Lecture 2

Phoneme Theory
Contents
Introduction
I.Phoneme Theory
II.Prague Phonological School
III.London Phonological School
IV.American Phonological school
Conclusion

Lab.: Phoneme vs. allophone

Minimal pairs
Introduction
Every language has a limited number of sound types which are shared by all the
speakers of the language and are linguistically important because they distinguish
words in the language. The segmental phoneme is the smallest (i.e. further
indivisible into smaller consecutive segments) language unit that exists in the
speech sounds which are capable of differentiating one word from another. They
also can distinguish one grammatical form of the same word. Speech sounds can
perform such distinctive function only when they are opposed to each other or to no
sound in one and the same position. For example, the English words bid [bid], bed
[bed] and bad [bd] are distinguished from one another by the vowel sounds [i],
[e], [m] occurring in the same position. Therefore, these different vowel sounds
represent different phonemes in English. In the pair of words bad [bred] and add
[d] the consonant [b] is opposed to no sound in the same position (zero
opposition) thus differentiating the two words. The vowel sounds [] and [e] are
capable of differentiating the grammatical forms of one and the same word, e.g. the
singular form man [mn] and the plural form men [men]. This is another proof that
[e] and [] represent different phonemes in English. The consonants [s] and [z]
differentiate such words as advice [d`vais] and advise [d `vaiz] while the
consonants [s] and [t] distinguish the grammatical forms of such a verb as 'to ask'
[a:sk] - asks [a:sks] - asked [a:skt]. Therefore the consonant sounds [s, t] represent
different English phonemes, [z] and [t] respectively. In speech the phoneme serves
to perform three functions: a) constitutive, because sounds constitute words,
phrases and sentences, b) distinctive, because sounds help to distinguish them, c)
recognitive as it helps to recognize words and consequently phrases and sentences.
The actual speech sounds pronounced by a speaker are variants or allophones of
phonemes. Every phoneme displays a vast range of variation in connected speech.
Variants are speech sounds the quality of which depends either on a) the region
where the speaker lives or b) on the individual peculiarities of the speaker's speech
apparatus, so they can be: a) regional. It is caused by concrete historical tendencies
active in certain locality. For example, the variant of [re] phoneme involves
significant changes in its length, because in some dialects [re] is much longer than
the standard sound. As to its quality, it ranges from a front open [re] in the southern
part of England to [a] in Northern England. Such type of variants does not affect
intelligibility of speech, yet they inform the listener about the speaker's origin (i.e.
the region he comes from) and his social standing; b) individual. This kind of
variants embraces the individual peculiarities of articulating sounds, which are
caused by the shape and form of the speaker's speech organs and by his
articulatory habits. For example, a speaker may mumble or lisp (say "thish ish" for
"this is"), or stammer (say "a f-f-fine d-d-day"). Individual variants may cause a lot of
difficulties in communication. At the same time they enable people to identify the
speech of definite individuals.

Allophones are speech sounds the quality of which depends either a) on the
position in the word or b) on the combination with other speech sounds. So
allophones can be: a) positional. They are used in certain positions traditionally. For
example, the English [I) is realized in actual speech as a positional allophone: it is
clear in the individual position and dark in the terminal position, compare "light",
"let" and "hill" , "mill" ; b) combinatory. They appear in the process of speech and
result from the influence of one phoneme upon another. Allophones are realized in
concrete words. To distinguish the sound types from their allophones in writing, two
types of brackets are used: slant like for the phonemes proper, and
square - for their allophones, e.g. the phoneme /1/ has two positional allophones:
clear [1) and dark [1). In practical teaching the most important allophones should
be mentioned to teach the pupils their correct pronunciation. Complementary
distribution is another pattern of, phoneme environment, when one and the same
phoneme occurs in a definite set of contexts in which no other phoneme ever
occurs. The allophones of one and the same phoneme never occur in the same
context, variants of one phoneme are mutually exclusive.
1.Phoneme Theory
The founder of the Phoneme theory was L.A.Baudouin de Courteney, the Russian
scientist of Polish origin. His theory of phoneme was developed and perfected by
L.V.Shcherba - the head of the Leningrad linguistic school. L.A.Baudouin de
Courteney-defined the phoneme as a psychical image of a sound or one common to
several sounds. Actually according to his conception pronounced speech sounds
are, but imperfect realizations of such ideal psychical images, so in his opinion there
is a discrepancy between an intended sound and the one really pronounced.
L.A.Baudouin de Courteney was an adherent to and an active exponent of the socalled psycho logistic school of thought in linguistics widely current in his time. His
pupil and disciple, L.V.Shcherba, who took the Phoneme theory a stage further, was
naturally under the influence of his teacher's views and of the general trend in
linguistics then current. He stated that in actual speech we utter a much greater
variety of sounds than we are aware of and that in every language these sounds are
united in a comparatively small number of sounds types, which are capable of
distinguishing the meaning and the form of words - that is to serve the purpose of
social intercommunication. It is these sound types that should be included into the
classification of phonemes and studied as differentiatory units of a language. In
another variety of the entirely abstract ional conception of the phoneme the latter is
regarded as a disembodied unit of language. This conception was originated by
Ferdinand de Saussure, the famous Swiss linguist, who was the first exponent of the
Phoneme theory in Western Europe. The distinctive feature of his viewpoint was his
complete disregard for the material aspect and the recognitive function of the
phoneme.
With the spread of the Phoneme theory to and in the USA, originally in F. De
Saussure's interpretation, the exclusively abstractional view of the phoneme was
shared by some American linguists. The denial in American linguists of the objective
reality of the phoneme has been carried to an extreme in what is known as the
fictionalists view of the phoneme launched by W.F.Twaddel. He declares the
phoneme "an abstractional, fictious unit".
There,however existed the second group of phonological conceptions, which were
the oppositions of the purely abstractional ones. One of the most typical definitions
of this kind was put forward in D.Jones' book "An Outline of English Phonetics", it
was as follows, "A phoneme may be described roughly as a family of sounds
consisting of an important sound of the language together with other related sounds
which "take its place" in particular sound-sequences or under particular conditions
of length or stress or intonation". Definitions of the phoneme in which its functional

