FUNCTIONAL DIFFERENCES BETWEEN A PHONEME AND A SOUND IN VARIOUS APPROACHES

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 771.

A Phoneme - is the shortest functional unit of language. Each phoneme exists in the form of mutually non-distinctive speech sounds, its allophones.
A sound - is a material unit, produced by speech organs. A sound can be viewed from the articulatory, acoustic, auditory and functional points of view. Each speech sound is an allophone of some phoneme.
Phonetics studies sounds as artuculatory and acoustic unit, phonology investigates sounds as units which serve communicative purposes. The unit of phonetics is a speech sound. The unit of phonology is a phoneme. Phonemes can be discovered by the method of minimal pairs, which consists in finding pairs of words which differ in 1 phoneme:
Can -can ban - Ben
Fan - ban bad - bat
Foot - root sit - sing
Meet - feet late - hate
The phonemes of a language form a system of oppositions, in which any one phoneme is usually opposed to any other phoneme in at least 1 position in at least 1 lexical or grammatical minimal pair.
The phoneme theory was developed by Scherba ( the head of the Leningrad Phonological School) who stated, that in actual speech we utter a much greater variety of sounds than we are aware of. These sounds are united in a comparatively small member of sound types, which are capable of distinguishing the meaning and the form of words (= they serve the purpose of soicial intercommunication). These sound types should be included into the classification of phonemes and studied as unit of language. The actually pronounced speech sounds are variants or allophones of phonemes. They are realized in concrete words. They have phonetic similarity: their acoustic and articulatory features have much incommon. And at the same time they differ in some degree and are incapable of differentiating words. E.g.: the sound type or the vowel phoneme /i:/ , which is defined as 'unrounded' , fully front, high, narrow, tense, long, fill, is more back in 'key' than in 'eat' under the influence of the backlingual /k/, it's longer before a voices lenis consonant, than before a voiceless fortis one: seed - seat
greed - greet
The number of phonemes is much smaller than the number of sounds actually pronounced.
The Leningrad Phonological School defined phoneme as a real independent distinctive unit capable of differentiating meaning, which manifests itself in the form of allophones.
According to Vasiljev (who developed Shcherba's theory ) a phoneme is a unity of 3 aspects:
1) it's material, real and objective (because it really exists in the material form of speech sounds, allophones)
2) it's abstractional, generalized (bcos we make it abstract from concrete realization)
3) it's functional ( its function's to make one word of its grammatical form distinct from the other)
Moscow - Jakovlev, Kuznetsov, Sidorov consider a phoneme to be a part of morpheme. It's a dependent unit and it's true manifests itself in a morpheme. A phoneme has many allophones, depending upon the position of a phoneme in the sound chain (final, mid, initial, before/after this or that vowel/consonant).

7. THE PROGNOSTICATION OF SYLLABLE COMPONENTS IN ENGLISH ON THE BASIS OF TRADITIONA SOUND CLUSTER
Human intercommunication is actualized in syllables. According to J. Renyon, the syllable is one or more speech sounds, forming a single uninterrupted unit of utterance, which may be a word or a commonly recognised subdivision of words.
There are powerful constraints operating in all languages as to the way in which phonemes combine together in a particular language. In Russian the syllable can be generalized as
(CCCC)V(CCCC) In English (CCC)V(CCCC) (cons. and vowels). Structure of the English syllable is the most general stated of the possibilities of sequence. The vowel of the syllable may be preceeded by up-to-3 consonants and may be followed up-to-4 consonants.
The vowel may occur alone (as in 'I' ). It may have 1-3 consonants before it ('pie' 'spy' straw'). It may have 1-4 consonants after it ('pit' 'fact' 'stamps' 'texts')
We need to know which of the consonants can occur alone or in clusters both before and after the vowel which is the syllable's centre.
All consonants occur singly before the vowel except 1 consonant [?]. [з] is rare in the initian position: 'genre' ['зa:nrэ]
Clusters of 2 consonnts before the vowel have 1 or 2 forms:
's' +consonant and consonant + /w/ /j/ /r/ /l/
'stay' 'straw' 'twist' 'yes' 'plan' ' cream'
/tl/ /hr/ /sb/ are not found in english in initial position.
Altogether there are 289 initial consonant clusters in Russian as compared with 50 initial
consonant clusters in English. On the other hand, Russian has 142 final clusters, English - 150
So, the syllable is useful as the largest unit we need to consider in explaining how phonemes are permitted to combine together in a language. The structure of a syllable varies in accordance with the number and the arrangement of consonants.
The english language has developed the closed type of syllable which begins with a vowel sound and ends in a consonant sound is called closed: VC 'act' 'ask'
In Russian it is the open type that forms the basis of syllable formation :CV 'no' 'go'
English syllable can also be classified as covered (CV/C 'fact') and uncovered (V/C 'eat')

