Theoretical phonetics

The information conveyed by a sentence is expressed not only by different words and grammatical structures, but also by means of intonation.

Intonation is a complex unity formed by the variations of 1. speech melody, 2. word stress, 3. tempo + pausation, 4. voice timbre. This unity serves to express the speaker’s attitude towards the context of the sentence or the reality.

British phoneticians state that is the rise and fall of the pitch of the voice when we speak (Ward, Armstrong). More and more foreign linguists define intonation as a combination of pitch and loudness. There is wide agreement among Soviet linguists that on perception level intonation is a complex, a whole, formed by significant variations of pitch, loudness and tempo (i.e. the rate of ) speech and pausation) closely related. Jones later had to admit important relations between intonation and stress in English as in all stressed languages. American phoneticians do not consider the stress as a component of intonation, although they regard voice pitch and stress closely connected.

Nowadays there is another term "prosody" which embraces the three prosodic components and substitutes the term "intonation".

Each syllable of the speech chain has a special pitch colouring. Some of the syllables have significant moves of tone up and down. Each syllable bears a definite amount of loudness. Pitch movements are inseparably connected with loudness. Together with the tempo of speech they form an intonation pattern which is the basic unit of intonation. An intonation pattern contains one nucleus and may contain other stressed or unstressed syllables normally preceding or following the nucleus. In other words it is “tail”, “pre-head” and “head”. Intonation patterns serve to actualize syntagms in oral speech. It may be well to remind you here that the syntagm is a group of words which is semantically and syntactically complete. In phonetics actualized syntagms are called intonation groups1. Each intonation group may consist of one or more potential syntagms, e.g. the sentence "I think he is coming soon" has two potential syntagms: "I think" and "he is coming soon". In oral speech it is normally actualized as one intonation group.

An intonation pattern consists of:

1) Nuclear tone – the most important and informative part. There are 7 types of it.

Main types:

a) low-fall

b) high-fall

c) low-rise

d) high-rise

e) fall-rise

Optional types:

f) Rise-fall

g) Rise-fall-rise

The meanings of the nuclear tones are difficult to specify in general terms. Roughly speaking the falling tone of any, level and range expresses "certainty", completeness", "independence". Thus a straight-forward statement normally ends with a falling tone since it asserts a fact of which the speaker is certain.

A rising tone of any level and range on the contrary expresses "uncertainty", "incompleteness" or "dependence". A general question, for instance, has a rising tone, as the speaker is uncertain of the truth of what he is asking about. A falling-rising tone may combine the falling tone's meaning of "assertion", "certainty" with the rising tone's meaning of dependence, incompleteness.

The tail follows the nuclear tone and together they form the so-called terminal tone.

The pre-head is not so important as the nuclear part. There are two types of it: low and high.

The head: descending (scandend, falling, stepping, sliding )

Ascending (rising, climbing)

Level head (high, mid., low)

All of these parts of the intonation pattern can be combined in different ways to express different meaning. E. g. The sentence “Not at all”.

High-level head + low-fall = calm, reserved

High-level head + high fall = sort of surprise

High-level head + low-rise = encouraging

High-level head + high-rise = questioning

Of course, the number of intonation patterns indicates the number of intonation groups in the sentence. Every intonation group has a communicative centre, the nuclear of which is indicated by the nuclear tone. The communicative centre conveys the most important part of information, which is usually something new in the sentence. Thus, the number of communicative centres or the number of nuclear tones indicates the number of intonation groups. Do you want to go to the theatre or to the cinema

This sentence contains 2 intonation groups since choice is meant here.

Thus the meaning of an English utterance is defined not only by grammatical structures and lexical compositions, but also by intonation what means that intonation is the most powerful means of communication.

Our approach to the study of intonation is based on its three functions.

1. The aim of the constitutive function is to constitute a meaningful utterance from a meaningless connection of words.

2. The distinctive / phonological function is to distinguish communicative types of sentences, the actual meaning of a sentence, the speaker’s attitude towards the context of the utterance. One and the same word sequence may express different meaning when pronounced with a different intonation pattern. Thus, when the meaning is changed by means of intonation only, then intonation fulfils the distinctive function. This function can be of two varieties: 1) syntactically distinctive, when intonation pattern differentiates the communicative types of sentences. E.g. Is not that wonderful?

Is not that wonderful!

2) Attitudinally distinctive function ( Why? (not much interest), Why? (some interest)).

3. Recognitive function – the function of identification which consist in the use of the right tone in the right place.

Pitch – is the quality of a voice, esp. how high or low it is. (intensity)

The tempo of speech is the third component of intonation. The term "tempo" implies the rate of the utterance and pausation.

The rate of speech can be normal, slow and fast. The parts of the utterance which are particularly important sound slower. Unimportant parts are commonly pronounced at a greater speed.

