Lecture 3. The system of english consonant phonemes
Филимонова Е. А.
Теоретическая фонетика английского языка: Учебное пособие. – Уфа: РИО БашГУ, 2008. – 65 с.
Данное учебное пособие по курсу теоретической фонетики английского языка предназначено для студентов II курса английского отделения факультета романо-германской филологии, прошедших водно-коррективный фонетический курс английского языка.
Учебное пособие ставит своей целью предварительно ознакомить студентов с планом лекционного освещения материала и семинарских занятий, а также закрепить и систематизировать знания по основным проблемам фонетики и фонологии.
При составлении данного пособия автор использовал системы упражнений, разработанные В.А.Васильевым, и Р.Г.Хамидуллиным.
УДК 81'34
ББК 81.2-1
©Филимонова Е.А. , 2008
©БашГУ, 2008
GENERAL INFORMATION
The phonetics/phonology portion of the course has three aims:
(a) to develop the students' skills in identifying, producing, and describing a wide range of sounds;
(b) to provide students with an understanding of the basic concepts of phonology, including the phoneme, natural classes, distinctive features, and the principles and notation of generative phonology;
(c) to train students to analyze phonological processes, and to apply the concepts listed in the course lectures to novel data.
These aims are fulfilled through lectures which concentrate on phonetic description and the basics of phonological theory, and practical sessions in which students learn to identify and produce a variety of sounds, and to apply phonological principles to data from the English language.
Course requirements
In this course there will be lectures once a week. More details about the practical program for each section of the course will be available separately. Since much of the work in this course depends on mastery of analytical processes, the practical program is just as important as the lectures.
Workload
Students are expected to attend all the lectures and practical sessions. Practical sessions should be prepared for by doing the homework. You should expect to put in two of your own hours of study for every inclass hour.
Assessment.
Two tests are currently scheduled, one on each section each worth 20%. The final examination is scheduled either. All tests and the examination will be ‘closed book’.
Class: The class format is that of a lecture, discussion and transcription. Participation is important, as phonetics is the most practical aspect of linguistics.
Textbooks:
English Phonetics. ФОНЕТИКА АНГЛИЙСКОГО ЯЗЫКА. Нормативный курс.: Учебник для ин-тов и фак.иностр.яз./ Васильев В.А. и др. – М.: Высш.школа, 1980.
V.A.Vassilyev. English Phonetics. Moscow, 1970.
Exams: There is to be one summer exam. Moreover there are to be several check-ups. The approach will be topical, in the sense that when a topic has been sufficiently covered that would be the appropriate time to have an exam on it e.g. vowels, consonants, syllables, etc.
Homework: transcriptions are an important part of phonetics, so transcription exercises or practices are apt topics, among others, for phonetic homework.
Semester project: As the semester moves along, each student should be able to sketch the sound system of her/his language or of any territorial variety of English and be able to provide a sketch of the dialect. A sketch of some other speaker’s dialect is the other alternative.
Grading will take into account the exams, homework and class participation.
Food-beverage-smoking consumption is not permitted during the class.
OUTLINE OF LECTURES.
LECTURE 1. Phonetics as a branch of linguistics.
Introductory lecture.
Issues of the lecture:
1) Ways to acquire good pronunciation.
2) Definition of ‘phonetics’.
3) Methods of phonetic investigation.
4) Speech organs and their functions.
5) Three aspects of a speech sound.
6) Functions of speech sounds.
7) Characteristics of speech sounds.
8) Branches of phonetics. Phonetics and phonology.
9) Phonetics and other sciences.
10) Practical application of phonetics.
Things to pay special attention:
1) The word "phonetics" is derived from the Greek (meaning ‘sound’) and is an independent branch of linguistics which is concerned with the phonetic structure of a language.
Phonetics as a science studies the human noises by which the thought is actualized in audible shape: the nature of these noises, their combinations, and their functions in relation to the meaning. Phonetics studies the sound system of the language, word stress, syllabic structure and intonation. It is primarily concerned with expression level. However, phonetics is obliged to take the content level into consideration too, because a phonetician should pay much attention to the effect which the expression unit he is examining and its different characteristics have on meaning.
