Main trends in phoneme theory

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 462.

The phoneme lets us view the main trends of the phoneme theory. 4 main classes: “mentalistic" or "psychological" regards the ph-me as an ideal "mental image" (Baudauin de Courtenay); "functual" view regards the ph-me as the minimal sound unit which meaning may be differentiated without much regard to actually pronounced speech sounds. Meaning differentiation is taken to be a defining characteristic of ph-mes. Thus the absence of palatalization in [l] and palatalization of [l] in English do not differentiate meanings, both form allophones of the ph-me [l]. In Russian л and л' do differentiate meanings: мол – моль. According to this the ph-me is not a family of sounds, since in every sound only acertain number of the articulatory features are involved in the differentiation of meanings. The functional view gave rise to a branch of linguistics called “phonology” which is concerned with relationship between contrasting sounds in a language; “abstract”view regards ph-mes as essentially independent of the acoustic and physiological properties associated with them, that is of speech sounds, the phoneme can be qualified as idealistic since it is as an abstract conception existing in the mind but not in the reality; "physical" regards the ph-me as a family of related sounds (the various members of the family must show phonetic similarity to one another, be related in character; no member of the family may occur in the same phonetic similarity to one another, be related in character).