THE PHONETIC SYSTEM OF A LANGUAGE.

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 485.

THE SUBJECT MATTER OF PHONETICS.

Language exists in the two main speech forms-oral and written. Speech is a manyfastation of language. It's a process of communication by means of language.

The phonetic system of a language is an orderly set of phonetic unites. It contains two systems, or levels- segmental and suprasegmental, or prosodic.

Segmental unites are speech sounds, vowels and consonants.

Suprasegmental, or prosodic unites are syllables, rhythmic groups, intonation groups, utterances and texts.

Syllables are combination of speech sounds in connected speech.

Rhythmic groups are combinations of syllables, or it can be one syllable. In connected speech rhythmic groups are pronounced in approximately equal periods of time. The nucleus of each rhythmic group is a stressed syllable. If a rhythmical group consists of only one syllable, it's always stressed. If a rhythmic group has some unstressed syllables they grouped around the stressed syllable.

Intonation group- is a stretch of speech from pause to pause. It may coinside with a sentence or a sentence may consist of two or more intonation groups. An intonation group may consist of one word “even a monosyllabic word”.

For example :- Do you like coffee? -No.

No-is one syllable, one word…

It all depends on meaning.

I'll see you tomorrow – Tomorrow// I see you.

Utterance is a spoken sentence. Unlike a sentence it doesn't have to be grammaticaly correct, because some meaning in an utterance may be conveyed not only through words and gramma, but also through intonation and border language.

Texts are sequences of sentences or utterances which are meaningfull, coherent and have some purpose.