The Phoneme Theory

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 903.

Speak on phoneme theory and it's variants

As you probably know from the course of general linguistics, the definitions of the phoneme vary greatly.

The truly materialistic view of the phoneme was originated by the linguist - L.V. Shcherba. According to L.V. 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".

So, 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. Views of the phoneme seem to fall into four main classes.

The "mentalistic" or "psychological" view regards the phoneme as an ideal "mental image" or a target at which the speaker aims. He deviates from this ideal sound partly because of the influence exerted by neighbouring sounds.

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 belonding to the same phoneme are not identical in their articulatory content though there remains some phonetic similarity between them. All the allophones of the same phoneme have some articulatory features in common, that is all of them possess the same invariant. The articulatory features which form the invariant of the phoneme are called distinctive or relevant.

According to this (1) conception allophones of the phoneme are varying materializations of it. This view was originated by the founder of the phoneme theory, the Russian linguist S.A. Baudauin de Courtenay. The same point of view was shared by E.D. Sapir, Alf. Sommerfelt. On the other hand, it is definitely not possible to establish such ideal sounds which do not exist in reality. For this reason the American linguist L. BIoomfield and his followers rejected the view.

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. According to this conception the phoneme is not a family of sounds, since in every sound only a certain number of the articulatory features, that is those which form the invariant of the phoneme, are involved in the differentiation of meanings. It is the so-called distinctive features of the sound which make up the phoneme corresponding to it. This view is shared by many foreign linguists: L. BIoomfield, R. Jakobson, M. Halle. The functional view of the phoneme gave rise to a branch of linguistics called "phonology" or "phonemics" which is concerned with relationships between contralisating sounds in a language. Its special interest lies in establishing the system of distinctive features of the language concerned. Phonetics is limited in this case with the precise description of acoustics and physiological aspects of physical sounds without any concern of their linguistic function.

A stronger form of the "functional" approach is advocated in the so-called "abstract¹¹ 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 group of articulatory similar sounds without any regard to its functional and abstract aspects.

Summarizing we may state that the materialistic conception of the phoneme first put forward by L.V. Shcherba may be regarded as the most suitable for the purpose of teaching.

Transcription is a set of symbols representing speech sounds. Phonetics transcription is a good basis for' teaching the pronunciation of a foreign language, being a powerful visual aid. To achieve good results it is necessary that the learners of English should associate each relevant difference between the phonemes with special symbols, that is each phoneme should have a special symbol. It not, the difference between the pairs of sounds may be wrongly associated with vowel length which is not-distinctive in modern English.