8. THE CONNECTION BETWEEN TONE AND INTONATION IN VARIOUS APPROACHES
int. is that which adds meaning to what is being said that a question is being asked or that the speaker is angry,

Intonation may be treated theoretically as a notion consisting of one central item (western scholars), several intrinsically interrelated items.
British - intonation - a contour, representing a tone group, consisting of 4 basic elements:
Pre-head, head, nucleus, tail. In each of these parts a different system of contrasts operates. It is a horizontal approach to intonation.
The meaning of the utterance changes when we change the nucleus
YOU CAN'T GO THERE

YOU CAN'T GO THERE

According to the Russian school, intonation is many things +speech melody, which is represented by the contour which consists of tones => change or no change in pitch (level tone). It is a complex unit of several phonetic items. By intonation they usually understand speech melody,pitch,stress,tone,loudness, rhythm, tamber, prolongation, duration, tempo.

Change from high to low, from low to high.
Thus we may say that Americans also study tone. Though they say they study pitch, actually intonation is differences in pitch. The use of pitch to distinguish the whole utterances without interfering with the shape of the components of the words is called intonation.
Pitch - extrahigh high mid low
Differences in pitch stem from the ratte of vibrations , thus the range of fall or rise may vary a lot.
Pitch changes creation tone which is very important to define the logical meaning and the emotional expression.

9. ASPIRATION AS A NON-PHONOLOGICAL FEATURE CAPABLE OF DIFFERENTIATING MEANINGS
Voiceless consonants: p, t, k ч can be apirated in certain positions.
Aspiration – when the tip of the tongue leaves the alveolar ridge to release (e.g. /t/ in the word "too"). The vocal cords don't start to vibrate immediately, there's a short period when breath is glowing act of the mouth. That is aspiration.
In the words 'pop' 'tot' 'kick' the 1st plosive is quite heavily aspirated while the second before a pause is less so. In the words 'pepper' 'totter' 'kicker' the 2nd plosive in each word has little or no aspiration because it is followed by an unstressed vowel. And the 1st plosive is heavily aspirated. After /s/ none of them is aspirated. In other accents aspiration may be heavier than in RP. For example in Cockney initial p, t, k are very heavily aspirated and /t/ in particular may be realized as an affricate. That is instead of the explosion. Bring followed by more or less unimpediate breath it's followed by a clear fricative segment like /s/
RP: 'tar' /tha:/ Cockney: /tsa:/
On the other hand in some accents of Lancashire and Scotland aspiration may be totally absent.

10. RELIABLE FACTORS FOR SYLLABLE DIVISION
David Crystal puts in his linguistics - 'Language is not merely randomly articulated human voice. It is patterned noise, sound with organisation.'
He makes it an introduction to his phoneme representation. But it serves well the purposes of syllable analysis. The matter is concerned with the constituence of a syllable, its boundary and mechanism of syllable division.
Constituence Boundary Mechanism

Ancient Doesn't consider consonant No boundary No mechanism

Expiratory Doesn't take into account resonator mechanism Where the new expiration begins No clear mechanism

Sonority The Power & Obstructor mechanisms aren't considered No boundary Only explains why there's such number of syllables

Arcs of Loudness Based on arcs of articulatory effects Finally weak and initially weak but polite Mechanism lies in its articulatory effects

Ferdinand de Saussure One potential characteristic+ sounds in speech Implosion explosion Does give it