2) Experimental phonetics
Quite a lot of the work done in phonetics is descriptive (providing an account of how different languages and accents are pronounced), and some is prescriptive (stating how they ought to be pronounced). But an increasing amount of phonetic research is experimental, aimed at the development and scientific testing of hypotheses. Experimental phonetics is quantitative (based on numerical measurement). It makes use of controlled experiments, which means that the experimenter has to make sure that the results could only be caused by the factor being investigated and not by some other: for example, in a test of listeners' responses to intonation patterns produced by a speaker, if the listeners could see the speaker's face as the items were being produced it would be likely that their judgements of the intonation would be influenced by the facial expressions produced by the speaker rather than (or as well as) by the pitch variations. This would therefore not be a properly controlled experiment. Experimental research is carried out in all fields of phonetics: in the articulatory field, we measure and study how speech is produced, in the acoustic field we examine the relationship between articulation and the resulting acoustic signal, and look at physical properties of speech sounds in general, while in the auditory field we do perceptual tests to discover how the listener's ear and brain interpret the information in the speech signal. The great majority of experimental research makes use of instrumental phonetic techniques, though in principle it is possible to carry out reasonably well controlled experiments with no instruments: a classic example is Labov's study of the pronunciation of / r / in the words 'fourth floor' in New York department stores of different levels of prestige, a piece of low-cost research that required only a notebook and pencil. This should be compulsory reading for anyone applying for a large research grant.
3)Instrumental phonetics
The field of phonetics can be divided up into a number of sub-fields, and the term 'instrumental' is used to refer to the analysis of speech by means of instruments; this may be acoustic (the study of the vibration in the air caused by speech sounds) or articulatory(the study of the movements of the articulators which produce speech sounds). Instrumental phonetics is a quantitative approach - it attempts to characterise speech in terms of measurements and numbers, rather than by relying on listeners' impressions. Many different instruments have been devised for the study of speech sounds. The best known technique for acoustic analysis is spectrography, in which a computer produces a "picture" of speech sounds. Such computer systems can usually also carry out the analysis of fundamental frequency for producing "pitch displays". For analysis of articulatory activity there are many instrumental techniques in use, including radiography (X-rays) for examining activity inside the vocal tract, laryngoscopy for inspecting the inside of the larynx, palatography for recording patterns of contact between tongue and palate, glottography for studying the vibration of the vocal folds and many others. Measurement of airflow from the vocal tract and of air pressure within it also give us a valuable indirect picture of other aspects of articulation. Instrumental techniques are usually used in experimental phonetics, but this does not mean that all instrumental studies are experimental: when a theory or hypothesis is being tested under controlled conditions the research is experimental, but if one simply makes a collection of measurements using instruments this is not the case.
4) A useful way to view the vocal tract is as an acoustic filter on sounds originating at the larynx: The vibrating larynx creates the buzz, and the vocal tract shape determines the way this buzz is modified. It's best to view the diagram below.
The "spectra" on the next page represents the sound waves that we interpret as the vowels [i, a, u].
Table 1. Sound production mechanism.
Literature:
1) Соколова М.А., Гинтовт К.П., Тихонова И.С., Тихонова Р.М. Теоретическая фонетика английского языка: Учеб.для студ.высш.уч.заведений. – 3-е изд., стереотип. – М.:Гуманит.изд.центр ВЛАДОС, 2003.- с.8-9.
2) Соколова М.А., Гинтовт К.П., Кантер Л.А., Крылова Н.И. Практическая фонетика английского языка: Учеб.для студ.высш.уч.заведений. –М.:Гуманит.изд.центр ВЛАДОС, 2003.- с.6-14.
3) Васильев В.А. Фонетика английского языка. Теоретический курс. - М: «Высшая школа», 1969.- С. 73-82.
4) Дикушина О.И. Фонетика английского языка. Теоретический курс. – М.: Просвещение, 1965. – С.11-24, 50-55.
LECTURE 2. THE PHONEME.
Issues of the lecture:
1) Definitions of the phoneme.
2) The notion of allophones and their classification.
3) Three aspects of the phoneme.
4) Main trends in phoneme theory:
A) The mentalistic or psychological view
B) The functional view
C) The abstract view
D) The physical view
E) The Cybernetic Approach to the Phoneme
5) Linguistic transcription.
