The phonetics as the branch of linguistics

We can pronounce 400 sounds. Only the structure of the human organs of speech allows a particular wide rage of sounds which can be put together in extraordionarinaly specifical speech. The phonetics studies the sound system of the language and the sounds of speech. Basically we can distinguish in phonetics 2 branches – phonetics and phonology. They both deal with sounds. No language description is possible without describing sound system. Every language uses a subset of speech sounds. When we consider sound system of any language from the point of view of its articulatory, acoustic, auditory characteristics we deal with the phonetics. When we look at the sounds and its functions we deal with phonology. Phonetics can be divided into many more branches. Phonetics is much older branch than phonology. It is the oldest branch. The fundamental phonetics began with the ancient Indian priest, they first began the principles of articulation and classify sounds according their articulation. It is articulatory phonetics. It studies sounds and the way they are produced by the human organs of speech.

Acoustic phonetics studies sound as physical phenomena. Every sound is a wave. Every wave has physical characteristics – the length and etc. Auditory phonetics is very closely connected with anatomy, psychology and other branches of medicine. It studies the sound according to how it is perceived by the listener. We can distinguish general and special phonetics. General s. sound system of languages irrespective with their similarity, geographical close and etc. It is in every language. Special phonetics deals with the specific language. The sound system of a particular language can be studied to the reference to a definite period of time or synchronically. It is descriptive phonetics. It studies sound system of the language with the referent to ….

Or can be studies diachronically which means it is studies to the reference to the whole development of language up to the present time. Historical phonetics studies the sound system in reference to its history. Theoretical phonetics has descriptive character. It states the present state of language. Practical p. deals with rules and it has prescriptive character. It tells us how it should be done. There is also applies phonetics which is a part of linguistics. It is used in teaching languages practically, speech analysis and medicine. Teaching languages is a hard job. In order to teach pronunciation properly you have to know the basics of articulation at least, concepts and terms of acoustics and auditory perception and even the speech etiquette of the language you are using. Speech analysis deals with computers (T-T-S). In medicine phonetics is used in logaoedics and surdopedagogics.

Experimental phonetics. It deals with experiments – different functional

Instrumental phonetics. It ettempts to characterize speech or sounds of speech in terms of its measurements and numbers.

Segmental and supersegmental ph. A segmental phonetics deals with sound unit parts. Supersegmental phonetics deals with units of the language that cant be used separately, but which are capable to transport some meaning.

(an ice-man, a nice man (pause). Oh! Oh? Oh.. Oh!!!(intonation))

Methods of the investigation in phonetics

They are direct and indirect.

1. The direct method of phonetics is observation (watching). Children watch people and learn how to speak. – lip movement, tongue movement we can watch

2. Indirect observation involves x-ray photography, MRI and others. The usage of the indirect methods has become possible at the end of the 19^th century, before that you could only watch.

There is usage of experimental research when people are asked either to pronounce a certain sound or a word or describe what they hear when the certain word or sound is pronounced.

Speech sounds. Their aspects and functions

1. Articulatory aspect of the sound is the organic basis of English. In producing a sound in main 4 stages are distinguished. A) psychological stage. The production of the sound begins in the brain where the concept is made. We are speaking about signals which are sent to organs of speech which results in producing a particular pattern of movement. B) physiological stage. The organs of speech starts moving and you are talking. C) acoustic stage. Movements of our speech apparatus produce some waves by disturbing the air stream. D) Auditory stage. It involves reception of the sound waves by the listener, transmission of the message to the brain and decoding it.

According to the articulatory aspect the sound is a result of movements of organs of speech. The set of all movements and positions of organs of speech used for the production of the certain sound is called the articulation of the particular sound. The production of its speech sound in articulatory aspect is done in 3 stage – the on-glade or excusion when the organs of speech are put in the position for producing the sound. The proper position of articulating organs of speech accounts for the proper pronunciation of the sound. The second stage – hold or ritantion. The organs of speech remain in the same position for a certain period of time. The airstream goes through active and passive organs of speech. The 3-d stage – ricurtion (рикёшн). The articulating organs of speech return to their neutral position. Organs of speech can be devided into three basic mechanism wich are involved in producing the sound

1. The power mechanism. It is formed by the lungs, the windpype, the diaphragm, and bronches. It supplies the necessary airstream. It is responsible for the force and the quantity of the air stream coming out thus producing vibrations in the intensity of speech sounds.

