21.The temporal subsys-m of prosody.Speech tempo and pauses.Devitations in temporal patterns in the speech of Belor and Russ learners of Eng.

The tempo of speech is the rate at which utterances and their smaller units are pronounced. On the acoustic level tempo is generally measured by the number of syllables per second.Tempo can also be used to express the speaker's attitude or emotion. For example, fast tempo may express excitement, joy, anger, etc. Everybody's speech has some norm of tempo, deviations from which affect meaning. Phoneticians generally distinguish normal tempo and two departures from the norm: fast and slow.In monosyllables the speeding up and slowing down of the duration of the syllable is perceived as clipped, drawled and held syllables which are generally used for emphasis. The speech continuum is divided into units of different length and hierarchy by means of pauses. It is the main function of a pause to segment connected speech into utterances and intonation groups to delimit one utterance or intonation group from another. Pauses are closely related with tempo: the number and length of pauses affect the general tempo of speech.Phoneticians distinguish 3 main types of pauses: silent pauses, pauses of percept ion and voiced (or filled) pauses. Pauses are very important constituents of intonation. Besides their segmentative and delimitative functions they also perform a unifying function showing the relations between utterances or intonation groups. The tempo of English utterances pronounced by Russian and Belorussian learners of English is slower than in the speech of Englishmen. Unstressed syllables are not reduced to the same degree as in the English norm.There is a tendency with Russian and Byelorussian speakers to overlengthen the final syllables of the preceding intonation group and to shorten the initial syllable of the following intonation group which is perceived as an inadequate (very long) pause.

22.The functional aspect of prosody.Meanings of the prosody of the utterance. The interaction of the tonal, accentual, rhythmic and temporal subsys-ms.

The functions and meanings of prosody should be described with reference to the utterance as the basic communicative unit. The prosody of an utterance carries independent meanings of its own, regardless of the words and the grammatical structure of the utterance. The prosody of the utterance is polysemantic. Due to its structural complexity it can express a number of different meanings of interrogation, non-finality, uncertainty, non-categoric attitude, surprise, etc. The prosody of the utterance performs a number of functions, the basic of which are constitutive, distinctive and identificatory. The constitutive function is to form utterances as communicative units. Prosody unifies words into utterances, thus giving the latter the final form without which they cannot exist. A succession of words arranged syntactically is not a communicative unit until a certain prosodic pattern is attached to it. In constituting an utterance, prosody at the same time performs the segmentative and delimitative function. It segments connected discourse into utterances and. intonation groups, and simultaneously delimits them one from another, showing relations between them. The distinctive function of prosody manifests itself in several particular functions, depending on the meaning which is differentiated. The communicative-distinctive function is to differentiate the communicative types of utterances, i.e. statements, questions, exclamations, imperatives, and communicative subtypes. The modal -distinctive function of prosody manifests itself in differentiating modal meanings of utterances (such as certainty versus uncertainty, definiteness versus indefiniteness) and the speaker's attitudes. Stylistic- distinctive function of prosody manifests itself in that prosody differentiates pronunciation (phonetic) styles, determined by extralinguistic factors. The identificatory function of prosody is to provide a basis for the hearer's identification of the communicative and modal type of an utterance, its semantic and syntactical structure with the situation of the discourse.Prosody of speech is significant and meaningful; prosody is systematic: it is not invented in speaking but produced according to the system of prosodic structures of a given language. Prosody is a characteristic feature of each concrete language and cannot be used in speaking another language

23. Substandert variation of the phonetic sys-m.The main regional types of Br pronunciation.

In present-day English the number of local dialects is being reduced to a fewer, more or less general, regional types. Every regional type of pronunciation is characterized by features that are common to all the dialects used in the region. The regional types of pronunciation, in their turn, are marked one from another by a number of peculiarities specific to each of them. In British English phoneticians generally distinguish three main regional types of pronunciation: Southern, Northern and Scottish regional types of English pronunciation. Besides, there may a non-regional type of pronunciation that is not native to any particular locality in the country. The Northern regional type of English pronunciation is characterized by features that are common to all the dialects used in the northern part of England. /ǽ/ is more open and more retracted back, /a:/ is fronted compared with RP /Þ:/and it approximates to /за/ in words which do not contain "r" in spelling, /оv / is pronounced as a monophthongal /о:/, All tones are drawled and speech is generally slower than in Southern English. The Low Rising Tone is used much oftener than in RP. The Scottish type of English Pronunciation is also based on the dialects spoken in Scotland which vary among themselves in some respects. Their common features, which distinguish the Scottish type of pronunciation from RP, are as follows: / 3:/ is not used in the Scottish type of pronunciation, instead of RP /3 :/ they use the sequences /ir/. The Scottish pronunciation does not distinguish between / ǽ / and / a :/ All vowels are short. There is no distinction in the length of the vowels in words like "pull" and "pool" , "cot" and "caught") In the Scottish type of pronunciation there appears a backlingual fricative /x/, which resembles the corresponding Russian sound (e.g. "loch"). Special Questions may end with a high level tone after a fall on the interrogative word, a final vocative does not necessarily continue the tune of the General Questions. Southern Eng. Received Pronunciation (RP) was accepted as the phonetic norm of English about a century ago. It is mainly based on the Southern English regional type of pronunciation. The main changes that have recently taken place in RP are as follows: The diphthongization of the RP /i:/ and /u:/ Monophthohgization of /ai/ and /au /, A greater weakening of vowels in weakly stressed syllables, which results in the use of the neutral /a/ The use of the intrusive /г/ etc.