Теоретическая фонетика английского языка (Теоретическая фонетика английского языка М.А. Соколова, И.С.Тихонова, Р.М.Тихонова, Е.Л.Фрейдина. - Дубна; Феникс+, 2010. - 192 с.), страница 7

A. Vasilyev, causesno phonological misunderstanding providing special symbols for all vowelphonemes: [I], [i:], [e], [ee], [a:], [A], [n], [J:], [u], [u:], [3:], [a]. Being a goodvisual aid this way of notation can be strongly recommended for teachingthe pronunciation of English to any audience.But phonemic representation is rather imprecise as it gives too littleinformation about the actual speech sounds. It incorporates only as muchphonetic information as it is necessary to distinguish the functioning ofsounds in a language.

The narrow or phonetic transcription incorporatesas much phonetic information as the phonetician desires, or as he candistinguish. It provides special symbols to denote not only the phoneme asa language unit but also its allophonic modifications. The symbol [h] forinstance indicates aspirated articulation, cf. [k(h)eIt] - [skeIt]. This typeof transcription is mainly used in research work. Sometimes, however, itmay be helpful, at least in the early stages, to include symbols representingallophones in order to emphasize a particular feature of an allophonicmodification, e. g.

in the pronunciation of the consonant [1] it is oftennecessary to insist upon the soft and hard varieties of it ("clear" and"dark" variants) by using not only [1] but also [1] (the indication of the"dark" variant).1.3. Main Trends in the Phoneme TheoryNow that we have established what the phoneme is, le.t us view the maintrends ofthe phoneme theory. Most linguists agree that the phoneme servesto distinguish morphemes and words thus being a functional unit. However,some ofthem define it in purely "psychological" terms, others prefer phys­ically grounded defmitions. Some scholars take into consideration only theabstract aspect ofthe phoneme, others stick only to its materiality.

This hasdivided various "schools" of phonology some of which will be discussedbelow. Views of the phoneme seem to fall into four main classes.As you see from the definition of the phoneme suggested above the au­thors ofthe book share L. V. Shcherba's view, because it is obviously impor­26Chapter 1. The Functional Aspect of Speech Soundstant to look upon the phoneme as a unity of its three aspects: material, ab­stract and functional.The "mentalistic" or "psychological" view regards the phoneme as anideal "mental image" or a target at which the speaker aims. Actually pro­nounced speech sounds are imperfect realizations of the phoneme existingin the mind but not in the reality. Allophones of the same phoneme cannotbe alike because of the influence of the phonetic context.According to this conception allophones of the phoneme are varyingmaterializations of it.

This view was originated by the founder of the pho­neme theory, the Russian linguist I. A. Baudauin de Courtenay. Similarideas were expressed by E. D. Sapir. This point of view was shared by otherlinguists, A. Sommerfelt (Sommerfelt 1936) for one, who described pho­nemes as "models which speakers seek to reproduce".The "psychological", or "mentalistic" view ofthe phoneme was broughtback into favour by generative phonology, and the idea of the phoneme as a"target" was revived, albeit under different terminology by N. ChomskyChomsky, M. Halle, 1968), M.

Tatham (Tatham 1980) and others. Nowthe basic concepts ofgenerative phonology attract much attention becauseof the rapid development of applied linguistics.The so-called "functional" view regards the phoneme as the minimalsound unit by which meanings may be differentiated without much regardto actually pronounced speech sounds. Meaning differentiation is taken tobe a deftning characteristic of phonemes. Thus the absence of palatalizationin [I] and palatalization of [1] in English do not differentiate meanings, andtherefore [I] and [1] cannot be assigned to different phonemes but both formallophones of the phoneme [1]. The same articulatory features of the Rus­sian [n] and [n'] do differentiate meanings, and hence [JI] and [JI'] must beassigned to different phonemes in Russian, cf.

MOA MOAb, A02 - /lif2. Ac­cording to this conception the phoneme is not a family of sounds, since inevery sound only.a certain number of the articulatory features, i. e. thosewhich form the invariant of the phoneme, are involved in the differentiationof meanings. It is the so-called distinctive features of the sound which makeup the phoneme corresponding to it. For example, every sound of the Eng­lish word ladder includes the phonetic feature oflenisness but this feature isdistinctive only in the third sound [d], its absence here would give rise to adifferent word latter, whereas if any other sound becomes fortis the result ismerely a peculiar version of ladder.

The distinctiveness of such a featurethus depends on the contrast between it and other possible features belong­ing to the same set, i. e. the state of the vocal cords. Thus when the above­.3. Main Trends in the Phoneme Theory27mentioned features are distinctive, lenisness contrasts with fortisness. Someapproaches have taken these oppositions as the basic elements of phono­logical structure rather than the phonemes in the way the phoneme wasdeftned above. The functional approach extracts non-distinctive featuresfrom the phonemes thus divorcing the phoneme from actually pronouncedspeech sounds.