aspect is not reflected do not form a separate group: they belong either to the first
group (purely abstractional) or to the second (vulgarly materialistic). It is assumed
that for teaching purposes the most suitable viewpoint is that of L.V.Shcherba and
his followers. Accordingly, the phoneme is characterized by definite articulatory and
acoustic characteristics and can be easily described as a separate unit of the sound
system of language. Whereas the other viewpoints treat the phoneme as a
phonological unit which is devoid of articulatory and acoustic characteristics,
because even its phonologically relevant features appear to be unstable (they can
be neutralized). Moreover, the phoneme in that sense embraces sounds that can be
assigned to other phonemes as well (the so-called "common" allophones). Such an
approach lacks the practical application of phonology to teaching pronunciation. The
existence of a number of viewpoints on phonological problems can be explained by
the well-known fact that language is too
complicated for all its features to be described in terms of anyone theory.
2. A phoneme can only perform its distinctive function if it is opposed to another
phoneme (or to no sound) in the same position. Such opposition is called distinctive,
or phonological. There exists a very thorough and rather complicated classification
of phonological oppositions, such as one worked out by N.S.Trubetzkoy in his book
"Grundzilge der Phonologie" ('Foundations of Phonetics'). This classification is based
on the number of distinctive articulatory features underlying the opposition. For
instance, if the opposition is based on a single difference in the articulation of two
speech sounds; it is a single phonological opposition, e.g. the opposition between [p] and [t] as in [pen] - [ten], bilabial
and forelingual, all the other features being the same. If the sounds in distinctive
opposition have two differences in their articulation, the opposition is called double,
e.g. the opposition between [p] and [d] as in [pen] - [den]: (1) bilabial and
forelingual, (2) voiceless-fortis and voiced-lenis. If there are three articulatory
differences, the opposition is a triple one, or the sum of three single oppositions,
e.g. the opposition between [p] and [] as in [pei] - [ei]. (1) bilabial and
forelingual, (2) occlusive and constrictive, (3) voiceless-fortis and voiced-lenis.
Thus, double and multiple phonological opposition are analyzable into the
corresponding sum of single oppositions and the establishment of the phonemic
system of a language is actually the establishment of all the single phonological
oppositions existing in it. N.S.Trubetzkoy further developed his system of
oppositions by giving special prominence to the most essential members: 1) the
phoneme which he defines as a unity of the phonologically relevant features of a
sound 2) the speech sound, which he defines as a unity of all the features, both
relevant and irrelevant of a sound representing the phoneme in connected speech.
Some oppositions may be neutralized as, for example, the German [d - t] in final
positions of words. The phoneme in the position of neutralization was called (by
N.S.Trubetzkoy) the arch-phoneme and defined as "a unity of relevant features
common to two phonemes". It is therefore an abstraction. N.S.Trubetzkoy
emphasizes the fact that the inventory of the phonemes of a language is practically
a correlation of its system of phonological oppositions.
One of the main problems of the Phoneme theory is the problem of identifying
phonemes in different allomorphs of the same morpheme. Depending on the point
of view on this problem linguists of Russia belong either to the Moscow Phonological
School or to the Leningrad Phonological School. The representatives of the Moscow
trend (A.A. Reformatsky, R.S.Kusnetsov, R.I.Avanessov, M.V.Panov, etc.) investigate
the phoneme on the material of the Russian language. They did a lot its thorough
and multilateral morpho-phonological analysis. A number of linguists of the Moscow
School have developed Baudouin's morphological Phoneme theory of the early
period Prof. RI.Avanessov in his book on Russian phonetics, has made a thorough
analysis of this conception and is of the opinion that it lacks precision.

He states that it has all the weak points of Baudouin's earlier morphological
phoneme theory with the addition that it has become more complicated because of
the introduction of two notions: 1) that of phonemic variations and 2) that of
phonemic variants. Variations, according to the Moscow group of linguists are the
concrete representations of phonemes in "strong" positions. Variants include all the
alternation series that can be found within the same morpheme. Such a conception
makes the phoneme idea very obscure. The representatives of the Leningrad School
(L.V.Shcherba's followers: L.R.Zinder,
O.I.Dickushina, V.A.Vassilyev etc) analyze and investigate sounds as real speech
units. Shcherba's disciples always cared for the practical appliance of phonemic
analysis. For example, in solving the problem of phoneme identification in the
neutral position they advocate the autonomy of the phoneme, its independence
from the morpheme, which is simpler for practical purposes.
The phoneme theory has also been developed in other countries.
The Prague Phonological School The Phoneme idea was further developed by
the Linguistic Society of Prague (Circle Linguistique de Prague). Among the linguists
of this society there were a number of well-known scholars who had created quite a
revolution in linguistics. The most prominent members are Dr. V.Mathesius, Prof.
N.S.Trubetzkoy, Prof. R.Jakobson, Prof. B.Trinka, Prof. J.Vachek. It was N.S.Trubetzkoy
who first became acquainted with the phoneme theory through the words of
Baudouin and L.V.Shcherba while he was studying at the University of Moscow, and
as a member of the Moscow Linguistic Society. However he did not approve of the
definitions of the phoneme as formulated by
Baudouin and by Shcherbas, yet he admitted his point of view to be a development
of the essential points of these two systems. The main points of N.S.Trubetzkoy's
theory were: 1) the separation of phonology from phonetics 2) the theory of
phonological oppositions 3) the theory or arch-phoneme.
3. The London School of Phonology. It was headed by Prof. Daniel Jones of
London and is considered to represent the physical conception of the phoneme.
D.Jones' conceptions show the influence of N.S.Trubetzkoy. In most of D.Jones' works
his treatment of phonemes is connected with philosophy, and even metaphysics, so
that a linguist cannot cope with it. And yet his object is to give the phoneme a
purely practical application: it is useful in teaching languages, in creating phonemic
transcription, etc. He considers that it is impossible to give an adequate definition of
the phoneme. Since the term "language" is vague and may be taken as a primary
notion only, a language can be said to exist only in some mentalistic or non-material
sense. Thus there are elements of agnosticism in his teaching.
The Copenhagen Trend. This trend is represented by L.Hejelmslev who claims "an
utter
estrangement" between phonetics and phonology. To L.Hejelmslev a language is a
system of signs, a code like any other code used by a human community. The
Copenhagen trend tries to represent all linguistic phenomena as a series of
"relations" and mathematical "rations". All the former linguistic terminology has
been given up and new "metalinguistic" terminology has been substituted.
R.Jakobson and M.Halle term this approach to linguistic problems "algebraic".
4.The American Phonological School The' Phoneme theory in America, headed
by Edward Sapir and Leonard Bloomfield, may be characterized as structuralism.
Leonard Bloomfield defined the phoneme as "a minimal unit of distinctive sound feature", Twaddle defines it as "an abstractional fiction". The American trend in
Phonology becomes more and more inclined towards abstractional views. According
to Ch.F.Hockett, language may be compared to any system of codes. Such notions
are characteristic of the Copenhagen School. The American structuralists are
frequently alluded to as "descriptivists" for their treatment of phonetics as
synchronic and descriptive. All the phenomena of language are analyzed in their
present condition without any connection with the history of the language in
question.

Conclusion
The phoneme is a minimal abstract linguistic unit realized in speech in the form of
speech sounds opposable to other phonemes of the same language to distinguish
the meaning of morphemes and words. Shcherba was the first to define a phoneme
as a real, independent, distinctive unit which manifests itself in the form of
allophones. The professor Vasiliev developed this theory and presented a detailed
definition of the phoneme in his book English Phonetics. He wrote that a phoneme
is a dialectal unity of three aspects:
1) material, real, objective;
2) abstactional and generalized;
3) functional.
It serves to perform the following functions.
1. distinctive
2. constitutive
3. recognative
Firstly, the phoneme is a functional unit. In phonetics function is usually understood
as a role of the various units of the phonetic system in distinguishing one
morpheme from another, one word from another or one utterance from another. The
opposition of phonemes in the same phonetic environment differentiates the
meaning of morphemes and words: e.g. bath-path, light-like. Sometimes the
opposition of phonemes serves to distinguish the meaning of the whole phrases: He
was heard badly - He was hurt badly. Thus we may say that the phoneme can fulfill
the distinctive function.
Secondly, the phoneme is material, real and objective. That means it is realized in
speech in the form of speech sounds, its allophones. The phonemes constitute
() the material form of morphemes, so this function may be called
constitutive function.
Thirdly, the phoneme performs the recognative function, because the use of the
right allophones and other phonetic units facilitates normal recognition. We may
add that the phoneme is a material and objective unit as well as an abstract and
generalized one at the same time.

