The Prague Phonological School.

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 786.

English Intonation

Outline

1. Two basic tunes

2. Prosodic constituents of the intonation

2.1. Sentence stress

2.2. Tempo and pausation

2.3. Loudness

2.4. Timbre (voice quality)

2.5. Rhythm

3. Phrasing and textual organization

4. Notation

5. Functions of intonation

6. Stylistic use of intonation

Literature:

Roach P., English Phonetics and Phonology

p. 192-204

Ladefoged P., Johnson K., A course in phonetics

p. 254-261

Sokolova M.A., English Phonetics. A theoretical course

p. 135-163

Practice:

Roach P., Audio Unit 17. Intonation

Audio Unit 18. Intonation

The phoneme theory was further developed by the Linguistic Society of Prague. The head of the school is N.S. Trubetzkoy. He first became acquainted with the phoneme theory through the works of Baudouin de Courtenay and Scerba. He propounded his phonological views in a number of works, the principal of which is” Grundzuge der Phonologie.” The main points of his theory are: 1. the separation of phonology from phonetics; 2. The theory of phonological oppositions; 3. the theory of the arc-phoneme.

He developed de Saussure's principle of the separation of speech from language by proclaiming a new science- phonology as distinct from phonetics. According to him, phonology is a linguistic science. It should concern itself with the distinctive features only which are connected with meaning, while phonetics is a biological science, it should concern itself with the sounds of a language, as they are pronounced and as they are heard, without paying any special attention to their function in the language. Trubetzkoy further develops his system of oppositions by giving special prominence to the most essential members: 1. the phoneme, which he defines as a unity of the phonologically relevant features of a sound; 2. the speech sound, which he defines as a unity of all the features, both relevant and irrelevant, of a sound representing the phoneme in connected speech. Some oppositions may be neutralized, the phoneme in the position of neutralization is the arc-phoneme, “a unity of relevant features common to two phonemes”.