This view is shared by many foreign linguists. See in particu­lar the works ofN. Trubetskoy (1960), L. BloomfIeld (1933), R. Jakobson,M. Halle (1956), who deftne the phoneme as a bundle of distinctive fea­tures.The functional view of the phoneme gave rise to a branch oflinguisticscalled "phonology" or "phonemics" which is concerned with relationshipsbetween contrasting 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 to the precise description of acoustic and psy­chological aspects ofphysical sounds without any concern to their linguisticfunction.

The supporters of this conception even recommend to extractphonetics from linguistic disciplines which certainly cannot be accepted byRussian phoneticians.A stronger form of the "functional" approach is advocated in the so­called "abstract" view of the phoneme, which regards phonemes as essen­tially independent of the acoustic and physiological properties associatedwith them, i. e. of speech sounds. This view ofthe phoneme was pioneeredby L. Hjelmslev (1963) and his associates in the Copenhagen LinguisticCircle, H.

1. Uldall and K. Togby.The views of the phoneme discussed above regard the phoneme as anabstract concept existing in the mind but not in the reality, i. e. in humanspeech, speech sounds being only phonetic manifestations of these con­cepts.The "physical" view regards the phoneme as a "family" of relatedsounds satisfYing certain conditions:1. The various members of the "family" must show phonetic similarityto one another, in other words be related in character.2. No member of the "family" may occur in the same phonetic contextas any other.The extreme form ofthe "physical" conception as suggested by D. Jones(1967) excludes all reference to non-articulatory criteria in the grouping ofsounds into phonemes.

And yet it is not easy to see how sounds could be as­signed to the same phoneme on any other grounds than that substitution ofone sound for the other does not give rise to different words and differentChapter L The Functional Aspect of Speech Sounds28meaning. The representatives ofthis approach view the phoneme as a groupof similar sounds without any regard to its functional and abstract aspects.Summarizing we may state that the conception ofthe phoneme first putforward by L. V.

Shcherba may be regarded as the most suitable for the pur­pose of teaching.1.4. Methods of Phonological Analysis1.4.1.The aim of phonological analysisNow that you have a good idea of what a phoneme is, we shall try toestablish the aim of phonological analysis ofspeech sounds, to give an over­view of the methods applied in this sort of analysis and show what charac­teristics ofthe quality ofsounds are ofprimary importance in grouping theminto functionally similar classes, i. e.

phonemes.To study the sounds of a language from the functional point of viewmeans to study the way they function, that is to find out which sounds alanguage uses as part of its pronunciation system, how sounds are groupedinto functionally similar units. The final aim of phonological analysis of alanguage is the identification of the phonemes and finding out the patternsof relationships into which they fall as parts of the sound system ofthat lan­guage.There are two ways of analyzing speech sounds: if we define /s/ from thephonological point of view it would be constrictive foreliIlb'1lal fortis, thiswould be quite enough to remind us of the general class of realization ofthissegment; for articulatory description we would need much more informa­tion, that is: what sort of narrowing is formed by the tip of the tongue andthe alveolar ridge, what is the shape of the tongue when the obstruction ismade (a groove in the centre of the tongue while the sides form a closurewith the alveolar ridge), and so on.

So if the speech sounds are studied fromthe articulatory point of view it is the differences and similarities of theirproduction that are in the focus of attention, whereas the phonological ap­proach suggests studying the sound system which is actually a set of rela­tionships and oppositions which have functionalEach language has its own system of phonemes. Each member of thesystem is determined by all the other members and does not exist withoutthem. The linguistic value of articulatory and acoustic qualities of sounds isnot identical in different languages.

In one language community two physi­104. Methods of Phonological Analysis29cally different units are identified as "the same" sound, because they havesimilar functions in the language system. In another language communitythey may be classified as different because they perrorm a distinctive func­tion.

Consider the following comparison: the two English [1] and·[l] sounds(clear and dark) are identified by English people as one phoneme becausethe articulatory difference does not affect the meaning. English speakers arenot aware of the difference because it is of no importance in the communi­cation process.In the Russian language a similar, though not identical difference be­tween [JI] and [JI'] affects the meaning, like inAYK andAlOK. So these soundsare identified by Russian speakers as two different phonemes. Analogically,the speakers of Syrian notice the difference between the [th] of English tenand the [t] of letter, because it is phonemic in Syrian but only allophonic inEnglish.Thus a very important conclusion follows: statements concerning pho­nological categories and allophonic variants can usually be made of a par­ticular language.So the aim of the phonological analysis is, firstly, to determine which dif­ferences of sounds are phonemic and which are non-phonemic and, sec­ondly, to find the inventory of the phonemes of a language.1.4.2.