Lab.: Phoneme and allophones

Minimal Pairs

A phoneme is a distinct sound in speech. They are often indicated with slash
marks around them, like this: /p/ Phonemes go together to make up words. For
example, /p/ + /a/ + /n/ = pan. If changing one of the sounds will make the word
have a different meaning, that sound is a phoneme. For example, changing the /n/
to /t/ would make the word "pan" change into "pat", a word with a completely
different meaning.
Allophones are slight variations on specific phonemes. They are often not
noticeable in everyday speech unless you are listening for them. Allophones are
often responsible for different accents and manners of speech. For example, you
could say the word "stop" with an explosive little puff of air at the end, as when
someone is exasperated. Or you could say it by simply closing your lips on the p
and not releasing any air, as when someone is impatient and snapping at someone
else. In either case, the phoneme has not changed - it is still a /p/, and the word
meaning is still the same. Each slight variations in how the /p/ is expressed would
be called an allophone.

In phonology, minimal pairs are pairs of words in a particular language that differ
in only one phonological element, such as a phoneme and have distinct meanings.
They are used to demonstrate that two phones constitute two separate phonemes
in the language.
Many phonologists in the middle part of the 20th century had a strong interest in
developing techniques for discovering the phonemes of unknown languages, and in
some cases setting up writing systems for these languages. The major work
of Kenneth Pike on the subject has the title Phonemics: a technique for reducing
languages to writing.The minimal pair was an essential tool in the discovery
process, arrived at by substitution or commutation tests.[3] Modern phonology is
much less interested in such issues, and the minimal pair is consequently
considered to be of little theoretical importance.
As an example for English vowels, the pair "let" + "lit" can be used to demonstrate
that the phones [] (in let) and [] (in lit) do in fact represent distinct
phonemes //and //. An example for English consonants is the minimal pair of "pat"
+ "bat". The following table shows other pairs demonstrating the existence of
various distinct phonemes in English. All the possible minimal pairs for any
language may be set out in the same way.

word 1
pin bin
rot
lot
thigh thy
zeal seal
bin bean
pen pan
hat had

word 2
IPA 1 IPA 2 note
/pn/ /bn/ initial consonant
/rt/ /lt/
/a/ /a/
/zil/ /sil/
/bn/ /bin/ vowel
/pn/ /pn/
/ht/ /hd/final consonant

Lecture 3
Segmental level
The classification of English phonemes
Lab.:classification of English Cons-s and Vowels
Introduction
When we listen to someone talk, we hear speech but perceive segments,
psychological units which correspond more or less to 'speech sounds.' It is
necessary to make this distinction because the sound waves produced by the vocal
tract are continuous (not divided neatly into individual sounds); however, our
interpretation of these sound waves is discrete (we perceive distinct sounds, one
following the other). For example, if someone utters the word war within our
hearing, what we actually hear is a sound that gradually changes shape through
time. What we perceive, however, is a series of three discrete segments: w-a-r. This
distinction between hearing and perceiving is fundamental to an appreciation

of phonology, although it is not an easy concept to grasp. . . .

"Speech refers to what we are actually doing when we talk and
listen; phonology refers to the segments and rules in terms of which we organize
our interpretation of speech. Put another way, speech refers to physical or
physiological phenomena, and phonology refers to mental or psychological
phenomena."
(Frank Parker and Kathryn Riley, Linguistics for Non-Linguists. Allyn and Bacon,
1994)
Phonetic Segmentation
"An utterance is said to consist of phonetic segments, each consisting of a
constellation of articulatory figures. Segments are easy to demonstrate with
well-chosen examples, such as the eight English words cats, tacks, stack,
cast, task, asked, sacked, and scat, each of which contains the same four,
evidently discrete, components--in very crude phonetics, [s], [k], [t], and [].
. . . From the phonetic point of view, it is clear that there are four separate
phonetic events (the segments) in a complex articulation like [stk], with
easy-to-hear boundaries between them.
"Even with examples of this kind, on close examination the question of
discrete phonetic segmentation turns out to be complex; and segmentation is
downright elusive in the case of words like warrior or yellow. It is convenient,
however, and usually not too much of an idealization, to regard all utterances
as segmentable into discrete elements articulated sequentially, called speech
sounds or (more formally) phones."
(Andrew L. Sihler, Language History: An Introduction. John Benjamins, 2000)
In linguistics (specifically, phonetics and phonology), a segment is "any discrete
unit that can be identified, either physically or auditorily, in the stream of speech"

"In phonology, a major division is often made into segmental and

suprasegmental (or 'non-segmental') categories. Segmental
phonology analyses the speech into distinctive units, or phonemes (=
'segmental phonemes'), which have a fairly direct correspondence with
phonetic segments (alternative approaches involve analysis in terms
of distinctive features and prosodies). Suprasegmental or non-segmental
phonology analyses those features of speech which extend over more than
one segment, such as intonation or (in some theories) vowel harmony."
(David Crystal, A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics, 4th ed. Blackwell,
1997)

In all languages speech sounds are traditionally divided into two main types
vowels and consonants.
From the articulatory point of view the main principles of the division are as follows:
1. the presence or absence of obstruction; 2. the distribution of muscular tension; 3.
the force of the stream of air coming from the lungs.
Vowels are speech sounds based on voice which is modified in the supralaringeal
cavities. There is no obstruction in their articulation. The muscular tension is spread
evenly throughout the speech organs. The force of the stream of air is rather weak.
Consonants are speech sounds in the articulation of which there is an
obstruction, the removal of which causes noise, plosion or friction. The muscular
tension is concentrated at the place of obstruction. The stream of air is strong. The
articulatory boundary between vowels and consonants is not well- marked. There
exist speech sounds that occupy an intermediate position between vowels and

consonants. These are sonorants [m,n,n,l,w,r,]. The wide passage for the stream of
air in the articulation of sonorants means that the oral and nasal cavities are active.
The classification of English consonants.
In the English consonant system there are 24 consonants. The quality of the
consonants depends on several aspects: 1. the work of the vocal cords; 2. what
cavity is used as a resonator; 3. the force of the articulation and some other factors.
There are 3 principles of consonant classification: 1. the type of obstruction and the
manner of production of noise. We distinguish 2 classes of consonants: a) occlusive
c., in the production of which a complete obstruction is formed [t, b,g]; b)
constrictive c., in the production of which an incomplete obstruction is formed.
[s,z,] Each of the two classes is subdivided into noise consonants and sonorants.
Noise consonants are divided into plosives (or stops) and affricates and constrictive
sounds. Sonorants are divided into occlusive and constrictive sounds. Constrictive
sonorants may be medial [n] and lateral [l].
2.Another principle is the place of articulation. Consonants are classed into 1)
labial, 2) lingual, 3) glottal. The first class is subdivided into a) bilabial [p]; b) labiodental [v]; the second class is subdivided into: a) fore lingual or apical, articulated
with the tip of the tongue [l, t, n, d], b) mediolingual [j], c)back lingual [k, g,], d)
pharingal [h].
3.The next principle is the presence or absence of voice which depends on the work
of the vocal cords. All voiced consonants are weak (lenis) and all voiceless c. are
strong (fortis).).
The classification of English vowels. In the E. vowel system there are 12
vowel monophthongs and 8 or 9 diphthongs. The quality of a vowel depends, first of
all, on its stability, on the tongue position, lip position, character of the vowel end,
length, tenseness. 1. According to this principle E. vowels are subdivided into
monophthongs, b) diphthongs, c) diphthongoids.[ i: ], [ u: ]. According to the
position of the tongue vowels are classed from vertical and horizontal planes. From
the horizontal plane vowels are divided into : 1. front; 2. front-retracted ; 3.central ;
4. back ; 5. back-advanced. From the vertical plane E. vowels are divided into: 1.
close; 2. mid; 3. open. Each class has wide and narrow variations. According to the
lip rounding vowels have 3 positions: spread, neutral, rounded. The next point is
checkness. All E. short vowels are checked when stressed. The degree of checkness
depends on the following consonant. All long vowels are free. According to the
length E. vowels are traditionally divided into short and long vowels, it is a historical
phenomenon. Besides, there exists the positional length of vowels, depending on
the position of a vowel in a word. From the point of view of tenseness all historically
long vowels are tense, while short vowels are lax.
The diphthong theory. The phonemic status of English diphthongs is still a
question of discussion. Diphthongs are complex units of the two elements which are
closely blended together. They are syllabically indivisible,the length of diphthongs is
the same as that of English long vowels. In Russian there are no diphthongs, only
combinations of sounds where both elements are equally energetic and distinct.
English diphthongs consist of two elements, the first of which is a nucleus, strong
and distinct; the second is a glide, which is very weak and indistinct. There exist
languages where the second element of a diphthong is a nucleus, being strong and
distinct, while the first element is weak and indistinct.(Italian, Latvian- piano,
ruoka). Such diphthongs are considered to be false and rising, while English
diphthongs are considered to be true and falling. There are 8 English diphthongs:
close |ie|, |ue|; mid |ou|, |ei|; open |ea|, |oi|, |ai|, |au|. They are characterized
according to the tongue position and the position of the lips.
Lab.: Classification of English Consonants and Vowels

