24. The phoneme theory

Founder- Бодуэн де Куртене – worked out 2 approaches to the phoneme

1) morphological – the phoneme is inseparable from the morpheme

2) psychological - phoneme is a complex of articulatoty, acoustic and auditory aspect (the physical image of the sound) е.g.” маг – мак”

There existed one more approach developed by Лео Щерба (Leningrad phonological school) - “materialistic approach” – phoneme does not only have articulatoty, acoustic and auditory characteristics but also fulfils some function in the language ( it is semantically significant) - one and the same sound may belong to two diff phonemes, but it makes no difference from the point of view of pronunciation.

Реформатский и Аванесов (Moscow phonological school) stated that one and the same sound may belong simultaneously to two diff phonemes representing two diff morphemes – this approach unlike leningrads does not state the independence of the phoneme from the morpheme e.g. “лук – лука – на лугу”

Трубецкой и Якобсон (Prague school) created a revolution in the theory:

they worked out the principle of phonological opposition and the concept of archiphoneme – a unity of relevant features common to to morphemes (лук – к + г, к is archiphoneme).

Daniel Jones (London school) – introduced an atomistic theory.He called the qualities of the same phoneme – phones, a number of which forms the corresponding phoneme. His views were underestimated because he took into account only material and real characteristics of the phoneme and didn’t observe its abstractional and general character.

American school members started to deny the objective realty of the phoneme and call it an abstractional fiction.

Copenhagen school (Yelmsler and Halley) separated the phoneme from the actual speech – they called their approach algebraic and look upon the language as a system of signs and codes. They underestimated material and real characteristics of the phoneme and overestimate its abstractional and general character.

All the problems were overcome by professor Vasilev who gave the phoneme definition which reflects all its aspects.

A phoneme is the smallest language unit which exists in speech of all the members of a given language community as such speech sounds which are capable of distinguishing of one word from another, one grammar form of the same word from another.

Functions if the phoneme

1) constitutive (morpheme constitutive, word and grammar form constitutive, sentence constitutive “ it’s cold – it’s gold)

2)distinctive (см 1)

3) Recognitive - usage of the right allophone in the rightly place (wrong usage leads to phonetic mistake (in pronunciation not in meaning)

25. 4 Components of phonetic system

1) phoneme structure (based on the principle of phonological opposition (Трубецкой) - each element of the language is opposed to any other element and at the same time to all other phonemes e.g. t opposed to d and to all sonorants and velar consonants, vowels - consonants, etc)

- system of isolated phonemes

- distribution of phonemes (usage of certain ph in the certain word-position e.g. ы never occurs at the beginning of Russian words

- transition - change of sound undr the influence of the neighboring ones

4 types of transition: (Vowel Consonant)

VV( pronunciation of “the”

VC( adaptation - positional length “ si: - si:z - sit),

CV( tri: – flat, tru: - rounded),

CC (assimilation – progressive ”slow”, regressive “in the”, double or reciprocal “thrilling”)