Things to pay special attention:
Different levels of language units.
The smallest or shortest unit of language is the phoneme. The sequence of phonemes making units of higher ranks represents the phonemic level. One or several phonemes combined constitute a unit of a higher level, the second level – that of morphemes, or the morphemic level. One (or usually more than one) morpheme makes a word, a ‘lexeme’ – hence, the lexical level. One or usually more than one word makes an utterance, or, in traditional terminology, a sentence. Hence, it is the sentence level. Word combinations are best treated as not forming an independent level for two reasons:
1) functionally, they do not differ from words, because they name without communicating;
2) one word does not make a word combination, whereas one word can make an utterance: OUT! WHY? WINTER.
We could go on singling out paragraph level and even text level paying homage to the now fashionable text linguistics but for the fact that not every text is divided into paragraphs, although every paragraph or every text is divisible into sentences.
Each level consists of units of the neighboring lower level with nothing besides – a sentence consists only of words; a word is divided into morphemes or sometimes coincides with one; a morpheme contains nothing but phonemes or is represented by one of them, as in make-s, read –er, pen –s.
Summing up, we must say that the first meaning of the word level suggests the idea of horizontal layers (subdivisions) of some structure. And, language presents a hierarchy of level, from the lowest up to the highest.
Segments and Phones
A phonetic alphabet represents speech in the form of segments, or individual speech sounds like [p], [s], or [m]. This may seem to be a natural thing to do, but anyone who hears a new language for the first time finds it hard to break up the flow of speech into individual sounds that make up words. Even when we hear our own language spoken, we do not focus our attention on individual sounds as much as we do on the meaning of words, phrases, and sentences. Still, all speakers of a language can identify the sounds of their language. Linguistic knowledge makes it possible to break down a stream of speech into its component parts, one of which is sound segments or phones, or sound features. So, we can conclude that the term phone or segment means a single speech sound.
By complimentary distributionis meant the fact, that the difference in articulation of a sound is based on certain phonetic environments, like voiced and voiceless [l] vary systematically in that all of the voiceless [l] occur predictably after the class of voiceless stops [p, t, k]. Since no voiced [l] ever occurs in the same phonetic environment as a voiceless one (and vice versa).
Allophonic variation is found throughout language. In fact, every speech sound we utter is an allophone of some phonemes and can be grouped together with other phonetically similar sounds into a class that is represented by a phoneme on a phonological level of representation. An important part of phonological analysis deals with discovering the phonemes of languages and accounting for allophonic variation.
As you have probably noticed, the terms segment, phoneand allophone are used by linguists interchangeably and, in fact, are synonyms.
Phoneme
This is the fundamental unit of phonology, which has been defined and used in many different ways during this century. Virtually all theories of phonology hold that spoken language can be broken down into a string of sound units (phonemes), and that each language has a small, relatively fixed set of these phonemes. Most phonemes can be put into groups; for example, in English we can identify a group of plosive phonemes [p t k b d g], a group of voiceless fricatives [f θ s ʃ h] and so on. An important question in phoneme theory is how the analyst can establish what the phonemes of a language are. The most widely accepted view is that phonemes are contrastive and one must find cases where the difference between two words is dependent on the difference between two phonemes: for example, we can prove that the difference between 'pin' and 'pan' depends on the vowel, and that /ɪ/ and /æ/ are different phonemes. Pairs of words that differ in just one phoneme are known as minimal pairs. We can establish the same fact about /p/ and /b/ by citing 'pin' and 'bin'. Of course, you can only start doing commutation tests like this when you have a provisional list of possible phonemes to test, so some basic phonetic analysis must precede this stage. Other fundamental concepts used in phonemic analysis of this sort are complementary distribution, free variation, distinctive feature and allophone.Different analyses of a language are possible: in the case of English some phonologists claim that there are only six vowel phonemes, others that there are twenty or more (it depends on whether you count diphthongs and long vowels as single phonemes or as combinations of two phonemes). It used to be said that learning the pronunciation of a language depended on learning the individual phonemes of the language, but this "building-block" view of pronunciation is looked on nowadays as an unhelpful oversimplification.
