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1 Language as “the most important means of human intercourse” exists in the
material form of speech sounds. It cannot exist without being spoken. Oral speech is
the primary process of communication by means of language. Written speech is
secondary; it represents what exists in oral speech.
2 Theoretical significance of phonetics is connected with the further development
of the problem of the synchronic study and description of the phonetic system of a
national language, the comparative analysis and description of different languages, the
study of the correspondences between them, the diachronic description of successive
changes in the phonetic system of a language or different languages.
Practical significance of phonetics is connected with teaching foreign languages.
Practical phonetics is applied in methods of speech correction, teaching deaf-mutes,
film dubbing, transliteration, radio and television.
3 Phonetics is connected with linguistic and non-linguistic sciences: acoustics,
physiology, psychology, logic, etc.
The connection of phonetics with grammar, lexicology and stylistics is exercised
first of all via orthography, which in its turn is very closely connected with phonetics.
Phonetics formulates the rules of pronunciation for separate sounds and sound
combinations.
4 The articulatory (sound-production) aspect. Speech sounds are products of
human organism. They result from the activities of the diaphragm, the lungs, the
bronchi, the trachea, the larynx with the vocal cords in it, the pharynx, the mouth
cavity with the speech organs situated in it and the nasal cavity.
The acoustic aspect. Like any other sound of nature speech sounds exist in the
form of sound waves and have the same physical properties-frequency, intensity,
duration and spectrum.
The auditory (sound-perception) aspect Every act of oral communication
presupposes the presence of at least two persons: the speaker and the hearer. The
former produces speech sounds, the latter perceives them. Thus speech sounds may
also be analysed from the point of view of perception.
The linguistic aspect. Speech sounds and prosodic features are linguistic
phenomena. They are realizations of language units-phonemes and prosodies.
Representing language units in actual speech, speech and prosodic features (pitch,
stress, temporal characteristics etc.) perform certain linguistic functions. They
constitute meaningful units-morphemes, words, word forms, utterances. All the words
of a language consist of speech sounds and have stress.
Physiological phonetics is concerned with the study of speech sounds as
physiological phenomena. It deals with our voice-producing mechanism and the way
we produce sounds, stress, intonation. It studies respiration, phonation (voice-
production), articulation and also the mental processes necessary for the mastery of a
phonetic system. Since sounds of speech are no only produced but are also perceived
by the listener and the speaker himself, physiological phonetics is also concerned with
man’s perception of sounds, pitch variation, loudness and length. In fact, physiological
phonetics can be subdivided into articulatory and auditory (perceptual) phonetics.
Acoustic phonetics is concerned with the acoustic aspect of speech sounds. It
studies speech sounds with the help of experimental (instrumental) methods. Various
kinds of apparatus are applied for analyzing sounds, stress, intonation and other
phonetic phenomena. For example, we use spectrographs to analyse the acoustic
spectra of sound, oscillographs and intonographs to analyse frequency, intensity and
duration. With the help of an electro-acoustic synthesizer synthetic speech is produced
which is a good means of testing the results of the electro-acoustic analysis.
5 Phonology, or function phonetics, is a purely linguistic branch of phonetics. It
deals with the functional aspect of speech sounds. Phonology sets out to determine the
phonetic distinctions which have a differential value in a language is as to establish the
system of phonemes and prosodemes.
6 Segmental phonology studies the way speech can be analyzed into discrete units, or segments, that constitute the basis of the sound system; and this, along with the analysis of the various phonetic features and processes which relate and differentiate these segments, is the subject-matter of this chapter.
7 Suprasegmental, also called prosodic feature, in phonetics, a speech feature such as stress, tone, or word juncture that accompanies or is added over consonants and vowels; these features are not limited to single sounds but often extend over syllables, words, or phrases
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A good dictionary gives information on a whole range of matters. As well as telling you what a word means (by translation or otherwise), it should at least give relevant information about its grammatical status and about its pronunciation.