Consonants are made with air stream that meets an obstruction in the mouth or
nasal cavities . Thats why in the production of cons-t sounds there is a certain
degree of noise.
There are 20 consonant letters in the English alphabet. They represent 24
consonant sounds. They are distinguished from one another by
1. the degree of noise
2. the manner of articulation
3. the place of articulation
1. DEGREE OF NOISE
- noise cons-s in its production there is a noise component characteristic. Noise
cons-s sounds vary:
1. in the work of the vocal cords (voiced b,d,g,v,6,z;,; voiceless p,t,k,f,0,)
2. in the degree of force of articulation (strong (or fortis) p,t,k,f,0,s,h; weak (or
lenis) b,d,g,v,)
- sonorants are made with tone prevailing over noise because of a rather wide air
passage m,n,n,,w,l,r,
2. THE MANNER OF ARTICULATION
1. Occlusive - are sounds in the production which the air stream meets a complete
obstruction in mouth (they are also called plosives). According to the work of the
vocal cords stops may be voiced and voiceless. Occlusive voiced: b, d, g. Occlusive
voiceless: the English [p, t, k]. Occlusive sonorants: [m, n, n,].
2. Constrictive - the air stream meets an incomplete obstruction in the resonator, so
the air passage is constricted (). Constrictive noise are called friatives - f, v,
0, 6, s, z, h. Constrictive sonorants - w, r, l, j
3. Occlusive-constrictive (affricates) are noise consonant sounds produced with a
complete obstruction which is slowly released and the air escapes from the mouth
with some friction. There are only two occlusive-constrictives in English: [ ]
4. Rolled are sounds pronounced with periodical momentary obstructions when the
tip of the tongue taps quickly several times against the teeth ridge and vibrates in
the air stream. They are the Russian [p, p'].
3. THE PLACE OF ARTICULATION
1. Labial - are made by the lips. They may be bilabial (when both lips are active - p,
b, m, w) and labio-dental are articulated with the lower lip against the edge of the
upper teeth - f, v
2. Lingual - are classified into forelingual, mediolingual (j) and backlingual (k,g,n,)
According to the place of obstruction forelingual consonants may be: Interdental
(g,d), Dental Alveolar (t,d,s,z,n,l), Post-alveolar (r), Palato-alveolar (
).
3. Glottal - h
Vowels are speech sounds produced without obstructing the flow of air from the
lungs, so that the breath stream passes freely through the mouth.
On the articulatory level there are several classifications, according to
1. THE STABILITY OF ARTICULATION
Vowel sounds are divided into monophthongs, diphthongs, and triphthongs.
A monophthong consists of only one vowel sound that does not change during its
articulation (i, e, 96, u)
A diphthong is a complex vowel sound that consists of two components (ei, ai, oi,
au)
A triphthong is a complex vowel sound that consists of three components (our, fire,
player)
2. THE TONGUE POSITION
- When the tongue moves forward and backward
front when the tongue is in the front part of the mouth and the front part of it is
raised to the hard palate i:, e, 96
front-retracted - the tongue is in the front part of the mouth but slightly retracted
() and the part of the tongue nearer to centre than to front is raised i

central the front of the tongue is raised towards the back part of the hard palate
v, :,
back the tongue is in the back part of the mouth and the back of it is raised
towards the soft palate a:, o, o:, u:
back-advanced the tongue is in the back part of the mouth but is slightly
advanced - u
- When the tongue moves up and down
close the front or the back of the tongue is raised high towards the palate i:, i, u,
u:
open the front or the back of the tongue is as low as possible in the mouth 96,
a:, o. o:
mid the highest part of the tongue occupies the position intermediate between the
close and the open one e, v, :,
3. LIP POSITION
unrounded i:, i, e, 96, a:, v, :,
rounded o, o:, u, u:
4. CHARACTER OF VOWEL END
checked if a vowel is followed by a strong voiceless cons-t ex, better, cart
free if a vowel is followed by a weak voiced cons-t before, begger
5. Vowel length
long i:, a:, o:, u:, :
short i, e, o, u, v,

Lecture 4
Types of Transcription
IPA
Contents
Introduction
1.Broad Transcription
2.Narrow Transcription
3.IPA
a)origin of IPA
b)uses of IPA
Transcription in the linguistic sense is the systematic representation
of language in written form.
The system of phonetic notations is generally termed as transcription.
Transcription is a set of symbols representing speech sounds. The first type of
notation is broad or phonemic transcription which provides special symbols for all
the phonemes of a language. The second type the narrow or allophonic
transcription suggests special symbols including some notes about the articulation
of a particular allophone. It is used in research work.
1.What is phonemic transcription?
Phonemic transcription is the most common type of phonetic transcription. This is
the type that is used in English dictionaries. Phonemic transcription is also
called broad transcription, as opposed to narrow transcription .
How does phonemic transcription work?
Suppose we have two different English sounds. Should we give them separate
symbols in transcriptions? In phonemic transcription, the answer is yes only if
there is an English word where saying one sound instead of another changes
the meaning.
For example, saying d instead of t in the word bet changes the meaning (the
word becomes bed), therefore we use separate symbols for d and t in phonemic
transcriptions. In other words, we say that t and d are two separate
phonemes.
On the other hand, the flap t (in this pronunciation of the word letter) and the
regular t (in this one) are two very different sounds. However, there are no
English words where saying the flap t instead of the regular t (or the other way
around) changes the meaning. Therefore, in phonemic transcription, we use the
same symbol for the flap t and the regular t. In other words, we say that the flap
t and the regular t are the same phoneme.
More examples
Each of these examples gives two different sounds that are written with the
same symbol in phonemic transcription. In other words, the two sounds are the
same phoneme.
the clear l in lean and the dark l in hill (the second sounds like a vowel
and the tongue does not touch the top of your mouth; the difference is
especially audible in British English)
the ee sound in this pronunciation of meet and this one (the second is
much longer)
the p sound in pin and spin (the first is accompanied by more breathing)
the w sound in wet and twice (the first is voiced, the second is not)