13. SPEECH MELODY AS THE BASIC MEANINGFUL UNIT OF INTONATION
Speech melody is represented graphically as a contour which consists of tones. A tone is either no change in pitch (a level tone) or a change in pitch (from high to low, from low to high). Pitch depends on the rate of vibrations.
Differences in the rate of vibration correspond to differences in pitch. The slower the rate, the lowers the pitch, and the higher the rate, the higher the pitch. The rate of 70 vibrations per second corresponds to a very low note in a male voice and 1 thousand per second gives a high note in a female voice. The VC are typically longer and heavier in the adult male than in female, and therefore they vibrate at lower rates. Though obviously there are variations of range for both males and females. The musculature of the VC is something that can be made longer or shorter and also thicker or thinner. Length and thickness as with harp strings produce slower vibrations and lower pitches; shortness and thinness produce faster vibrations and higher pitches. Our control of rate of vibration and therefore of pitch is very sensitive and we make use of it very extensively in language. A brief example of the kind of use is the difference between
a)'not once' meaning 'never' said as a categorical reply to the question 'have you met her?' and
b) 'not v once' meaning 'many times'.
In a) the vocal cords vibration changes from rapid to slow and the pitch falls whereas in b) the reverse takes place.
Tone Logical Meaning Emotional Expression
\/ Implication Hint
/\ Antithesis, contrast, opposition Objection, great interest, rage
\ Finality Sadness, indifference, categoric attitude
/ Lack of Finality Sympathy, warmth, doubt, hesitation, suprise

The choice of rising or falling pitch marks a difference of meaning . E.g. 'he won't pay for anything'
a) HE WON'T PAY FOR \ ANYTHING (means he'll pay for nothing which case it has a fall on "anything' (он ни за что не хочет платить)
b) HE WON'T PAY FOR \/ ANYTHING (means 'he won't pay for rubbish' with a fall rise on 'anything' (он за хлам платить не собирается)

14. THE SUBJECT-MATTER OF THEORETICAL PHONETICS
Theoretical Phonetics studies speech sound :
1) from every point of view.
Articulatory point of view - every speech sound is a complex of definite finely coordinated and differenciated movements and positions of the various speech organs.
Acoustic - speech sounds have certan physical properties.
Phonological - speech sounds are studied through the phonological oppositions.
Auditory - all of speech sounds have infinite number of features.
2) studies meachnisms of vowel and consonant production:
Vibrator mechanism - vocal cords
Resonator mechanism - oral cavity, nasal cavity
Obstructor mechanism - tongue, VC, teeth
Power mechanism - lungs, diaphragm
3) sounds are studied not only separately but in clusters and in speech. Thus we've come to kinetic and kinesthetic factors. The kinetic factor is responsible for one's ability to coordinate the differentiation articulatory movements necessary to produce a chain of speech sounds constituting a word. The kinaesthetic factor is responsible for one's finding definite movements and positions of the organs of speech necessary to produce a sound.

The kinetic factor is responsible for one's ability to coordinate the differentiated articulatory movements necessary to produce a chain of sounds. The importance of a detailed articulatory description can scarcely be exadirated.

4) the matter of analysis:
- description - setting down as many as possible features which are present in sounds.
- classification - mentioning those features by which sounds utter.
one of the main subjects is intonation. Theoretical phonetics views it from the point of view of different schools and approaches:
Russian - intonation is many thing + speech melody, tones, change in pitch.
British - intonation is a contour, that is a unit of intonation consisting of pre-head, head, nucleus and tail.
American - intonation is pitch. Differences in pitch cause differences in meaning.
speaking about sounds we usually view them in words, that constits of syllables. This is another subject of theoretical phonetics - syllable division and different approaches to it.

15. THE INTERCONNECTION BETWEEN RHYTHM AND SPEECH MELODY IN AN UTTERANCE.
Melody - changes in the voice pitch in the process of speech. Speech melody is closely connected with sentence stress, which is connected with rhythm.
Speech melody is also called pitch of the voice. Successive contours of intonation singled out of the speech flow may be defined differently :
Sense group (semantic approach)
Breath group (extra linguistic approach)
Tone groups ( phonological definition)
Intonation group
Tone (tonetic units)
Pitch and stress patterns.
Each tone unit has one peak of prominence in the form of a nuclear pitch movement and a slight pause after the nucleus that ends the tone unit and is usually shorter than the term 'pause' in
pausation system.
The tone unit is one of the most important units of intonational theory. It contains one nucleus, which is often referred to as nuclear tone or peak of prominence. The interval bewteen the highest and the lowest pitched syllables is called the range of a sense group. The Pange usually depends on the pitch level - the higher the pitch, the wider the Range. The Range of pitch within the last stressed syllable of the tone group is called a nuclear tone. It may occur not only in the nucleus but extend to the tail terminal tone. The inventory of the tonal types given by different scholars is different:
Sweet distinguishes 8 tones :
- level ?low falling
? high rising \/ compound rising
? low rising /\ compound falling
? high falling ? rise-fall-rise

Palmer : 4 basic tones - falling, high rising, falling-rising, low-rise.
Vasiljev: 10 tone-groups. He stated that tones can be moving and level. Moving tones can be simple, complex and compound. Low fall, high wide fall, high narrow fall, low rise, high narrow rise, high wide rise, rise-fall, rise-fall-rise.
The most common compound tones are - high fall + high fall, high fall + low-rise.
Level tones can be pitched at High, Mid, Low level.