There are various ways of giving information about pronunciation: respelling using orthographic conventions of the learner’s language, respelling using orthographic conventions of the target language, or phonetic notation. All of these can be regarded as types of phonetic transcription, though they may well vary considerably in quality.
The easiest transcription system for the beginner is arguably a respelling using the orthographic conventions of the first language: for example, showing English pronunciation in a Korean-English bilingual dictionary by transcribing English pronunciation into han’gŭl, in a Japanese-English bilingual dictionary by transcribing it into katakana, or in a Turkish-English bilingual dictionary by writing it in Latin letters with Turkish spelling conventions. In its crudest form, this has the major drawback of treating English as if its sound system were the same as that of the learner’s first language. At the very least the transcription system will need to be made more elaborate, and therefore more complicated, by devising ways of symbolizing those sounds of English that are not found in Korean, Japanese, or Turkish respectively. Obvious examples of such sounds are the two th-sounds of English, the voiceless and voiced dental fricatives heard in thin and this respectively; or the vowel sound of the word nurse (no matter whether we take British RP or GenAm as our pronunciation model for English)
Types of transcription
For the last part of this talk I would like to consider phonetic transcription from a more general point of view. Beginners in phonetics often imagine that in transcription we can use one symbol for each “sound”, a separate phonetic symbol for each sound-type our ears or our machines can detect.
However this approach is not practical. What might appear to be “the same sound” in two different languages usually turns out, on closer inspection, to exhibit certain differences. Even within a given language, “the same sound” usually comprises a fair number of different variants associated with different positions in the word or different phonetic environments. This is what lies behind the development, over the course of the past hundred years, of the notion of the phoneme (or of more sophisticated phonological units). It also explains why all phonetic transcription depends for its interpretation upon two things: the transcribed text itself, but also the conventions for its interpretation (Abercrombie 1964: 16-24; Jones, 1956: App. A).
The phonemic principle allows us to use the same transcription symbol for all the variants of a given phoneme. We can write the same /t/ in English /tɒp, stɒp, lɒt, rɒtn, bɒtl/, despite the clear differences in aspiration and type of release. We can write the same /aʊ/ in now, louder, mouth, outing, despite differences in the duration of the diphthong. These differences, though real, are a matter of conditioned variation, determined by phonetic context. Every language has its own phoneme system and its own rules for allophonic variation.
The simplicity principle tells us to use the simplest phonetic symbol consistent with the avoidance of ambiguity. Although a few languages distinguish between dental and alveolar plosives, most do not. Although a few distinguish between aspirated and unaspirated plosives, most do not. This means that it is acceptable to use the same symbol /t/ for a range of sound-types in different languages: in English for what is typically an aspirated alveolar, in French for an unaspirated dental, in Swedish for an aspirated dental, and in Dutch for an unaspirated alveolar. The alternative is an explosion of complicated symbols and dictionary entries full of difficult diacritics.
Until we have determined the phonemic structure of a language, we can produce only an impressionistic transcription depending on our familiarity with general-phonetic sound-types. Once we have worked out the phonemics, we can use a systematic transcription, which will be simpler. This is what is appropriate for dictionaries and language textbooks. When considering connected speech, however, we need to take account of the features of connected speech, of the phrase-level and sentence-level phonology: we can produce a “phonotypical” transcription of how we expect a given sentence to sound, or alternatively an impressionistic transcription of what was actually uttered on a given occasion. Each has its uses.
9 The study of phonetics has educational and social values for almost everyone, realizing the importance of language in human communication.
As phonetics is one of the branches of linguistics it is closely connected with its other branches.
Connection with Grammar.Many Soviet linguists of the past considered phonetics to be an integral part of grammar along with morphology and syntax, and grammar reference books in those years contained a chapter in phonetics.
