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JHE PHONEM‘S THEORY
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Інші
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Рік:
2024
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Теорія
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Інші
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Тема: JHE PHONEM‘S THEORY
It is interesting at this stage to consider the system of phonetic notations which is generally termed as “transcription”. Transcription is a set of symbols representing speech sounds. The symbolization of sounds naturally differs according to whether the aim is to indicate the phoneme, i.e. a functional as whole, or to reflect the modifications of its allophones as well.
The International Phonetic Association (IPA) has given accepted values to an inventory of symbols, mainly alphabetic but with additions. “Agreed values” means, for example that the symbol [q] represents a lenis backlingual stop as in gate and not the orthographic “g” of gin, which is notated as [d3].
The first type of notation, the broad or broad or phonemic transcription, provides special symbols for all the phonemes of a language. The second type, the narrow or allophonic transcription, suggests special symbols including some information about articulatory activity of particular allophonic features. The road transcription is mainly used fir practical expedience, the narrow type serves the purposes of research work.
The striking difference among present-day broad transcriptions of British English is manly due to the varying significance which is attached to vowel quality and quantity. Now we shall discuss two kinds of broad transcription which are for practical purposes in our country. The first type was introduced by D. Jones/ He realized the difference in quality as well as in quantity between the vowel sounds in the words sit and seat, pot and port, pull and pool, the neutral vowel and the vowel in the word earn. However, he aimed at reducing the number of symbols to a minimum and strongly insisted that certain conventions should be stated once for all. One of these conventions is, for instance, that the above-mentioned long and short vowels differ in quality as well as in quantity. D.Jones supposed that this convention would relieve us from the necessity of introducing special symbols to differentiate the quality of vowels. That is he used the same symbols for them. According to D. Jones’ notation English vowels are denoted like this: [I] – [і], -[e] – [ae], [ ] – [ ], [ ], [ ], [ ] – [ ]. This way of notation disguises the qualitative difference between the vowels [ ] and [і:], [ ] and [ ], [ ] and [ ], and [ з:] though nowadays most phoneticians agree that vowel length is not a distinctive feature of vowel, but is rather dependent upon the phonetic context, that is it is definitely redundant. For example, example, in such word pairs as hit – neat, cock, pull – pool the opposed vowels are approximately of the same length, the only difference between them lies in their quality which is therefore relevant.
More than that. Phonetic transcription is a good basis for teaching the pronunciation of a foreign of a foreign language, being a powerful visual aid. To achieve good results it is necessary that the learners of English should associate each relevant difference between the phonemes with special symbols, that is each phoneme should have a special symbol. If not, the difference between the pairs of sounds above may be wrongly associated with vowel length which is non-distinctive (redundant) in modern English.
The other type broad transcription, first used by V.A. Vassilyev, causes no phonological misunderstanding providing special symbols for all vowel phonemes: [ І ], [і:], [ е ], [ае ], [ а: ], [ ], [ ], [ ], [ ], [ и ], [ з: ], [ ], Being a good visual aid this way of notation can be strongly recommended for teaching the pronunciation of English to any audience.
But phonemic representation is rather imprecise as it gives too little information about the actual speech sounds. It incorporates only as much phonetic information as if is necessary to distinguish the functioning of sounds in a language. The narrow or phonetic transcription incorporates as much more phonetic information as the phonetician desires, or as he can distinguish. It provides special symbols to denote not only the phoneme as a language unit but also its allophonic modifications. The symbol [h] for instance indicates aspirated articulation, cf. [kheIt] – [skeIt]. This type of transcription is mainly used in research work. Sometimes, however, if may be helpful, at least in the early stages, to include symbols representing allophones in order to emphasize a particular feature of an allophonic modification, e.g. in the pronunciation of the consonant [f] it is often necessary to insist upon the soft and hard varieties of it by using not only [f] but also [f] (the indication of the hard variant).
Now that we know what the phoneme is let us view the main trends of the phoneme theory. Most linguists have looked upon the phoneme as one of the basic language units. But not all them have described it in the same way. The majority of them agree them the phoneme serves to distinguish morphemes and words thus being a functional unit. However, some of them define it in purely “psychological” terms, others prefer physically grounded definitions. Some scholars take into consideration only the abstract aspect of the phoneme, others stick phonology some of which be discussed below. Views of the phoneme seem to fall into main classes.