A. C. Gimsons system
The most popular system of phonemic transcription was created by A. C. Gimson,
the editor of the 13th edition of the English Pronouncing Dictionary, published in
1967. It is used (usually with certain small changes) in nearly all dictionaries
published in Britain.
Gimsons system uses symbols from the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) to
represent phonemes. Of course, some phonemes can be pronounced in many ways
(as explained above), and therefore could be written with many IPA symbols. For
example, the t phoneme can be spoken like the regular t sound (IPA symbol t) or
like the flap t sound (IPA symbol tt or ). In such cases, A. C. Gimson simply chose
one of the possible IPA symbols. Thus, the t phoneme is represented by
the t symbol.
There are two problems with Gimsons phonemic system:
It uses IPA symbols for sounds to represent phonemes, which can be
confusing, because the symbol t can mean both the t phoneme and the t
sound. To help solve this problem, we place IPA symbols between slashes/'lak
s/ when we mean phonemes and between square brackets[lak s] when
we mean sounds.
Moreover, some of the phoneme symbols chosen by Gimson are problematic.
For example, in Gimsons system, rule is transcribed as /ru:l/. But the IPA
symbol r does not correspond to the American or British rsound. It represents
a different r sound one used e.g. in SpanishandPolish. The
American/British r sound is actually represented by another IPAsymbol: . So
a regular r seems a strange choice to represent the English rphoneme.
2.Narrow phonetic transcription
The other type of phonetic transcription is much more detailed than phonemic
transcription. In narrow transcription, we use different symbols e.g. for:
the p sound in pin and spin (the first is accompanied by more breathing)
the w sound in wet and twice (the first is voiced, the second is not)
the u sound in this pronunciation of flu and this one (the second has a
longer u sound)
the flap t in this pronunciation of letter and regular t in this one (the first is
voiced and flapped)
Narrow transcription also uses symbols of the International Phonetic Alphabet.
However, it uses more symbols than Gimsons phonemic transcription. Narrow
transcription is mainly used by phoneticians
There are two principal types of brackets used to set off IPA transcriptions:
[square brackets] are used with phonetic notations, possibly including
details of the pronunciation that may not be used for distinguishing words in
the language being transcribed, but which the author nonetheless wishes to
document.
/slashes/ are used for phonemic notations, which note only features that are
distinctive in the language, without any extraneous detail.
For example, while the /p/ sounds of pin and spin are pronounced slightly differently
in English (and this difference would be meaningful in some languages), the
difference is not meaningful in English. Thus phonemically the words
are /pn/ and /spn/, with the same /p/ phoneme. However, to capture the difference
between them (the allophones of /p/), they can be transcribed phonetically
as [pn] and [spn].
3.International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)
Origin

The IPA was first published in 1888 by the Association Phontique Internationale
(International Phonetic Association), a group of French language teachers founded
by Paul Passy. The aim of the organisation was to devise a system for transcribing
the sounds of speech which was independent of any particular language and
applicable to all languages.
A phonetic script for English created in 1847 by Isaac Pitman and Henry Ellis was
used as a model for the IPA.
Uses
The IPA is used in dictionaries to indicate the pronunciation of words.
The IPA has often been used as a basis for creating new writing systems for
previously unwritten languages.
The IPA is used in some foreign language text books and phrase books to
transcribe the sounds of languages which are written with non-latin
alphabets. It is also used by non-native speakers of English when learning to
speak English.
The International Phonetic Alphabet is an alphabetic system of phonetic
notation based primarily on the Latin alphabet. It was devised by the International
Phonetic Association as a standardized representation of the sounds of oral
language.] The IPA is used by lexicographers,foreign language students and
teachers, linguists, speech-language pathologists, singers, actors, constructed
language creators, and translators.
The IPA is designed to represent only those qualities of speech that are part of oral
language: phones, phonemes ,intonation, and the separation
of words and syllables. To represent additional qualities of speech, such as tooth
gnashing, lisping, and sounds made with a cleft palate, an extended set of symbols
called the Extensions to the IPA may be used.
IPA symbols are composed of one or more elements of two basic
types, letters and diacritics. For example, the sound of the English letter t may be
transcribed in IPA with a single letter, [t], or with a letter plus diacritics, [tt],
depending on how precise one wishes to be. Often, slashes are used to signal broad
or phonemic transcription; thus, /t/ is less specific than, and could refer to,
either [tt] or [t], depending on the context and language.
Occasionally letters or diacritics are added, removed, or modified by the
International Phonetic Association. As of the most recent change in 2005, there are
107 letters, 52 diacritics, and four prosodic marks in the IPA. These are shown in
the current IPA chart,

Lecture 5.
Syllable as a phonological unit.
Introduction
Syllable is the smallest unit, into which the speech continuum is divided. It is the
smallest pronunciation and perceptible unit since, as is known, in connected
speech sounds are not pronounced separately; it is practically impossible to draw
articulatory boundaries between them. Boundaries between the sounds in a syllable
are not clearly marked. On the contrary, boundaries between syllables are marked
by the alternation of increases and decreases in articulatory tension. So the syllable
is the smallest pronunciation unit; it is also the smallest perceptible unit. The
syllable is a fundamentally important unit both in phonetics and in phonology.

Sounds are the smallest segments into which the speech continuum is divided for
purposes of analysis. But in real speech sounds are not pronounced separately and
sometimes it's practically impossible to draw boundaries between them. If we slow
down our speech and try to articulate sounds distinctly, we shall see that the
smallest units into which the speech continuum is divided are syllables. J. Kenyon:
the syllable is one or more speech sounds forming a single uninterrupted unit of
utterance, which may be a whole word (e.g. man) or a commonly recognized and
separable subdivision of a word (e.g. English) or a word form (e.g. late later). The
syllable can be considered as both a phonetic and a phonological unit. As a phonetic
unit the syllable can be characterized in articulatory, auditory and acoustic terms
with the universal application for all languages. Acoustically and auditory the
syllable is characterized by the force of utterance (accent or stress), by pitch of the
voice, by length and others. Auditorily the syllable is the smallest unit of perception,
which means that the listener first identifies the syllable and only after that its
sound structure. The articulatory energy constituting the syllable results from the
combination of actions of the vibrator, resonator and obstructor
The syllable is made to play a lot of different roles in language description: in
phonology we often use the syllable as the basic framework for describing how
vowels and consonants can combine in a particular language, and most of the time
it does not seem to matter that we use the same unit to be the thing that we count
when we are looking for beats in verse or rhythmical speech.
Syllable as a phonological unit
As a phonological unit the syllable can be described only with the reference to the
particular language, because each language has its own rules of combining
phonemes into syllables. Some combinations of phonemes are permissible in the
language, others are not, that's why one and the same word can be interpreted
differently in terms of its syllabic structure by the speakers of different languages.
E.g. Kna-be, /knb/. The ancient Greeks noticed that vowels and consonants
fulfill different functions in speech. The function of a vowel is to occupy the central
position in sound combinations, while consonants serve as margins of the sound
combinations. The very term consonant means sounding with something. Vowels
are always syllabic and consonants are incapable of forming syllables without
vowels, but in some languages (e.g. English) some sonorant consonants can be
syllabic (m,n,r).
Syllable Structure in English
Syllables have internal structure: they can be divided into parts. The parts
are onset and rhyme; within the rhyme we find the nucleus and coda. Not all
syllables have all parts; the smallest possible syllable contains a nucleus only. A
syllable may or may not have an onset and a coda.
Onset: the beginning sounds of the syllable; the ones preceding the nucleus. These
are always consonants in English. The nucleus is a vowel in most cases, although
the consonants [ r ], [ l ], [ m ], [ n ], and the velar nasal (the 'ng' sound) can also be
the nucleus of a syllable. In the following words, the onset is in bold; the rest
underlined.
read
fop
strap
If a word contains more than one syllable, each syllable will have the usual syllable
parts:
win.dow
to.ma.to