By "pause" here we mean a complete stop of phonation. For teaching expediency it is sufficient to distinguish the following three kinds of pauses:

1. Short pauses which may be useH to separate intonation

groups within a phrase.

2. Longer pauses which normally manifest the end of the

phrase.

3. Very long pauses, which are approximately twice as long

as the first type, are used to separate phonetic wholes.

Functionally, there may be distinguished syntactic, emphatic and hesitation pauses.

Syntactic pauses separate phonopassages, phrases, intonation groups.

Emphatic pauses serve to make especially prominent certain parts of the utterance.

Hesitation pauses are mainly used in spontaneous speech to gain some time to think over what to say next

Rhythm is a very general term. It is understood as a periodicity in time and space.

Rhythm as a linguistic notion is realized in lexical, syntactical and prosodic means and mostly in their combinations. For instance, such figures of speech as sound or word repetition, syntactical parallelism, intensification and others are perceived as rhythmical on the lexical, syntactical and prosodic levels.

this fact it is still an ppen question in linguistics.

In addition, larng as a means of commun. is known to have sev. Fun-ns. In the well-known conception sug. by acad. Vinogr., 3 fun-ns are disting., that is the func. of communic. (colloquial style), the function of informing (business, official and scientific styles.) and the emotive function (publicistic style and the belles-lettres style). Classif. of this kind reflects some of the aspects of stylistic phenomena. However, the criterion of disting. styles does not seem accurate enough. It is obvious that what is called the emotive func. is the general task of liter. but not of style. Besides, the lang. of fiction should not be treated on the same footing with the functional style of a language.

Tne other two above-ment. Fun-ns can’t serve as a basis for disting. Funct. styles because there is no simple corresp-ce b/w the fun. and the style. For ex., scientific style is used not only for informing people but also for commun. of scientists in discussions, talks, speeches and so on. Colloq. speech, in its turn, always combines those two fun-s. What is to be taken into acc. here is the difficulty of disting. those 2 fun-s, which is one of the basic prob. In fact comm-on is the process of exch. information. The actual difference b/w communicating and informing can be marked primarily in a dialogue — monol. opposition.

Among the well-known classif. of phonetic styles we would like to mention the following two. One of them belongs to Gaiduchic. He distinguishes five phonetic styles:

1) Solemn,

2) scientific business,

3) official business,

4) everyday,

5) familiar.

The other way of classifying phonetic styles is suggested by J.A.Dubovsky who discriminates the following five styles:

1) informal ordinary,

2) formal neutral,

3) formal official,

4) informal familiar,

5) declamatory.

The division is based on different degrees of formality or rather familiarity between the speaker and the listener.

Our approach (Sokolova) is slightly different.

It might be generally assumed that there-are five phonetic styles singled out mainly according to the purpose of communication and to which we could refer all the main varieties of the text generated in everyday communication of a modern man. They are as follows:

1. Informational style.

2. Academic style (Scientific).

3. Publicistic style (Oratorial).

4. Declamatory style (Artistic).

5. Conversational style (Familiar).

We could add that any style with very little exception is seldom realized in its pure form. Each generated text is likely to include phonetic characteristics of different styles. In such cases we talk about overlapping (fusion) of styles.

1. The Phoneme Theory : three aspects of the phoneme. Phonemes and allophones. Phonetic and phonological mistakes

THE PHONEME

To know how sounds are produced by speech organs is not enough to describe and classify them as language units. When we talk about the sounds of a language, the term "sound" can be interpreted in rather different ways. To avoid this ambiguity, the linguist uses two separate terms: ‘phoneme’ is used to mean "sound" in its contrastive sense, and "allophone" is for sounds which are variants of a phoneme: they usually occur in different positions in the word (i.e. in different environments) and hence cannot contrast with each other, nor be used to make meaningful distinctions.

The definitions of the phoneme vary greatly. The truly materialistic view of the phoneme was originated by the Soviet linguist L.V.Shcherba1. According to LV.Shcherba the phoneme may be viewed as a functional, material and abstract unit. These three aspects of the phoneme are concentrated in the definition of the phoneme suggested by V.A.Vassilyev, who looks upon the phoneme as "...a dialectical unity of these aspects because they determine one another and are thus interdependent".

V.A.Vassilyev defined the phoneme like this: "The phoneme is the smallest language unit 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 a word from another grammatical form of the same word" .

The only drawback of this definition is that it is too 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.

Let us consider the phoneme from the point of view of its three aspects. Firstly, the phoneme is a functional unit. In phonetics function is usually understood to mean discriminatory function, that is, the role of the various components of the phonetic system of the language in distinguishing one morpheme from another, one word from another or also one utterance from another. "The opposition of phonemes in the same phonetic environment differentiates the meaning of morphemes and words, e.g. sleeper — sleepy.

