Phonetics as a science

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 499.

Transcribe the following words and word combinations. Check your transcription with the dictionary.

Phonetic exercises to Unit V

Phonetics is one of the oldest and the most essential branches of the linguistic. It studies the spoken aspects of languages. Its subject is a scientific analysis of the entire system of oral means expressing thoughts and emotions of the speaker.

Branches of phonetics:

The phoneme is the smallest sound unit of a language which is capable of distinguishing one word from another.

Different phonetic realizations of phonemes are called allophones. The total number of English phonemes is 44. There are 24 consonant phonemes and 20 vowel phonemes. A vowel is a voiced sound produced with no obstruction (затруднение) to the air stream. A consonant is a sound produced with an obstruction to the air stream.

phonology (фонология). It deals with the study of purely linguistic aspect of speech sounds with the analysis of the semantic functions of phonemes and other oral means of the language.

articulatory phonetics. It deals (studies) with the prediction/production, description and the classification of speech sounds. It is the oldest branch.

acoustic phonetics (акустическая). It deals with the acoustic aspects of speech sounds (from the physical point of view).

General phonetics studies all sound producing possibilities of the human speech apparatus and the role they play in human communication.

Special (descriptive) phonetics studies a particular language (phonetic system).

comparative phonetics. (средства различных систем различных языков,)

Historical phonetics studies all kinds of written documents and literature of ancient periods, compares pronunciation in different periods.

The newest branch – phonostylistic. It studies different types of pronunciation.