pre.pos.te.rous
fun.da.men.tal
Rhyme (or rime): the rest of the syllable, after the onset (the underlined portions
of the words above). The rhyme can also be divided up:
Rhyme = nucleus + coda
The nucleus, as the term suggests, is the core or essential part of a syllable. A
nucleus must be present in order for a syllable to be present. Syllable nuclei are
most often highly 'sonorant' or resonant sounds, that can be relatively loud and
carry a clear pitch level. In English and most other languages, most syllable nuclei
are vowels. In English, in certain cases, the liquids [ l r ] and nasals [ m n ] and the
velar nasal usually spelled 'ng' can also be syllable nuclei.
The syllable structure analysis of the words 'read', 'flop', 'strap' and 'window' are as
follows (IPA symbols are used to show the sounds in the word/syllable):
read = one syllable
Onset = [ r ]
Rhyme = [ id ]
(within the rhyme:)
Nucleus = [ i ]
Coda = [ d ]
flop = one syllable
Onset = [ f l ]
Rhyme = [ a p ]
Nucleus = [ a ]
Coda = [ p ]
window = 2 syllables
First syllable: [wIn]
Onset = [ w ]
Rhyme = [ I n ]
Nucleus = [ I ]
Coda = [ n ]
Second syllable: [ d o ]
Onset = [ d ]
Rhyme = [ o ]
Nucleus = [ o ]
(This syllable has no coda)
Linguists often use tree diagrams to illustrate syllable structure. 'Flop', for example,
would look like this (the word appears in IPA symbols, not English spelling). 's' =
'syllable'; 'O' = 'onset'; 'R' = 'rhyme'; 'N' = 'nucleus'; 'C' = 'coda'. (The tree may not
come out well-aligned on your screen, because your computer may show this page
in a different font). The syllable node at the top of the tree branches into Onset and
Rhyme; the Onset node branches because it contains two consonants, [ f ] and [ l ].

The Rhyme node branches because this syllable has both a nucleus and a coda.
s
/
\
O
R
/\ / \
| | NC
| | | |
[f l a p]

Liquids and nasals as syllable nuclei

The English liquids [ r l ] and the nasals [ m n ] can be the nuclei of syllables under
certain conditions. [ r ] can be a nucleus as easily as a vowel, in any position: the
words 'bird', 'word', 'her', 'fur', the first syllable of 'perceive' and 'surname' and the
final syllables of 'mother', 'actor' (in casual pronunciation) all have [ r ] as the
nucleus; in other words, there is no vowel in the pronunciation of these syllables,
even though they have one in the spelling.
[ l ] and the nasals [ m n ] become syllable nuclei when they follow an alveolar
consonant in the last syllable of a word. This happens in the relaxed or casual rather
than very formal articulation of the word. Compare casual vs. formal pronunciations
of 'button', 'bottle', 'bottom'.
When one of these sounds is a syllable nucleus, this is shown in transcription by
putting a very short vertical line under the IPA symbol
[ r l m n ].
' ' ' '
(If the vertical lines don't line up under the symbols on your screen, it is due to
webpage transfer complications.)
A word with a syllabic [ r ] as nucleus is 'bird':

Syllable Functions
Syllable performs 3 main functions: constitutive, distinctive & identificatory.
The constitutive function of the syllable manifests itself in the fact that the syllabic
forms higher-level units-words, accentual or rhythmic groups, utterances. On the
one hand, the syll. is a unit in which segmental phonemes are realized. L. Bondarko
has proved experimentally that the relations between the distinctive feature of the
phonemes & their acoustic correlates can be revealed only within the syllable. On
the other hand, within a syllable or a sequence of syllables prosodic features of
speech are also realized. There are distinctive variations in loudness (stress), in
pitch (tone), & in duration (tempo, length). Thus, syllable maybe stressed &
unstressed, high, mid or low, rising or falling, long or short. Al these prosodic
features are significant for constituting the stress-pattern of a word & the tonal &
rhythmic structure of an utterance.
The distinctive feature of the syllable is to differentiate words & word combinations.
Phonemes exist & function within the syllable. Therefore words are actually
differentiated by the syllable as one articulatory or perceptible unit. E.g. / bi:t /
beat & bead / bi:d / differ not only in their consonant phonemes / t / & / d /, but
also in the length of / i:/, which is conditioned by the neighboring fortis and lenis
consonants.
there are some words in English where syllabicity alone is responsible for the
differentiation of the words: / laitnin / (lightning) & / laitnin /
(lightning). On this account V. Vassilyev distinguishes a separate phonological unit
the syllabeme.
Syllable division is very important too in distinguishing words & utterances:
/ naitreit / nitrate - / naitreit / night-rate

/ neim/ a name - / neim / an aim

/ ai skri:m / I scream - / aiskri:m / ice-cream

Due to the distinctive importance of syllable division, the syllabic boundary is often
regarded by the American descriptivists as a separate phonological unit the
juncture phoneme. Open juncture (or open transition) occurs between syllables: it is
called intersyllabic juncture. Thus, in I scream / ai| skri:m / the open juncture is
between / I / & / s / & in / ais|kri:m / ice-cream it is between / s / & / k /. Close
juncture (or close transition) occurs between sounds within one syllable. Thus in
ice-cream / ais|kri:m / the close juncture is between / k / & / r /, / r / & / i:/, / i:/ & /
m /. This juncture is called intersyllabic juncture. The largest acoustic investigations
of juncture show that the factors determining an open or a close juncture are the
duration of the sounds, their intensity & formant transitions. Thus, according to the
data obtained by I. Lehiste, the initial / n /in a nice man is longer than the final /
n / in an iceman. The pre-junctural / n / gas falling intensity, while the postjunctural / n / has rising intensity. Formant transitions of / n / & / ai / are different in
the contrasted pairs.
Some phoneticians consider the open juncture to be a segmental phoneme; others
consider it a suprasegmental phoneme or a phoneme in its own right.
K. Pike & I. Lehiste regard the juncture to be a contrastive feature of high-level units
but not a phonological unit in its own right.
The identificatory function of the syllable is conditioned by the hearers perception
of syllables as entire phonetic units with their concrete allophones & syllabic
boundaries.
The listener identifies two syllables in plum pie - & plump eye
bulging with the corresponding boundaries before / p / & after /
p /, bec. in the first example / p / is unaspirated & / m / is shorter on account of the
following fortis / p /.
Thus, shifting of the syllabic boundary causes not only a strong foreign accent, but
also misunderstanding on the part of the listener.
Syllable as a phonetic unit
The syllable is a basic unit of speech studied on both the phonetic and phonological
levels of analysis. No matter how easy it can be for people and even for children to
count the number of syllables in a sequence in their native language, still there are
no universally agreed upon phonetic definitions of what a syllable is.
PHONETIC DEFINITION
Phonetically syllables are usually described as consisting of a centre which
has little or no obstruction to airflow and which sounds comparatively loud; before
and after that centre () there will be greater obstruction to airflow and/or less loud
sound (Roach, 2000: 70). In the monosyllable (one-syllable word) cat /kt/, the
vowel // is the centre at which little obstruction takes place, whereas we have
complete obstruction to the airflow for the surrounding plosives /k/ and /t/.
PHONOLOGICAL DEFINITION
Laver (1994: 114) defines the phonological syllable as a complex unit made
up of nuclear and marginal elements. Nuclear elements are the vowels or syllabic
segments; marginal elements are the consonants or non-syllabic segments. In the
syllable paint /pent/, the diphthong /e/ is the nuclear element, while initial
consonant /p/ and the final cluster /nt/ are marginal elements.
PROMINENCE THEORY
Attempts have been made to provide physiological, acoustic or auditory
explanations and definitions of the syllable. According to the prominence theory,
for example, which is based mainly on auditory judgements, the number of syllables
in a word is determined by the number of peaks of prominence. In the word
entertaining /entten/ the peaks of prominence are represented by the
vowels /e e /. However, this theory does not help much in discussions of syllable
division.