2. Our lungs can hold up to several literes. When we speak we use very little of it.

3. For normal aspiration take about the same amount of time. In speech the ration varies and its typical 1 to 8 in favor of exhalation. Speech can be described as controlled breathing. Basically the sounds are made by egressive airstream (the air goes out). In some languages sounds can be made by drawing the air in, using ingressive airstream. (the air goes in). They are cocasive languages.

4. The next mechanism is the vibrator mechanism. It comprised larynx which contains the vocal cords. The function of the larynx is to act as a valve (клапан) which can stop air entering or escaping the lungs. It also prevents food, water entering the lungs. Vocal cords are two small folds of muscular tissue with a space between them. The vibrator mechanism is responsible for the vibration of airstream. In fact it is the source of vibrations. The sound wave is made. Those vibrations are different with men and women. About 120 times per second for men and twice that amount with women. These vibrations !produce a baze ! which can be heard and turned as voice. Variation in a speed of vibrations of the vocal cords is turned frequency. It is the vital factor in producing changes of pitch. This is how we perceive sounds as high and low.

5. The resonator mechanism is formed by the pharynx, the nasal and coral (глотка, носовая и ротовая полости). The resonator mechanism is responsible for the falling of resonators which provides for the amount of voice and noise in the production of sound and appropriate obstructions to the air stream which play essential part in producing a sound.

Soft palite and the tongue as the basic means resonator mechanism

The soft palite acts as a railway point mechanism (стрелка, мягкое небо направляет воздух) The airstream can be switched to pass either through both nasal and oral cavities simoltaniously or through nasal or oral cavity seperately. The soft palite rises and forms a closia against a back of the farings. Thus, blocking the passage way to the nasal cavity for normal gravy to the nosal cavity. Alterations in the shape of the cavities are particularly important in producing different types of vowel sounds. Obstructions within the oral cavity are essential for producing consonants. Basically in russian all the sounds are formed within in oral cavity, in English we have only one consonant which is formed within in the pharynx. In Arabic and cocosion languages there are voiced and voiceless pharyngeal phricatives. That is why people speaking in these languages have a very strong accent.

2. The abstractor mechanism. It is formed by the organs of speech which provide appropriate obstractions to the airstreams. These organs of speech are called articulators. Articulator is a very important concept in phonetics. Speech sounds can be produced only by moving parts of the body and some of them and can be done by contractive muscles. The movments of articulators are very complex - thus to move your tongue you need to use more than 20 muscles. Some articulators can be moved and they are called active. And those that can`t be moved are called passive. Active - Passive –

The most important articulator for producing sounds is the tongue. Its musels achieve extraordinary control over its shape and movement. A tongue is subdivide into the tip of the tongue and the sounds produced by it are called apical. The front part of the tongue – the sounds are produced with the help of the front part of the tongue are called dorsal. The central part of the tongue is involved in producing palatal sounds. The back part of the tongue is involved in producing back lingual, velar and uvula sounds. The tongue ends with the tongue root which function is to be moved backward and forward to change the quality of the vowel. The aim of articulation of many consonants depends on versatility of the tongue which can make air tight closer, incomplete closer, which can trial (триал ), tap, flap and click. The tip of the t can be curled backwards thus producing retroflex consonants. The palate is sometimes called the roof of the mouth. It can be devided into the hard and the soft palate. The hard palate runs from the alveolar reach to the beginning of the soft palate in the back. It is a thin layer of bone which is dowshaped (куполообразный). The soft palate extends from the reel end of the hard palate almost to the back of the throat ending with uvula.

The organic basis of English is defined by the setting. A long term muscular ejastment of the speaker`s speech apparatus. It is acquire by social imitation and it becomes permenant. It defines the manner of speech (accent of a speaker). Setting refers to the overall way in which speech organs are functioning through the speech processes.

Consonants. English has no dorsal consonants. Most English c. are epical. In English there are very few dental consonants. Most of the eng. consonants are alveolar. In English there are no palatalized consonants. Voiceless cons-s are pronounced with greater force, thus they require a larger amount of air.