The falling tones convey coplexion and finality, they are categorics in character. The rising tones are incomplete and non-categoric. Mid tone is used most frequintly. The level tone expresses hesitation.

The phenomenon of rhythm is closely connected with the phonetic nature of stress. So, rhythm is the regular alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables. The units of the rhythmical structure of an utterance are stressed groups of rhythmic groups. The perception of boundaies between the rhythmic groups is assiated with the stressed syllables or peaks of prominence.
In English, stressed syllables tend to occure at regular intervals of time. Each sense-group of the sentence is pronounced at approximately the same period of time, unstressed syllables are pronounced more rapidly: the greater the number of unstressed syllables, the quicker they are pronounced.
Rhythm is connected with the sentence stress. Under the influence of rhythm words which are normally pronounced with two equally strong stresses may lose one of them or may have their word stress realized differently.
/'piccad'illi/ - /'piccadilly 'circus/ - close to the picca'dilly
/'princess' - a 'royal prin'cess/

18. THE CONNECTION BETWEEN PITCH AND INTONATION IN VARIOUS APPROACHES
Intonation may be treated theoretically as a notion consisting of 1 central item (western scholars) or several intrinsically interrelated units.
American - Intonation is pitch - differences between pitches are used to make differences in meanings. The use of pitch to distinguish as utterance without interfering with the shape of components of words called Intonation. Pitch - Low High Mid . The differences in pitches (fall to rise, rise to fall) depend on the rate of vonrations and stem from a variety.
British - tone. Intonation is a contour which is represented by a tone group, consisting of 4 basic elements. Tone - low/high rise , low/high fall. The tone distinguishes the meaning.
Russian - intonation is many things + speech melody, a contour represented by tones. Tone -
change of pitch.
Speech melody is a contour consisting of different tones, a tone is either no change of pitch (level tone) or a change of pitch (high fall). Pitch in its turn is based on the rate of vibrations.

Tone

Logical Meaning
Emotional expression
Fall - low fall
'I \ won't do it' Finality
Categoric statement Sadness, indifference, dissatisfaction
Rise
'I / won't do it' Lack of finality Hesitation, surprise, doubt, sympathy, warmth
Fall-rise
'Where've you been?' Implication Hint, contempt, suspicious
Rise-fall
'Who was he?' Contrast opposition Objection, great interest

21. THE DYNAMISM OF INTONATION COMPONENTS
Intonation is treated theoretically as a notion, including either one central, phonetic item or several intensically interrelated phonetic items. The term 'intonation' in American school referrs to the way the voice goes up and down in pitch. Britain scholars consider intonation as a contour representing a tone group that is a unit of intonation, consisting structurally of 4 basic parts, and in each of these parts a different system of of contrasts operates. A contour contains the pre-head, the head, the nucleus and the tail. The last accented syllable of a contour is known as the nucleus. The stretch from the first accented syllable up to the nucleus is called the head. Sometimes the term 'head' is restricted to the first accented syllable and the remainder is called the body. The head may be short: 'What nonsense!'

or long: 'How on earth did you manage to make such a stupid mistake!'

The head has 14 syllables here, 5 of them are accented. Th esyllables before the first accented syllable are the pre-head. 'You can't do that!'

The pre-head is not usually very long, but it may be so when the 1st accented syllable occurs late in the tone group: ' I told him just about everything he knows'

The syllables after the last accented syllable (the nucleus) are the tail. Neither head nor pre-head may occur without the nucleus. On the other hand the nucleus can occur without the head and the pre-head, and both head and pre-head may occur independently from each other
'yes!' - the nucleus.
'What nonsense!' - head+nucleus+tail
'It was incredible!' - pre-head + nucleus + tail
the head-the pre-head-the tail may be omitted

For a head to occur there must be at least two accuted syllables in the contourand for the pre-head to occur there must be at least one syllable before the 1st accented syllable. The meaning of a contour may change with a new choice of nuclear tone and a new placement of the pre-head, head and tail within the voice range. But today not all of these changes are registered and classified.
A Conclusion : in the treatment of intonation as one thing, phoneticians just single out the most significant phonetic item and view it as the cause of possible semantic modifications.