CHEST PULSE THEORY

The chest pulse theory discusses the syllable in the context of muscular
activities and lung movements in the process of speech. Experiments have shown
that the number of chest pulses, accompanied by increase of air pressure can
determine the number of syllables produced (Gimson, 1980: 56), thus allowing to
associate the number of syllables with the number of chest pulses. This approach,
however, cannot account for cases when 2 vowels occur one after the other for
example in words like being /bi:/ or playing /ple/ the second chest pulse might
be almost irrelevant and thus lead erroneously to the conclusion that such English
words consist of one syllable only.
SONORITY THEORY,
Another approach is presented by sonority theory according to which the
pulses of pulmonic air stream in speech correspond to peaks in sonority
(Giegerich, 1992: 132). The sonority of a speech sound is discussed as its relative
loudness compared to other sounds (Giegerich, 1992: 132) and each syllable
corresponds to a peak in the flow rate of pulmonic air. Thus nuclear elements, or
syllabic segments can be described as intrinsically more sonorous than marginal, or
non-syllabic elements.
Speech sounds can be ranked in terms of their intrinsic sonority according to a
sonority scale. The sonority scale for English is given below (although in principle it
is also valid for other languages). Voiced segments are more sonorous than
voiceless ones and sonorants are more sonorous than obstruents; vowels are more
sonorous than consonants, open vowels being more sonorous than close ones.
The sonority scale, like all the approaches outlined above, is of little help when it
comes to delimiting separate syllables, however.

Lecture 6
Phonological nature of word stress
Contents
Introduction
I. The nature of English Word Stress
II. Types of English Word Stress
III. Word Stress tendencies
IV. Word Stress functions
V. Variation in word stress
VI. English Word Stress - Does It Really Matter?
Conclusion
Lab.: Primary and secondary stress
Sentence stress
Introduction
Word stress is not used in all languages. Some languages, Japanese or French for
example, pronounce each syllable with eq-ual em-pha-sis. Other languages, English
for example, use word stress.
Word stress is your magic key to understanding spoken English. Native speakers of
English use word stress naturally. Word stress is so natural for them that they dont
even know they use it. Non-native speakers who speak English to native speakers
without using word stress, encounter two problems:
1. They find it difficult to understand native speakers, especially those speaking
fast.
2. The native speakers may find it difficult to understand them.
So, in this report we will focus our attention on the accentual patterns of English
words. The sequence of syllables in the word is not pronounced identically. The
syllable or syllables which are uttered with more prominence than the other
syllables of the word are said to be stressed or accented. The correlation of varying
prominences of syllables in a word is understood as the accentual structure of the
word or its stress pattern.
I. The nature of English Word Stress
Any word spoken in isolation has at least one prominent syllable. We perceive it as
stressed. Stress in the isolated word is termed ws, stress in connected speech is
termed sentence stress. Stress indicated by placing a stress mark before the
stressed syllable: Stress is defined differently by different authors. B. A. Bogortsky,
for instance, defined stress as an increase of energy, accompan by an increase of
expiratory and articulatory activity. D. Jones fined stress as the degree of force,
which is accompanied by a stress force of exhalation and gives an impression of
loudness. H. Sweet stated that stress is connected with the force of breath. Later,
however P. Jones wrote, that stress or prominence is effected by inherent sonority,
vowel and consonant length and by intonation. A. C. Gison also admits that a more
prominent syllable is accompanied pitch changes in the voice, quality and quantity
of the accented sounds.[2;179]
In disyllabic and polysyllabic words different syllables possess different degrees of
special prominence in different positions in relation to the beginning, middle and
end of words.
Word stress (WS) can be defined as the singling out of one or more syllables in a
word, which is accompanied by the change of the force of utterance, pitch of the
voice, qualitative and quantitative characteristics of the sound which is usually a
vowel. The analysis of WS can be carried out according to the following parameters:
(i) the nature of English word-stress;
(ii) its degree and syllabic location;
(iii) its functions;
(iv) basic stress patterns of the English words.[3;171]

If we compare stressed and unstressed syllables in the two contract, we may note
that in the stressed syllable:
(a) the force of utterance is greater, which is connected with more energetic
articulation;
(b) the pitch of the voice is higher, which is connected with stronger tenseness of
the vocal cords and the walls of the resonance chamber
(c) the quantity of the vowel is greater, a vowel becomes longer;
(d) the quality of the vowel !& in the stressed syllable is different from the quality of
this vowel in the unstressed position, in why it is more narrow than.
On the auditory level a stressed syllable is the part of the word which has a special
prominence. It is produced by a greater loud and length, modifications in the pitch
and quality. Their physic correlates are: intensity, duration, frequency and the
formant structure. All these features can be analyzed on the acoustic level.
Word stress can be defined as the singling out of one or more s tables in a word,
which is accompanied by the change of the force utterance, pitch of the voice,
qualitative and quantitative characteristics of the sound, which is usually a vowel.
In different languages one of the factors constituting word stress is usually more
significant than the others. According to the mo important feature different types of
word stress are distinguished different languages.
If special prominence in a stressed syllable or syllables achieved mainly through the
intensity of articulation, such type stress is called dynamic, or force stress.[2;179]
Stress can be studied from the point of view of production and of perception. While
producing stressed syllables, speakers use more muscular energy than they do for
unstressed syllables. From the perceptual point of view, stressed syllables are
recognized as stressed because they are more prominent than unstressed syllables.
Phoneticians claim that at least four different factors are important in making a
syllable prominent:
1) listeners seem to feel stressed syllables louder than unstressed; thus loudness is
a component of WS (Peter Roach explains that if one syllable in a sequence of
identical syllables, e.g. ba:ba:ba:ba:, is made louder than the others, it will be heard
as stressed);
2) 2) if one of the syllables in the above-given nonsense word is made longer, that
syllable is heard stressed, so the length of the syllables is another important factor
in making prominence;
3) every syllable is said on some pitch (related to the frequency of vibration of the
vocal cords which is an essential perceptual characteristic of speech) . If one
syllable is said with high pitch as compared to the others then it will be heard as
stressed;
4) a syllable can be heard prominent if it contains a vowel that is different in quality
from neighbouring vowels. If one of the vowels in the nonsense word is changed,
the odd syllable: will be heard as stressed.
The phonetic manifestation of stress varies from language to language. Indifferent
languages one of the factors constituting word stress is usually more significant
than the others. According to the most salient feature the following types of word
stress are distinguished in different languages:
1) dynamic or force stress if special prominence in a stressed syllable(syllables) is
achieved mainly through the intensity of articulation;
2) musical or tonic stress if special prominence is achieved mainly through the
change of pitch, or musical tone.
3) quantitative stress if special prominence is achieved through the changes in the
quantity of the vowels, which are longer in the stressed syllables than in the
unstressed ones.
4) qualitative stress if special prominence is achieved through the changes in the
quality of the vowel under stress. Vowel reduction is often used as a manipulation of
quality in unstressed syllables.