Vowels. English vowels are devided into long and short unlike in Russian. Long eng vowels are monophtongs. It means they have stable articulation throughout their production. Sounds y and o are labializeв (the lips are protruded). The number of eng vowels envolve neutral position of the mouth which implies laxed muscles with loose spreading and relax lips position.

Acoustic and auditory quality of sounds. Recent research shows that a human ear can perceive changes in peach equwalent no less than 1 herz. Neverweless to most speakers the relavant rage of peach changes is not less than from 1 to 2 semitons. (=7-10 herz) A listener tends cautiously to perceive or interpret only those sound features which are relevant and important to the indelgibility of the speech or play an important part in the process of communication.

Acoustic quality of the sound are defined by temporal, dynamic and peach components. Temporal component (the duration of the sound) is perceived as the length of the sound. In Eng the length of a sound doesn`t carry any communicative value (unlike in Russian). We have long and short vowels in eng (different meanings) in Russian – to express the emotions. Variation in length usually reflexts condition of the speech situation. It influences the tempo of speech. Basically we can distinguish 3 levels of tempo. So – slow tempo involves one two 4 syllables per secons, normal four to 7 per second and fast 7 to more syllables per seconds.

There is perception threshold (порог восприятия). A sound is not perceived when it lasts less than 0, 05 milliseconds. Pauses are not perceived if they are shorter than 0,15 milliseconds.

The dynamic component of the sound. It realizes the speech as an intensity or force and it is perceived as loudness. The loudness points out relative prominants of a sound in comparison with the other sounds in a speech. It usually indicates the speaker`s emotional status in the moment of speech. Basically loudness varies from 40 to plenty decibel. A human ear can perceive variations of less than 1 decibel. Sounds quiets than 30 decibels are not perceive. From 40 to 45 is whispering. The threshold will be 120 decibel (when the person feels physical discomfort) 130 brings tickling, 140 brings pain.

The peach component of a sound is defined by the vibration of vocal cords. Those vibrations may be periodic (regular) and they characterize the fundamental frequency of sound (melody, musical tone, peach). Irregular vibrations (partial waves, overtones, harmonics are multi-plies of the fundamental frequency and they are called formants). They are responsible for the emotional covering of the speech. Some linguists distinguish one more feature of a sound. It is timbre. Timbre represents special coloring of speech and it usually distinguishes voices of speakers or speaker’s different regions and social status. When we listen to a continuuous atterance we perceive an ever-changing pattern of sounds which represents variations in its kinds. The sound is produced by the same speaker are not the same. The acoustic properties of a sound are constantly changing. We should always bear in mind that there is always some invariant which is correlated with that communicative necessity which provides for the articulatory stability of a speech sound which intend provides for its acoustic and auditory characteristics.

The chronological aspect of a sound. Speech sounds fulfill some functions in a stream of speech. There three basic functions. 1) Constitutive. Speech sound serves as the building material of speech. They counstitute material forms of morphemes, words, sentences, texts, utterances. 2) The distinctive function. They distinguish different meanings of words, forms, variants and etc. 3) Recognitive. Different variants of speech sounds must be used in right places to provide for the intelligibility of the speech. These functions help speech sounds act as units serving for communicative purposes.

Phonology studies the speech sounds according to their functions. The phonological aspect of sounds is called functional, social and linguistic. We should remember that the functional aspect is the dominating aspect of the sounds. Distinctive function is the most important function of the speech sound. A sound must be able to transport the meaning to serve as a unit of speech. The distinctive function provides for the opposition of speech sounds which serves to differentiate units of meaning.

The theory of a phoneme.

A phoneme is a completely new unit in the language. Any spoken language can be broken down into a stream of some units and each language has a relatively small relatily fixed set of such units. Most sounds can be united into groups. The most important question here will be how we can establish what the phonemes of a language are. The most widely excepted view on the phonemes is that they are contrasted ( the sounds are opposed to each other, they are different). They differentiate meanings of bigger units. For example – pin-pen, men-man. Pairs of words which are differ in just sound are called minimal pairs. Thundamental concepts used in phoneme analysis are complementary distribution three variation, distinctive feature, allophone and some others.