Thus we may say that the phoneme can fulfil the distinctive function.

Secondly, the phoneme is material, real and objective. That means that it is realized in speech of all English-speaking people in the form of speech sounds, its allophones.The sets of speech sounds, that is the allophones belonging to the same phoneme are not identical in their articulatory1 content though there remains some phonetic similarity between them.

This is how it sounds in isolation or in such words as [d] door, darn, down, etc. The allophones which do not undergo any distinguishable changes in the chain of speech are called principal. At the same time there are quite predictable changes in the articulation of allphones that occur under the influence of the neighbouring sounds in different phonetic situations, Such allophones are called subsidiary.

[d] is pronounced without any plosion before another stop,

.e.g. in the word-final position it is voiceless, e.g. road, raised, old.

Consequently, though allophones of the same phoneme possess similar articulatory features they may frequently show considerable phonetic differences.

It is perfectly obvious that in teaching English pronunciation the difference between the allophones of the same phoneme should be necessarily considered.

Allophones" are arranged into functionally similar groups, that is groups of sounds in which the members of each group are not opposed to one another, but are opposable to members of any other group to distinguish meanings in otherwise similar sequences. Consequently allophones of the same phoneme never occur in similar phonetic contexts, they are entirely predictable according to the phonetic environment, and thus carry no useful information, that is they cannot differentiate meanings.

Thirdly, allophones of the same phoneme, no matter how different their articulation may be, function as the same linguistic unit. The phonemes have an important function in the language: they differentiate words like tie and die from each other, and to be able to hear and produce phonemic differences is part of what it means to be a competent speaker of the language. Allophones, on the other hand, have no such function: they usually occur in different positions in the word (i.e. in different environments) and hence cannot be opposed to each other to make meaningful distinctions. Allophones of each phoneme possess a bundle of distinctive features, that makes this 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. Neilher of the articulatory features that form the invariant of the phoneme can be changed without affecting the meaning. The articulatory features which form the invariant of the phoneme are called distinctive or relevant. To extract relevant feature of the phoneme we have to 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. For example, the words port and court differ in one consonant only. Both sounds are occlusive and fortis, the only difference being that [p] is labial and [k] is backlingual. Therefore 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. '

Naturally, anyone who studies a foreign language makes mistakes in the articulation of particular sounds. L.V.Shcherba classifies the pronunciation errors as phonological and phonetic.

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 inevitably affected. It happens when one or more relevant features of the phoneme are not realized, e.g.:

When the vowel [i:] in the word beat becomes slightly more open, more advanced or is no longer diphthongized the word beat may be perceived as quite a different word bit. 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 pboneme is not modified and consequently the meaning of the word is not affected, e.g.:

When the vowel [i:] is fully long in such a word as sheep, for instance, the quality of it remaining the same, the meaning of the word does not change.

MAIN TRENDS IN PHONEME THEORY

The "mentalistic" or "psychological" view regards the phoneme as an ideal "mental image" or a target at which the speaker aims.

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. Meaning differentiation is taken to be a defining characteristic of phonemes. A stronger form of the "functional" approach is advocated in 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. 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 useful info., that is they cannot differen. meanings.

Thirdly, allophones of the same phoneme, no matter how different their articulation may be, function as the same linguistic unit. The phonemes have an important function in the language: they differentiate words like tie and die from each other, and to be able to hear and produce phonemic differences is part of what it means to be a competent speaker of the language. Allophones, on the other hand, have no such function: they usually occur in different positions in the word (i.e. in different environments) and hence cannot be opposed to each other to make meaningful distinctions. Allophones of each phoneme possess a bundle of distinctive features, that makes this 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. Neilher of the articulatory features that form the invariant of the phoneme can be changed without affecting the meaning. The articulatory features which form the invariant of the phoneme are called distinct.or relev. To extract relev. feature of the phoneme we have to 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. For example, the words port and court differ in one consonant only. Both sounds are occlusive and fortis, the only difference being that [p] is labial and [k] is backlingual. Therefore 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 disting. meaning are called non-distinct., or redundant; for inst., it is imposs. in Eng. 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. '

Naturally, anyone who studies a foreign lang. makes mistakes in the artic-ion of particular sounds. L.V.Shcherba classifies the pronunciation errors as phonological and phonetic.

If an allophone of some phoneme is replaced by an allophone of a different phoneme the mistake is called phonolog., cause the meaning of the word is affected. It happens when one or more relevant features of the phoneme are not realized, e.g.:

When the vowel [i:] in the word beat becomes slightly more open, more advanced or is no longer diphthongized the word beat may be perceived as quite a different word bit. 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 pboneme is not modified and consequently the meaning of the word is not affected, e.g.:

When the vowel [i:] is fully long in such a word as sheep, for inst, the quality of it remain.the same, the meaning of the word does not change.