Книга фонетика

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articulated. For the most part, transcriptions in this book are phonological: they show the phonemes, and use slant brackets. However, when the articulatory detail should be presented, for example certain regional variations, the sounds appear in square brackets.

Phonetic transcription is a system for transcribing sounds that occur in spoken language. The most widely known system of phonetic transcription, the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), uses a one-to-one mapping between phones and written symbols.

It is also important for a language learner to pay special attention to the word stress. In Ukrainian there are only two degrees of word stress, stressed and unstressed syllables, while in English there is primary and secondary stress in most polysyllabic words. That is why Ukrainian learners of English must be particularly careful not to omit secondary stress in English words since the interference of Ukrainian pronunciation habits is very strong in this case, cf:

ˌorgani'zation – організація, ˌdemon'stration – демонстрація, ˌnationali'zation –

націоналізація. There are several large groups of words in English with two equally strong stresses. These words consist of two morphemes. The use of the second strong stress is caused by the semantic significance of both equally stressed elements of the word, eg. 're'write, 'four'teen. Therefore it is vital to check which syllable is strongly stressed in a good dictionary e.g. Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary). The pronunciation of the word is shown in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), with the symbol at the top in front of the main strong stress of the word and at the bottom in front of the secondary stress

e.g. / ɪˌlekˈtrɪsǝtɪ /. NOTE: the stress is marked strictly vertically before the stressed syllable.

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LECTURE 2. THE PRODUCTION OF SPEECH SOUNDS

ARTICULATORS ABOVE THE LARYNX

All the sounds we make when we speak are the result of muscles contracting. The muscles in the chest that we use for breathing produce the flow of air that is needed for almost all speech sounds; muscles in the larynx produce many different modifications in the flow of air from the chest to the mouth. After passing through the larynx, the air goes through what we call the vocal tract, which ends at the mouth and nostrils. Here the air from the lungs escapes into atmosphere. We have a large and complex set of muscles that can produce changes in the shape of the vocal tract, and in order to learn how the sounds of speech are produced it is necessary to become familiar with the different parts of the vocal tract. These different parts are called articulators, and the study of them is called articulatory phonetics. Fig. 1 is a diagram that is used frequently in the study of phonetics. You will need to look at it carefully as the articulators are described, and you will often find it useful to have a mirror and a good light placed so that you can look at the inside of your mouth.

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The pharynx is a tube which begins just above the larynx. Its top end it is devided into two, one part being the back of the mouth and the other being the beginning of the way through the nasal cavity. If you look in your mirror with your mouth open, you can see the back of the pharynx.

The velum of soft palate is seen in the diagram in a position that allows air to pass through the nose and through the mouth. Yours is probably in that position now, but often in speech it is raised so that air can not escape through the nose. The other important thing about the velum is that it is one of the articulators that can be touched by the tongue. When we make the sounds / k / and / g / the tongue is in contract with the lower side of the velum, and we call these velar consonants.

The hard palate is often called the “roof of the mouth”. You can feel its smooth curved surface with your tongue.

The alveolar ridge is between the top front teeth and the hard palate. You can feel its shape with your tongue. Its surface is realy much rougher than it feels, and is covered with little ridges. You can only see these if you have a mirror small enough to go inside your mouth (such as those used by dentists). Sounds made with the tongue touching here (such as / t / and / d /) are called alveolar.

The tongue is, of course, a very important articulator and it can be moved into many different places and different shapes. It is usual to divide the tongue into different parts, though there are no clear dividing lines within the tongue. Fig. 2 shows the tongue on a larger scale with these parts shown: tip, blade, front, back and root.

The teeth (upper and lower) are usually shown in diagrams like Fig. 1 only at he front of the mouth, immediately behind the lips. This is for the sake of a simple diagram, and you should remember that most speakers have teeth to the sides of their mouth, back almost to the soft palate. The tongue is in contact with the upper side teeth for many speech sounds. Sounds made with the tongue touching the front teeth are called dental.

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The lips are important in speech. They can be pressed together (when we produce the sounds / p /, / b /), brought into contact with the teeth (as in / f /, / v /), or rounded to produce the lip-shape for vowels like / u: /. Sounds in which the lips are in contact with each other are called bilabial, while those with lip-to-teeth contact are called labiodental.