Utterances are made up of syllables and the syllables where the main pitch movement in the utterance occurs, are called tonic syllables. The syllables that establish a pitch that stays constant up to the tonic syllable are called onset syllables. These ideas belong to the approach to intonation based on grammar.

22. THE COMMUNICATIVE VALUE OF LOUDNESS (Whisper>Loudness)
The vocal cords produce vibrations. The amount of horizontal opening of the cords that is the amplitude of vibration, relates to loudness.The further the VC more apart in the open phase, the louder the resulting sound and the smaller the gap, the softer the sound. So loud sounds will have large amplitudes, soft sounds will have smaller amplitutes. Ff - very loud (forti) f - loud (forissimo) p - soft (piano) pp - very soft (pianissimo)
For purposes of communication all of us are capable of varying the general loudness of our speech. We can also vary our loudness from utterance to untterance or within utterances for effect. In saying 'It was terrible' the syllable [ter-] will be pronounces with a much greater amount of energy if we wish to express outrage.
Differences in loudness are indicative of differences in strength of feeling. Extraloudness may influence whole sequences of only stressed syllables. So in 'It was very pleasant' there may be a generally increased loudness over the whole utterance or effecting only the 1st syllables of 'VEry' and 'PLEAsant'. And we quite often find a contrast between particularly loud stressed syllables. As in the utterance 'She was absolutely marvellous'
Where 'ab-' and 'mar-' are made especially loud and the remaining syllables are virtually whispered. THAnk you - frankly. Thank yOU - formally.
THAnk you VERy MUCH! Said extra loudly sounds angry- outrage.
Abnormally reduced loudness in the utterance 'it was horrible' signals anguis rather that anger.
In saying something like 'Jonh told me - John Smith that is - that he…' the parenthetical expression will often be said more quietly than what surrounds it simple to underline that it is a parenthesis(вв слова)
The same happens in the utterance 'I'd like - it won't take me long - to tell you a story' The interpolation 'it won't take me long' is accompanied by reduced loudness. To express direct quotations BBC news readers use extra loudness. E.g. 'Mr. Smith expressed the view that it was a gross extravagance (extra loud)'.
Among the functions of the vocal cords we mention whisper. For a very quiet whisper the vocal cords come close together so that some friction is caused as breath passes between them. For louder whispers the VC themselves are brought closer and closer together so that more friction is caused, until for the loudest one there's only a narrow chink left open between the VC through which air is forced under great pressure causing maximum friction.
Whisper may be used to express the speaker's attitude. Whisper over sequences is generally conspiratorial. It may also be used on unstressed syllables in contrast with normal or creaky voice on the stressed syllables as in the word 'fantastic' where 'fan-' and 'tic' are whispered.

23. ARTICULATORY SIMPLIFICATION IN COCKNEY
Cockney is a dialect of the less educated region in London. There's a certain amount of articulatory simplifications.
1) Many simplifications are concerned with broadening vowels, this happens because it's much easier to pronounce broad than narrow vowels. One needs less muscular tension.
/a/ > /ae/ 'blood'
/e/ (mid) > /ai/ (low) 'lady'
/эu/ (mid) > / aeu/ (low, more open) 'soaked'
/au/ > /aeэ/ or /ae/ 'now' 'how' 'about'
even /э/ > more broader
2) Same monophthongs are diphthongized due to the instability of articulation:
/o/ > / эu/
As for consonants, we can see that there are also same cases of simplification:
- there's no dental fricatives in Cockney as it's difficult to pronounce them: the tip of the tongue is to be between the upper and lower teeth. Theese consonants are replaced by labiadental fricatives (f, v)
- /t/ appears to be an affricate and /s/ is heard before /t/ and a vowel articulation: the soft palate comes close with the back of the tongue but one doesn't wait the stop > the air passes through the nasal cavity. 'top' /tsop/
- initial /th/ is replaced by /d/ 'father'
- /l/ vocalic - is a vowel before a consonant. The tip of the tongue approaches (not contacts!) the alveolar ridge and lips rounded for /o:/ . 'almost' /o:mэust/
- final / ng/ >/n/ the jaw is dropped the center of the tongue is raised
/-ink/ in words like 'thing' 'something' 'nothing'
- /n, t, k / are heavily aspirated
- ‘/loose /h/ 'have' But they plave h/ in some words in RP without /h/ 'art' /hart/
-/ ' / is used in intervocalic position alone