Connection of phonetics with morphology is revealed in the fact that establishing grammar categories, morphology often applies to phonetic rules:
1) vowel shift in formation of
a) irregular plurals: foot [fut] – [fi:t];
b) forms of irregular verbs: swim [swim] – swam [sw æ m] – swum [sw ʌ m];
2) rules, regulating the reading of flexions of some grammatical categories:
a) forms of past tense of regular verbs: played [pleid], worked [w ɜ:kt], wanted
[w ɒ ntid];
b) plural form and possessive case of nouns: tables [teiblz], books [buks], boxes
[b ɒ ksiz], boy’s [b iz], cat’s [k æ ts], Alice’s [æ lisiz].
Phonetics is also connected with syntax. This connection is revealed in the fact that any sentence being read has always a definite prosodic contour. There are some tendencies in intonation of such syntactic structures as questions of different types, direct addresses, the author’s words, enumeration, greeting, saying good –bye, parenthesis.
Connection with Lexicology,to be precise with the word stock of the language. First of all, this connection is revealed in the fact that any word cannot exist without its sound shape. Besides, with the help of vowel and consonant shift there appears the formation of different parts of speech: wise [waiz]- wisdom [wizd ə m], breath [bre θ ] – breathe [ bri:ð ].
The change in accentual structure of the word may also bring change of the part of speech: contest (n) [`k ɒ ntest]- contest (v) [k ə n`test], import (n) [`imp ə t] – import (v) – [im`p ɔ: t].
Phonetics also defines the sound form of borrowed words: their accented structure and sound composition. For example, Russian name Бородино is pronounced with the last stressed syllable and vowel sound [o] in stressed position. In English it is pronounced as [, b ɒ r ɒ ` di:n ] (Borodino), i.e. with two stresses, main and secondary, according to the rhythmical tendency of accentuation of poly syllabic English words, and with diphthong [əu] at the end of the word, as letter o in final position in English is not reduced.
Connection with Stylistics. There areStylistic Devices based on repetition of sounds (rhyme – repetition of final sounds of a syllable, alliteration – repetition of certain sounds or their combinations, assonance – repetition of vowel sounds.
ONOMATOPOEIAis a combination of speech-sounds, which aims at imitating sounds produced in nature (wind, sea , thunder ).by things (machines, tools), by people (sighing, laughter, patter of feet) and by animals.
However, the closest connection of phonetics with stylistics is observed at the intonation level. With the help of intonation means a speaker can express his/her feelings and emotions, attitude to the situation or the subject of conversation.
Phonostylisticsis a new trend in phonetics that has been lately established for the purposes of studying prosodic and sound peculiarities of texts, belonging to different genres: narrative and scientific prose, fairy tale, poetry, public and spontaneous speech and others.
Connection with Dialectology.One of the phonetic research deals withthe sound and intonation peculiarities of speech of the speakers of dialect and regional types of pronunciation in comparison with the Received Pronunciation.
Phonetics is interested in the way people’s pronunciation forms vary in different social situations. Sociophonetics,quite a new branch of Phoneticsdeals with the way language and its variations function in the speech community, social environment.
10 The methods of investigation used in phonetics vary, but there are three
principal methods: (1) the direct observation method; (2) the linguistic method; (3) the
experimental method.
1 The direct observation method comprises three important modes of phonetic
analysis: by ear, by sight and by muscular sensation. Investigation by means of this
method can be effective only if the persons employing it have been specially trained to
observe the minutest movements of their own and other people’s speech organs, and to
distinguish the slightest variations in sound quality.
2. The aim of the linguistic method of investigation of any concrete phonetic
phenomena, such as sound, stress, intonation or any other feature, is to determine in
what way all of these phonetic features are used in a language to convey a certain meaning.
3. The experimental method is based, as a rule, upon the use of special apparatus
or instruments, such as the laryngoscope, the artificial palate, the kymograph, the
magnetic tape recorder, the oscillograph, the intonograph.