The seven articulators described above are the main ones used in speech, but there are three other things to remember. Firstly, the larynx could also be described as an articulator – a very complex and independent one. Secondly, the jaws are sometimes called articulators; certainly we move the lawer jaw a lot in speaking. But the jaws are not articulators in the same way as the others, because they can not themselves make contact with other articulators. Finally, although there is practically nothing that can do with the nose and the nasal cavity, they are a very important part of our equipment for making sounds, particularly nasal consonants such as / m /, / n /.

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ARTICULATION BASIS OF ENGLISH

The summary of all main principles of articulation in a certain language is called –

Articulation Basis.

1.The tongue in English is more tense and bulky and has a retracted position for most of the phonemes.

2.The lips are also more tense and less movable. They are mostly spread (with the lower teeth revealed) or neutral (flat articulation).

3.Fore lingual English consonants (12) have an apical articulation. They are articulated with the tongue tip against the alveolar, as in / t, d, s, z, ʃ, ʒ, tʃ, dʒ, ŋ, l / or / θ, ð /.

4.All English consonants are hard (except for / ʃ, ʒ /) and have no palatalized oppositions.

5.The English word final voiced consonants must not be devoiced, yet they are weak / beg, sæd /. The English word final voiceless consonants are strong

/ naɪt /, / wi:k /.

6.The English plosive voiceless / p, t, k / are pronounced with aspiration.

7.The English sonorants / m, n, l / are tenser and longer than the corresponding Russian ones. They are syllabic when post-tonic and preceded by a consonant / prɪzn /, / teɪbl /.

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LECTURE 3. VOWEL SYSTEM OF ENGLISH

All vowels (20) have certain properties in common, which distinguish them

from consonants.

From a phonetic point of view, vowels are articulated with a relatively open configuration of the vocal tract: no part of the mouth is closed, and none of the vocal organs come so close together that we can hear the sound of the air passing between them. Consonants have a very different method of articulation.

From a phonological point of view, vowels are units of the sound system which typically occupy the middle of a syllable (the nucleus).

Vowels typically involve the vibration of the vocal cords (voicing), and their distinctive resonances are made by varying the shape of the mouth, using the tongue and lips.

THE VOWEL SYSTEM

The classification of vowels groups them into types, draws attention to the common properties of each type, and notes the features which distinguish one type from another. Becoming aware of the difference between a pure vowel, a diphthong is a start, but there is much more to be said about the way vowels work in English.

A particularly important factor is length (symbolized by /:/). When we listen to the 12 pure vowels, it is evident that five of them are relatively long in duration, and seven are relatively short. Moreover, in several cases length seems to relate pairs of vowels which are articulated in roughly the same part of the mouth. In the following examples, pairs of words are followed by the same consonant. If each word is given the same amount of emphasis, there is no doubt that the vowel in /si:t/ seat is much longer than in /sɪt/ sit; and similar effects can be heard in /fu:d/ food vs /gʊd/ good, /dɔ:n/ dawn vs /dɒn/ don, and /la: (r)d/ lard vs /læd/ lad. There is also a length difference between /ɜ:/ and /ǝ/, though as the former occurs only in stressed syllables in RP (bird, servant), and the latter only in unstressed syllables

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(above, butter), this is not a contrast which enables a difference of meaning to be

expressed.

The contrast between long and short vowels is not just one length (quantity);

a different place of articulation (quality) is involved.

TYPES OF VOWEL:

Monophthongs (12) – are vowels the articulation of which is almost unchanging., they are vowels with a single perceived auditory quality, made by a movement of the tongue towards one position in the mouth.

Diphthongs (8) - also known as a gliding vowel, refers to two adjacent vowel sounds occurring within the same syllable. The organs of speech glide from one vowel to another within one syllable. /əʊ, aʊ, ai, ei, ͻi, iə, eə, ʊə/. It is important to note that here we are talking about phonetic diphthongs, not graphic ones: the sounds in my, so and how, for example, are all diphthongs, even though each has only a single vowel letter.

PRINCIPLES OF CLASSIFICATION according to:

1)the stability of articulation: 12 monophthongs, 8 diphthongs.

