The definitions of the phoneme vary greatly. The materialistic view of it was originated by the Soviet linguist L.V.Shcherba. According to his view the phoneme may be viewed as a functional, material and abstract unit. V.A. Vassilyev looks upon the phoneme as “… a dialectal unity of these aspects because they determine one another and are thus interdependent” (Vassilyev V.A. English Phonetics: A Theoretical course. – M., 1970, p.141). He defines the phoneme like this: “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 of the same language or one grammatical form of the same word.(#, p.136). This definition is to long and complicated for practical use. The concise form of it could be: “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.”