SONORITY AS A SYLLABIC QUALITY AND A VOCALIC FEATURE.
Date: 2015-10-07; view: 444.
Phonostylistics as a branch of phonetics; its linkage with other linguistic disciplines. Extralinguistic factors causing phonetic modifications of speech. Phonetic styles, the problem of their definition and classification.
The subject matter of phonostylistics is versatile and not clearly determined. It studies variation in use of sounds of a l-ge, its phonetic expressive inventory, as well as typical prosodic features of different types of discourses and registers. Phonostylistics deals with ‘style-sensitive' or ‘style-dependent' phonological processes. Phonostylistic processes are language specific. The same function is served by various means across l-ges, but also within a l-ge. Ph. Provides descriptive frameworks by which readers hypotheses concerning the meaning and effects produced in texts can be explored through a systematic and principled attention to l-ge and intonation patterns.
The factors that determine the choice of the intonational style are the following: the aim of communication – the style forming factor. The other factors are called style modifying factors:
-the speakers attitude
-the form of communication
-the degree of formality
-the degree of preparedness.
All thses factors are interdependent and interconnected. Stylistic variation can also be caused by such factors as topic, setting and relationship between interlocutor. There are 5 intonational styles singled out mainly acc to the purpose of communication (Moscow linguistic school):
-Informational
-Academic
-Publicistic
-Declamatory
-Conversational
Using the informational style the speaker ought to be careful not to distract the listener by what he is saying (TV announcers). Written representation of oral and prepared speech.
Scientific style is used in lectures or science subjects or when reading out loud a piece of scientific prose. The purpose is to attract the listener's attention to what is the most important in the lecture.
Publicistic style is used by politicians, the purpose is to except the influence of the listener to convince him of sth and make him accept the speaker's point of view.
Declamatory style is used in reading poetry, prose aloud, in stage speech to appeal the feelings of the listener.
Conversational formulae familiar of every day communication are used in speech of friends within similar groups. It can have a wide range of intonation patterns.
23. Main prosodic peculiarities of the conversational style. Intonation of dialogues and monologues.
Conversational style is used in every day communication and thus is not formal. These are some common feature of informal communication:
-casual vocabulary and colloquial idioms, including slang.
-conversational openers to sentences (you know, say, you take)
-people speaking at the same time (overlapping)
-interruption
-hesitation
-repetition or rephrasing
-incomplete sentences. Loose sentence patterns common to conversation.
Some more important characteristics is an entire range of vocalic clusters, sounds, non-verbal signals are common in conversations.
On the prosodic level there are some generalizations about the conversational style.
1. Conversations fall into coordinated blocks, consisting of suprasegmental and supraphrasal units tied up by variations within the lenghth of pause speed, rhythm, pitch ranges, pitch levels and loudness.
2. Since there are no restrictions on the range and depth of emotions which might be displayed in conversational speech situations, they will allow entire range of prosodic effects.
3. Intonation groups are rather short, their potentially lengthy tone units tend to be broken. These short interpausal units are characterized by decentralized stress and sudden jumps down on communicative centres.
4. The heads are usually level, or rarely falling. Falling heads occur only in groups consisting of several stressed syllables.
5. As for the nuclei, simple falling and rising tones are common. Emphatic tones occur in highly emotional contexts. High pre-nuclear syllables are very frequent.
6. The tempo of colloquial speech is very varied. The natural speed might be very fast but the impression of slowness may arise because of a great number of hesitation pauses both filled and non-filled with the block. However, the speakers may have no pauses between their parts, very often they speak simultaneously, interrupt each other.
7. Also a familiar point about informal conversation is the frequency of silence for purposes of contrastive pause as opposed to its being required simply for breath-taking.
8. Pauses may occur randomly, not just at places of grammatical junctions.
9. So, tempo is very flexible in this style. It is uneven with and between utterances.
10. Interpausal stretches have a marked tendency towards subjective rhythmic isochrony.
11. Alongside common features, there is evidence for variation of prosodic characteristics in women's conversational style. Women's voice range is, as a rule, wider than men's one and changes basically within high and low pitch levels.
In monologues the speech reminds the informational monologue, only differs in the degree of formality.
Sonorants are /m, l, n,n ?/
They have more noise in them than semi-vowels, though there's more tone. Sonorants are the same as semi-vowels in articulation, but professor Vasiljev says for sonorants there's an additional outlet for the air stream:
/m, l/ - sides of the tongue /n, ?/ - nasal cavity ( as another resonator)
Sonority - is a quality, belonging to the sound, which has tone. It's characterized by sound's ability to form a syllable.
There's a sonority theory of syllable division (Jesperssen, Jones). There are as many syllables in a word as there are peaks of prominence in terms of the scale of sonority (sonority here's a degree of hearability of speech sounds).
The auditory effect is tone, not noise. The peculiarity of articulation makes sonorants sound more like vowels than consonants.
5. MECHANISMS
There are 4 mechanisms of producing sounds:
- the power mechanism
- the vibrator mechanism
- the resonator mechanism
- the obstructor mechanism
The Power Mechanism (diaphragm, the lungs, the bronchi) makes the vocal cords vibrate.fills in the resonator with air.It regulates the force of exhalation making tense and lax vowels that is producing the greater force of exhalation for tense vowels and weaker force of exhalation for lax.It creates fortis and leanis consonants. But as fortis consonants are voiceless consonants and leanis consonants are voiced consonants sonorants and semi-vowels are neither fortis nor leanis because they have no voiceless pair and they are different auditorily as well as articulatory. It makes 4 aspirated consonants (p t k ÷) as aspiration is a puff of air supplied by the power mechanism. There are no aspirated vowels in English.
The Obstruction Mechanism - wind-pipe, the pharynx, sills in the mouth resonator, the oral cavity, the nasal cavity. The air stream has to overcome or break the obstruction. The function is to supply energy in the form of air pressure and to regulate the force of the air stream. It is the leading one in the production of consonants as it creates a system of consonant phoneme belonging to a particular language. It happens because of 3 factors of obstruction: the active organ of articulation creating the obstruction, the type of obstruction, and the place of obstruction. It doesn't take part in the production of vowels because when vowels are produced muscular tension in the active organ of articulation is defused, distributed evenly along the surface of the tongue. So that not a single part of the tongue is raised higher to produce an obstruction.
The Vibrator Mechanism (larynx, vocal cords, the ligament, muscles). Produces vc vibrations which give voice and voice is a vowel from the auditory point of view. It produces voice for voiced consonants, sonorants and semi-vowels. It produces 0 vibration for voiceless consonants. It differentiates the duration of vocal cord vibration making long and short vowels( long vowels need prolonged vibration, short-reduced vibration).
The Resonator mechanism (pharynx, the mouth cavity, the nasal cavity) specifies vowels, makes them different. In the mouth cavity - the mouth resonator and the size - the volume - the shape of mouth resonator make all sounds different. The mouth resonator can be changed in the position of the lips (full spread, slightly, neutral, fully rounded, slightly) and by the position of the tongue (horizontal, vertical). The mouth resonator is considered to be the space btw the upper surface of the tongue and the roof of the mouth cavity. It creates a resonator within a resonator producing diphthongs which have 2 vocalic elements in their structure: the nucleus and the glide.