2)the position of the bulk of the tongue:

	fully front	/ i:		e	æ /
-	front
	front retracted	/ ɪ /
-	central	/ з:	ə	ʌ /
	back advanced	/ ʊ	a: /
-	back
	fully back	/ u:		ͻ:	ɒ /

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3) The tongue height
	Narrow		Broad
High	/ i:	u: /	/ ɪ	ʊ /
Mid	/ e	з: /	/ ə	ͻ: /
Low	/ ʌ /		/ æ	a: ɒ /

4)The duration

-Long

-Short

5)The degree of muscular tension

-Tense (all long)

-Lax (all short)

6)The lip position

-Labialized

-Non-labialized

Front

Central

Back

Position of the tongue

Fully

Front

Back

Fully

Height of the tongue

front

retracted

advanced

back

High

Narrow

i:

u:

Broad

i

ʊ

Mid

Narrow

e

з:

Broad

ə

ͻ:

Low

Narrow

ʌ

Broad

æ

a:

ɒ

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TYPES OF DIPHTHONG

From the point of view of length, the diphthongs are like long vowels; but the first part of diphthong in English is much longer and louder than the second. When we listen to the diphthong in /haʊ/ how, for example, most of the sound is taken up with the /a/ part, the glide to /ʊ/ being quite short and rapid.

The eight diphthongs are usually grouped into three types, depending on the tongue movement involved.

The first group ends with a glide towards the /ǝ/ vowel in the centre of the mouth, and are called centring diphthongs. They are heard in the words here

/ɪǝ/, air /eǝ/, and sure /ʊǝ/. The remainder end a glide towards a higher position in the mouth, and are called closing diphthongs.

One type of closing diphthong moves in the direction of an /ɪ/ quality at the front of the vowel area. These sounds are heard in the words they /eɪ/, cry /aɪ/, and toy /ɔɪ/.

The other type of closing diphthong moves in the direction of an /ʊ/ quality at the back of the vowel area (and thus adds some lip rounding). These sounds are heard in the words so /ǝʊ/, and how /aʊ/.

The possibilities are shown in the diagram below, this also shows the two

types of triphthong, formed by adding a central glide to the closing diphthongs.

			Diphthongs
centring							closing
ending in ǝ			ending in ɪ				ending in ʊ
ɪǝ	eǝ	ʊǝ	eɪ		aɪ	ɔɪ	ǝʊ	aʊ
here	air	sure	they		cry	toy	so	how
Triphthongs				+ ǝ			+ǝ
			eɪǝ	aɪǝ		ɔɪǝ	ǝʊǝ	aʊǝ

player fire royal

lower tower

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LECTURE 4. SYLLABLE FORMATION AND

SYLLABLE DIVISION

Vowels and consonants typically do not act alone; there are very few words or word-like noises which consist of only one sound (they include I, eye, oh, m). The vast majority of English words contain a combination of vowels (V) and consonants (C), such as CV (go), VC (up), CVC (cat), CCVCC (stops), and CCCV (screw). The combined units are called syllables. In the above examples the words each contain only one such unit, and are thus often called monosyllables, or monosyllabic words. This notion contrasts with words that contain more than one syllable (polysyllabic words) – most of the words in the language, in fact. The present sentence contains instances of a two-syllable (disyllabic) word, despite

/dɪˈspaɪt/ (CVCCVC), and a three-syllable (trisyllabic) word, instances /ˈɪnstǝnsɪz/ (VCCCVCCVC), and the previous sentence has a five-syllabic word, polysyllabic

/pɒli:sɪˈlæbɪk/, which despite its length has a simple syllabic structure (CVCVCVCVCVC).

People know about syllables. ‘Not another syllable!’ we may say to someone who is protesting too much. And if we want to emphasize a point, or speak plainly, we may well try to ‘put it in words of one syllable’. People are also able to count the number of syllables in a word, by beating out its rhythm. The rule is basically simple: each syllable contains one vowel or vowel-like nucleus. The word despite has two such nuclei, so there are two syllables. The word polysyllabic has five nuclei, so there are five syllables. However, there are several types of word (notably, those which contain diphthongs or triphthongs) where it can be difficult deciding just how many syllables there are. Is meteoric four syllables (me-te-o-ric) or three (me-teo-ric)? Is several three syllables or two (se-ve-ral or sev-ral)? Is being two syllables (be-ing) or one? Regional accent, speed of speech, level of formality, and context of use can all influence these decisions. For example, the number of syllables we assign to such words can depend on whether they are being