Metrical phonology
This is a comparatively recent development in phonological theory, and is one of the approaches often described as "non-linear". It can be seen as a reaction against the overriding importance given to the phonemic segment in most earlier theories of phonology. In metrical phonology great importance is given to larger units and their relative strength and weakness; there is, for example, considerable interest in the structure of the syllable itself and in the patterns of strong and weak that one finds among neighboring syllables and among the words to which the syllables belong. Another area of major interest is the rhythmical nature of speech and the structure of the foot: metrical phonology attempts to explain why shifts in word stress occur as a result of context, giving alternations like
thir'teen but 'thirteenth 'place
com'pact but 'compact 'disc
The metrical structure of an utterance is usually diagrammed in the form of a tree diagram (metrical trees), though for the purposes of explaining the different levels of stress found in an utterance more compact "metrical grids" can be constructed. This approach can be criticized for constructing very elaborate hypotheses with little empirical evidence, and for relying exclusively on a binary relationship between elements where all polysyllabic sequences can be reduced to pairs of items of which one is strong and the other is weak.
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Literature:
1) Васильев В.А. Фонетика английского языка. Теоретический курс. - М: «Высшая школа», 1969.- С. 140-170.
2) Соколова М.А., Гинтовт К.П., Кантер Л.А., Крылова Н.И. Теоретическая фонетика английского языка: Учеб.для студ.высш.уч.заведений. –М.:Гуманит.изд.центр ВЛАДОС, 2004.- с.47-51.
3) Дикушина О.И. Фонетика английского языка. Теоретический курс. – М.: Просвещение, 1965. – С.26-43.
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LECTURE 3. THE SYSTEM OF ENGLISH CONSONANT PHONEMES.
Issues of the lecture:
1) Articulatory and acoustic peculiarities of consonants.
2) The notion of quality of a consonant.
3) The classification principles of English consonants
a) the type of obstruction and the manner of production of noise;
b) the degree of noise (the problem of sonorants);
c) the active speech organ & the place of articulation (the problem of phonological oppositions);
d) the work of the vocal cords& the force of articulation;
e) the position of the soft palate.
4) The problem of affricates classification.
5) Modifications of consonants in connected speech
Things to pay special attention:
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There seems to be little agreement among phoneticians about the meaning of the Latin terms designating some of the parts of the tongue functioning as articulators and the classes of consonants produced by these articulators. Thus, some Russian phoneticians differ from their American and British colleagues in interpreting the terms apex and apical, dorsum and dorsal, as well as cacuminal and retroflex(ed). Following L. V. Scerba, most Russian phoneticians use the terms dorsal, apical, cacuminal, and retroflex(ed) to refer to the position of the very tip of the tongue (the tongue-point) with respect to the upper front teeth, the teeth-ridge and its back slope rather than to the part of the tongue, as the usage is with American and British phoneticians.
Thus, dorsal are considered by most Russian phoneticians to be those consonants in the articulation of which the blade (=dorsum) of the tongue touches or approaches the upper teeth and the gums while the tongue-point turns down towards the lower teeth and is passive, as in the case of the Russian [т, д, н, с, з] (Fig. 1).
Apical are consonants in the articulation of which the tongue-point touches or approaches the teeth ridge or the upper teeth at a right angle to them, as in the case of the English [t, d, n, 1] and, often, [s, z] (Fig. 1).
Cacuminal are consonants in the articulation of which the tongue-point is turned up and back against the teeth-ridge on its back slope so that a spoon-shaped depression is formed in the fore part of the tongue, as in the case of the RP constrictive sonorous (frictionless) [r] (Fig. 1).
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This interpretation of the above terms is in accordance with their definitions given in dictionaries, as, for instance, in Webster's New International Dictionary of the English Language (unabridged).
A. C. Gimson, however, points out that the term apex is sometimes used to denote the region of the tip and blade of the tongue, while dorsum is sometimes employed to designate the whole upper area of the tongue from the front to the back inclusive. Therefore the terms apical and dorsal in American linguistic literature are equivalent to the terms forelingual and backlingual respectively, used by Russian phoneticians (Fig. 3). As for latter's term mediolingual, its equivalent in American linguistic literature is frontal, e.g. [j] (the front = the middle of the tongue).