The term sound can be interpreted into the two ways. The articulation of the sound which accounts for the physical difference of a sound made and perceived. The second interpretation of the sound is its functional importance and this second interpretation of the sounds abraises the basys of the constant phoneme. A phoneme is a functional unit. It exists because it fulfills some function. The phoneme implies that two sounds are in opposition to each other in all contecs throughout the language. The opposition of the phonemes in the same phonetic environment always differentiates meanings of bigger units. Closer study of phonemes shows that in some contests the opposition ceases to function. Basically those are cases when people experience some difficulty in understanding each other.

Secondly, the phoneme is objective and material. It exists in the form of speech sounds. These sounds represents phonemic variants and they are called allophones. The phonemes are not sounds we must remember. A phoneme can be realized in many different ways. In theory a phoneme can have an infinite number of allophones, but in practice they can be united into several groups. Allophones of the same groups are different; there is always some phonetic similarity. The allophones which do not undergo any distinguishable (significant) changes of speech are called principal or typical. Accordingly the allophones which undergo distinguishable changes of speech are called subsidiary. Subsidiary allophones are always predictable because phonetic situations are always predicted in the language. Subsidiary allophones can be divided into positional and combinatory. Positional – light and dark l (at the beginning and at the end of the words). Combinatory – exists in different combinations. Phonemicс variants of allophones are very important in practical , their mispronounciation in actual speech makes it foreign. Speech sounds which differentiate one member of the meaningful pair from the other are phonemic variants of the phoneme. Allophones of different phonemes are in contrastive distribution. They are mutually distinctive. And allophones of the same phoneme never occur in the same phonetic circumstances (they never occur in the minimum pair) they never differentiate the meanings. Thus, they are mutually non-distinctive. Though, physically they are different. They are in complementary distribution. The distribution of the allophones of the same phoneme is usually predictable, we are able to tell when one variant or another will appear. For example –[k] –representative of phoneme. Kick – quick. Kik - kwik

The phoneme is an abstract unit. All allophones of the same phoneme possess a set of pronunciation features which make this phoneme phunctionally different from any other phoneme in the language. This functionally important relevant set of pronounciation features. These features that help to differentiate one phoneme from another – it is called diferentic

Non-called distinguished features don`t deferentiate the meanings of bigger units .

The phoneme is a minimal functional objective and abstract unit of the language which serves to differentiate meanings of bigger linguistic units. A phoneme represents a set of functionally releavant pronunciation features (distingtive features). The number of the phonemes in any language is much smaller than a number of sounds actually pronuanced. The total number of the phonemes in eng is 45 which 24 consonantal phonemes, 21 vowel phonemes.

Approach to the problem of the phoneme. There are different approaches. When the importance of the phoneme was studies (19 century) many attempts were made to develop scientific ways of establishing phonemic structure of a language. During this period a new branch of linguistics was stablished the phonemics. Its purpose now is to devise writing systems for previously unwritten languages. The founder of the phoneme theory was the Russian scientist Бодуэн де Куртене. His approach is called psychological. He defined the phoneme is a сайкикал mantal image of the sound. Allophons are material forms of phonemes. He didn`t call them phonemes. This term was given us to his ученик профессор Щерба. He and His disciple professor Васильев considered the phonemes objective and material because they exist in material form. Another French scientist Фердинанд де Соссюр introduced an abstract approach to the phoneme. He considered the phoneme to be absolutely independent from any physiological, acoustical or other properties. The same approach was shared by european linguist УльДаль and Sepler an American. Wolall Hhjelmslew Sapir. From his point of wiev these units were formed by the differeneces separating its acoustic image from that of other units. Sapir shared the same approach. Daniel Johnses view of the phoneme was quite different. He looked upon the phoneme as a physical matter. From his point of view a phoneme represented a family of sounds which means all its allophons. He was the first to speak about invariant. It is presented in all possible allophons. This point was shared Lanad Bloomthild. All these points looked upon the phoneme from one of its aspect. Thus there was a problem of giving proper definition. By the end of the 19^th century a new approach to the phoneme was developed. It was called the functional approach. The phoneme was looked at and investigated from the point of view of its functional relevance (importance it is). The phomene is looked upon as a minimal linguistical unit which can differentiate meanings without much regard to actually pronounced speech sounds. This was the approach of Nikolai Trubetskoi. He is a founder of this theory. His point of view was shared by the Prague Linguistic School (кружок ) with Hally, Jakobson, Jassem (Яссем).