- •5. Modifications of phonemes in the speech continuum. Classification of allophones.
- •2. . The structure and types of syllables in English, their graphical representation.
- •3. Functions of syllables.
- •11. Syllable formation theories. Main problems of the phonetic aspect of syllable in English.
- •1. It, us, oath, add; 2. May. Tea, new; 3. Penknife, what time? midday meal.
- •1. Phonotactics as a branch of phonology.
- •3. Typical phonotactic possibilities in the structure of English syllables and words.
- •4. Phonological constraints on sound clusters in onset and coda.
- •15. Suprasegmental phonology. Intonation as the complex semantic unity of suprasegmental phonology. Different approaches to the definition of intonation and its components.
- •18. Utterance stress, its types and problems of classification. The interrelation of word-stress and utterance-stress.
- •19. Speech melody as a subsystem of intonation. Functions of its components. Nuclear tones in the system of English intonation.
- •20. Pausation and tempo in the structure of English intonation. Their functions.
- •21.Rhythm as a linguistic notion. English speech rhythm. Types of rhythmic units. Guidelines for teaching English speech rhythm.
- •24 .The attitudinal function of intonation in the conversational style and the use of emphatic complex tones.
- •25.Main prosodic peculiarities of the publicistic (oratorical) phonostyle.
- •26. Main prosodic peculiarities of the academic (scientific) phonostyle.
- •27. Main prosodic peculiarities of the informationalphonostyle.
- •28. Main prosodic peculiarities of the Declamatory (Artistic or Belles-letter) phonostyle: fiction, drama, poetry.
- •30. The orthoepic norm of English and its types. Phonetic changes in the present- day standard English. Regional and social variants in the British English pronunciation.
- •31. Received Pronunciation and Estuary English as a recent development of standard British English. The socialinguistic aspect of Estuary English.
- •32. Regional types of English pronunciation. Major differences between regional variants of English pronunciation and Received Pronunciation.
- •33. American-based pronunciation standards of English. Major differences between General American and Received Pronunciation on the segmental and suprasegmental levels.
1. It, us, oath, add; 2. May. Tea, new; 3. Penknife, what time? midday meal.
At the beginning of the 50s prof. N.I. Zhinkin of Moscow proclaimed his ‘loudness theory’. It is based upon the series of experiments that were originally ment to determine the nature of Russian word stress and partly sentence stress.
His experiments have led him to the conclusion that syllables are due to a rise and fall in loudness and not to breath puffs or anything else. He asserts, on the basis of his experiments, that ever}' phoneme possesses a specific inherent loudness which manifests itself when sounds are pronounced in sequences.
The so-called expiratory (chest pulse or pressure) theory was introduced by R.H. Stetson. This theory is based on the assumption that expiration in speech is a pulsating process and each syllable should correspond to a single expiration. So the number of syllables in an utterance is determined by the number of expirations made in the production of the utterance. This theory was strongly criticized by Russian and foreign linguists. G.P. Torsuyev, for example, wrote that in a phrase a number of words and consequently a number of syllables can be pronounced with a single expiration. This fact makes the validity of the theory doubtful.
12. Phonotactics as a branch of phonology. Basic rules of syllable division. Typical phonotactic possibilities in the structure of English syllables and words. Phonological constraints on sound clusters in onset and coda.
1. Phonotactics as a branch of phonology.
Every language has phonemes, and every language has its own common patterns in which phonemes are arranged to form syllables and the syllables are arranged to form larger units. In some languages all syllables consist of one consonant followed by one vowel (CV), so that no word has a cluster of consonants or of vowels; any word has the form CV, or CVCV, or CVCVCV..., depending on how many syllables it has. In English there are never more than two vowels in sequence in a single word (as in neon, poet, cruel, radio), but clusters of two, three, or more consonants are fairly common: prescribe, district,splints, tempts, for example. Still, not just any two, three, or more con- cluster. There are definite limits, or constraints, on co-occurrence. Phonotactics is the part of phonology which studies and describes such constraints. Phonotactics varies from language to language but there are general tendencies across languages.
* When a syllable onset has more than one consonant, the less sonorant sounds tend to be first, followed by more sonorant sounds.
*When a syllable coda has more than one consonant, the more sonorant sounds tend to be first, followed by less sonorant sounds.
In other words, the more sonorant sounds tend to be closer to the syllable nucleus, obstruents < [+son] consonants < vowels.
This is called the Sonority Scale or Sonority Sequencing Generalization.
2. Basic rules of syllable division. As A.A. Kalita writes, in English the vowel of the syllable may be preceded by up to three consonants as in stress (CCCVC) and followed by up to four as in texts (CVCCCC); this is the most general statement of the possibilities of phoneme sequences in the English language. English does not exploit all the possible clusters of phonemes in the word and in the syllable. For instance, long vowels and diphthongs do not precede final /q/, sounds /e, æ, d, ʌ / never occur finally. The types of consonant clusters permitted are subject to constraints. It is the feature of English that in initial position, i.e. before the vowel, there can be any consonant except / ŋ/; the sound /ʒ/ is rare in a word initial position, but it does appear in rather recent borrowings like gigolo, jabot; no consonant combinations are possible with / θ, z, ʧ, ʤ/; such consonant clusters as /pw, bw, tl, dl, mh, sr, sj, spw, fs, hr, stl/ never occur initially. Clusters of two consonants before the vowel have one of two forms: Isl + C as in stay, swim, sleep, etc. or C + /w, j, r, 1/ as in twin, beauty, creame, plain, etc. J. D. O'Connor noted that final clusters are more complex in English than initial ones since they express grammatical meanings of plurality, tense, ordinal number, e.g. /-ksts/ as in texts, /-kst/ as in mixed, /-mpst/ as in glimpsed, /-ksθ / as in sixth, / ŋθs/ as in strengths. According to their position in the phonetic structure of a word clusters can be divided into: (1) prevocalic, (2) postvocalic and (3) intervocalic.