A. L. Trakhterov retains the terms forelingual, mediolingual, backlingual, apical, cacuminal, and dorsal, using the latter term to cover both mediolingual and backlingual consonants, but introduces the term predorsal to designate in terms of active speech organs the English dental consonants [T, ð], the Russian [т, д, н, л, ц], which he calls dental-alveolar, and [C, s, z], [c, з], which he considers to be alveolar.
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Another classificatory controversy, though not of a terminological character, is the definition of the consonant [h]. L. V. Scerba insisted on classifying it as a lower-pharyngeal consonant and is followed in this definition by G. P. Torsuyev and most other Russian phoneticians. However, British and American phoneticians, as well as A. L. Trakhterov, define the [h]-sound as a glottal, or laryngeal, consonant.
The articulatory features which do not serve to distinguish meaning are called non-distinctive, irrelevant or redundant; for instance, it is impossible in English to oppose an aspirated [p] to a non-aspirated one in the same phonetic context to distinguish meanings. That is why aspiration is a non-distinctive feature of English consonants.
The articulatory features which form the invariant of the phoneme are called distinctive or relevant. To extract relevant feature of the phoneme we have to oppose it to some other phoneme in the same phonetic context. If the opposed sounds differ in one articulatory feature and this difference brings about changes in the meaning of the words the contrasting features are called relevant. For example, the words port and court differ in one consonant only, that is the word port has the initial consonant [p], and the word court begins with [k]. Both sounds are oc-clusive and fortis, the only difference being that [p] is labial and [k] is backlingual. Therefore it is possible to say that labial and backlingual articulations are relevant in the system of English consonants.
If an allophone of some phoneme is replaced by an allophone of a different phoneme the mistake is called phonological, because the meaning of the word is inevitably affected. It happens when one or more relevant features of the phoneme are not realized, e.g.:
When the vowel [i] in the word beat becomes slightly more open, more advanced or is no longer diphthongized the word beat may be perceived as quite a different word bit. It is perfectly clear that this type of mistakes is not admitted in teaching pronunciation to any type of language learner.
If an allophone of the phoneme is replaced by another allophone of the same phoneme the mistake is called phonetic. It happens when the invariant of the phoneme is not modified and consequently the meaning of the word is not affected, e.g.:
When the vowel [i:] is fully long in such a word as sheep, for instance, the quality of it remaining the same, the meaning of the word does not change. Nevertheless language learners are advised not to let phonetic mistakes into their pronunciation. If they do make them the degree of their foreign accent will certainly be an obstacle to the listener's perception.
Aspiration
This is noise made when a consonantal constriction is released and air is allowed to escape relatively freely. English [p t k] at the beginning of a syllable are aspirated in most accents, so that in words like 'pea', 'tea', 'key' the silent period while the compressed air is prevented from escaping by the articulatory closure is followed by a sound similar to [h] before the voicingof the vowel begins. This is the result of the vocal folds being widely parted at the time of the articulatory release. It is noticeable that when [p t k] are preceded by [s] at the beginning of a syllable they are not aspirated. Pronunciation teachers used to make learners of English practise aspirated plosives by seeing if they could blow out a candle flame with the rush of air after [p t k] - this can, of course, lead to a rather exaggerated pronunciation. A rather different articulation is used for so-called voiced aspirated plosives found in many Indian languages (often spelt 'bh', 'dh', 'gh' in the Roman alphabet) where after the release of the constriction the vocal folds vibrate to produce voicing, but are not firmly pressed together; the result is that a large amount of air escapes at the same time, producing a "breathy" quality. It is not necessarily only plosives that are aspirated: both unaspirated and aspirated affricates are found in Hindi, for example, and unaspirated and aspirated voiceless fricatives are found in Burmese.
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Literature:
1) Соколова М.А., Гинтовт К.П., Кантер Л.А., Крылова Н.И. Практическая фонетика английского языка: Учеб.для студ.высш.уч.заведений. –М.:Гуманит.изд.центр ВЛАДОС, 2003.- с.24-66.
2) Васильев В.А. Фонетика английского языка. Теоретический курс. - М: «Высшая школа», 1969.- С. 98-119.
3) Дикушина О.И. Фонетика английского языка. Теоретический курс. – М.: Просвещение, 1965. – С.77-90.
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