The “mentalistic” or “psychological” view regards the phoneme as an ideal “mental image” or a target at which the speaker aims. He deviates from this ideal sound partly because an identical repetition of a sound is next to impossible and partly because of the influence exerted by neighbouring sounds. Acoording to this conception allophones of the phoneme are varying materializations of it. This view was originated by the founder of the phoneme theory, the Russian lingust I.A. Baudauin de Courtenay (6) and something like it appears to have been adopted by E.D. Sapir. The same point of view was shared by other linguists, Alf. (76) for one, who described phonemes as “models which speakers seek to reproduce”.
The “psychological”, or “mentalistic” view of the phoneme was brought back into favour by generative phonology, and the idea of the phoneme as a “target” has recently been revived, albeit under different terminology by M. Tatham (77).
It is definitely not possible to establish such ideal sounds which do not exist in reality. For this reason the American linguist L. Bloomfield (46) and his followers rejected the view and the English phonetician D. Jones (64), while basically favourable to the view preferred in practice to take a "physical" view. This approach to the phoneme as a clearly idealistic one cannot be taken up by Soviet linguists.
The so-called "functional" view regards the phoneme as the mini mal sound unit by which meanings may be differentiated without much regard to actually pronounced speech sounds. Meaning differentiation is taken to be a defining chaiacteristic of phonemes. Thus the absence of palatalization in [?] and palatalization of [?] in English do not differenti ate meanings, and therefore [?] and [?] cannot be assigned to different phonemes but both form allophones of the phoneme [?]. The same articulatory features of the Russian [л] and [л/] do differentiate meanings, and hence [л] and [л'] must be assigned to different phonemes in Rus sian, cf. мол – моль, лог - лёг. According to this conception the phoneme is not a family of sounds, since in eveiy sound only a certain number of the articulatory features, that is those which form the in variant of the phoneme, are involved in the differentiation of meanings. It is the so-called distinctive features of the sound which make up the phoneme corresponding to it. For example, every sound of the English word ladder includes the phonetic feature of lenisness but this feature is distinctive only in the third sound [d], its absence here would give rise to a different word latter, whereas if any other sound becomes fortis the result is merely a peculiar version of ladder. The distinctive-ness of such a feature thus depends on the contrast between it and other possible features belonging to the same set, that is the state of the vocal cords. Thus when the above-mentioned features are distinc tive, lenisness contrasts with fortisness. Some approaches have taken these oppositions as the basic elements of phonological structure rather than the phonemes in the way the phoneme was defined above. The functional approach extracts non-distinctive features from the phonemes thus divorcing the phoneme from actually pronounced speech sounds. This view is shared by many foreign linguists: see in particular the works of N. Trubetskoy (34), L. Bloomfield (46), R. Jakobson (62), M. Halle (62).
The functional view of the phoneme gave rise to a branch of lin guistics called "phonology" or "phonemics" which is concerned with relationships between contrasting sounds in a language. Its special inter est lies in establishing the system of distinctive features of the language concerned. Phonetics is limited in this case with the precise description of acoustic and physiological aspects of physical sounds without any concern to their linguistic function. The supporters of this conception even recommend to extract phonetics from linguistic disciplines which certainly cannot be accepted by Soviet phoneticians.
A stronger form of the "functional" approach is advocated in the so-called "abstract" view of the phoneme, which regards phonemes as essentially independent of the acoustic and physiological properties asso ciated with them, that is of speech sounds. This view of the phoneme was pioneered by L. Hjelmslev and his associates in the Copenhagen Linguistic Circle, H.J. Uldall and K. Togby.
The views of the phoneme discussed above can be qualified as ide alistic since all of them regard the phoneme as an abstract conception existing in the mind but not in the reality, that is in human speech, speech sounds being only phonetic manifestations of these conceptions.
The "physical" view regards the phoneme as a "family" of related sounds satisfying certain conditions, notably:
1. The various members of the '"family" must show phonetic simi larity to one another, in other words be related in character.
2. No member of the "family" may occur in the same phonetic context as any other.
The extreme form of the "physical" conception as propounded by D. Jones (64) and shared by B. Bloch and J. Trager (45) excludes all reference to non-articulatory criteria in the grouping of sounds 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 of one sound for the other does not give rise to different words and different meaning. This approach may seem to be vulgarly materialist since it views the phoneme as a group of articulatorily similar sounds without any regard to its functional and abstract aspects.
Summarizing we may state that the materialistic conception of the phoneme first put forward by L.V. Shcherba may be regarded as the most suitable for the purpose of teaching.
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