II. Types of English Word Stress

Types of English word stress according to its degree. One of the ways of
reinitiating the prominence of syllables is manipulating the degree of stress. There
is controversy about degrees of WS in English and their terminology. Strictly
speaking, polysyllabic word has as many degrees of stress as there are syllables in
it. Designating strongest syllable by 1, the second strongest by 2, etc., we may
represent the distribution Jesses in the following examples:
examination indivisibility
igzeminein indivizibiloti
32415 2536174
But from a linguistic point, i.e. for the purposes of differentiating words from each
and identifying them, the fourth, the fifth and other degrees of lexical stress are
redundant English, while the distinctive and recognitive relevance of the third
degree of stress is a objective point. The majority of British phoneticians (D. Jones,
Kingdon, A. C. Gimson among them) and Russian phoneticians (V. A. Vassilyev,
Shakhbagova) consider that there are three degrees of word-stress in English:
* primary -- the strongest
* secondary -- the second strongest, partial, and
* weak -- all the other degrees.
The syllables bearing either primary or secondary stress are termed stressed, while
syllables with weak stress are called, somewhat inaccurately, unstressed. American
linguists stingiest four degrees of word stress, adding the so-called tertiary stress .
Contrary stress differs from tertiary that it usually occurs on the third or fourth pretonic syllable, and tertiary is always post-tonic, e.g. administrative, dictionary.
category.[3;173]
English language not only through the increase of intensity, but also through the
changes in the vowel quantity, consonant and vowel quality and pitch of the voice.
Russian word stress is not only dynamic but mostly quantitative and qualitative. The
length of the Russian vowels always depends on the position in a word. The quality
of unaccented vowels in Russian may differ greatly from the quality of the same
vowels under stress. Stress difficulties peculiar to the accentual structure of the
English language are connected with the vowel special and inherent prominence. In
identical positions the intensity of English vowels is different. The highest in
intensity is /a/, then u:, u, e, u,
The quantity of long vowels and diphthongs can be preserved (a) pretonic and (b)
post-tonic position. All English vowels may occur in accented syllables, the only
exception is /, which is never stressed. English vowels /i, u, u/ tend to occur in
unstressed syllables. Syllables with the syllabic m, n/ are never stressed.
Unstressed diphthongs may partially lose their glide quality. In stressed syllables
English stops have complete closure, fricatives have full friction, features of
forties/lenis distinction are clearly defined.
Stress can be characterized as fixed and free. In languages with fixed type of stress
the place of stress is always the same.
In English and Russian word-stress is free, that is it may fall any syllable in a word:
a) idea sarcastic archaic
b) placard railway
Stress in English and in Russian is not only free but also shifting. In both languages
the place of stress may shift, which helps t0 differentiate different parts of speech,
e.g. linsult--to inlsult, import--to imiport.
When the shifting of word-stress serves to perform distinctive function, V. Vassil.
Stress performs not only distinctive function, it helps to constitute and recognize
words and their forms (constitutive and recognitive functions).
Strictly speaking, a polysyllabic word has as many degrees of stress as there are
syllables in it. American and English phoneticians give the following pattern of

stress distribution in the word examination. They mark the strongest syllable with
primary accent with the numeral 1, then goes 2, 3, etc.[2;180]
English word-stress is traditionally defined as dynamic, but in fact,
the special prominence of the stressed syllables is manifested in the English
language not only through the increase of intensity, but also through the
changes in the vowel quantity, consonant and vowel quality and pitch of the voice.
`Most words of more than four syllables have 2 stresses: primary (nuprefixes and
entry. The primary stress falls either on the third or the second syllable from the end
and the secondary stress falls on the syllable separated from the nuclear syllable by
one unstressed syllable: pro-ition, recog ition, etc.
The place of word-stress in English compound words principally derewrite on the
semantic factor, i. e. the element which determines the mean-of the whole
compound has a primary stress. But most of the compound possess the nuclear
stress on the l element: `bookcase, `diligence etc, whereas compound adjectives
have, as a rule, primary stress on element of the compound `

III. Word Stress tendencies

In spite of the fact that word stress in English is free, there are certain factors that
determine the location and different degree of it. Prof. V. A. Vassilyev describes
them as follows:
* the recessive tendency;
* the rhythmic tendency;
* the retentive tendency and
* the semantic factor
The first and the oldest of the English lexical stress tendencies (characteristic of all
Germanic languages) known as the recessive tendency originally consisted in
placing lexical stress on the initial syllable of nouns, adjectives and verbs derived
from them and on the root syllable of words which belonged to other parts of
speech and had a prefix. In most cases prefixes lost their referential meaning since
then, with the result that recessive stress in present-day English of two subtypes:
1) unrestricted: when stress falls on the initial syllable, provided it is not a prefix
which has no referential meaning. A great majority of native English words of
Germanic origin are stressed this way: father mother husband, `wonder
2) restricted: when stress falls on the root of the native English words with a prefix
which has no referential meaning now: among, become, before,fo,get, etc.
It is this tendency that determined the incidence of stress in a huge number of
disyllabic and trisyllabic French words which had been borrowed into English until
the 1 5th century (during and after the Norman Conquest).
The presence in English of a great number of short (disyllabic and trisyllabic) words
defamed the development of the so-called rhythmic tendency which results in
alternating stressed and unstressed syllables. Borrowed polysyllabic words
developed a secondary stress on the syllable separated from the word-final primary
stress by one unstressed syllable. These words began to be pronounced, in
isolation, on the model of short phrases in which a stressed syllable alternates with
an unstressed one: pronunciation.
The retentive tendency consists in the retention of the primary stress on the parent
word: person -- personal, or more commonly the retention of the secondary stress
on the parent word: `personal -- 1personalily. The difference between constant
accent and ` retentive stress consists in that the former remains on the same
syllable in all the g forms of a word or in all the derivatives from one and the same
root, whereas retinal, stress in a derivative falls on the same syllable on which it
falls in the parent word, while i other derivatives from the same root it may be
shifted e.g.: personal .

There are certain categories of English words stressing of which is determined the
semantic factor, e.g. compound words and words with the so-called separable prefix
The majority of such words have two equally strong stresses, both stressed parts
considered to be of equal semantic importance, with the semantic factor thus
canceling rhythmic tendency in word stressing, e.g.
* compound adjectives: hard-working, blue-eyed,
* verbs with post positions sit down, take off
* numerals from 13 to 19:fourteen, sixteen.
It should be noted that the rhythmic tendency becomes operative when such work
occur in sentences and the first stress of a double-stressed English word disappears
in an immediately or closely preceding word requires stress: a `very good-looking
`girl.[3;175]
IV. English Word Stress functions
In discussingaccentual structure of English words we should turn now to
the functional aspect of word stress. Word stress in a language performs three
functions.
I. Word stress constitutes. a word, it organizes the syllables of a word Into a
language unit having a definite accentual structure, that is a pattern of relationship
among the syllables; a wok4 does not exist without the word stress. Thus the word
stress forms the constitutive function. Sound continuum become phrase when it is
divided into units organized by word stress into words.
II. Word stress enables a person to identify a succession `of syllables as a definite
accentual pattern of a word. This function of word stress is known as identificatory
(or recognitive). Correct accentuation helps the listener to make the process of
communication easier, whereas the distorted accentual pattern of words, misplaced
word stresses prevent normal understanding.
Ill. Word stress alone is capable of differentiating the meaning of words or their
forms, thus performing its distinctive function. The accentual patterns of words or
the degrees of word stress and their positions form oppositions, e.g. `import -import, `billow --below.
Word stress in a language performs the following functions:
1. The CONSTITUTIVE function: it organizes the syllables of a word into language
unit having a defmite accentual structure, i.e. a pattern of relationship among th
syllables. The word does not exist as a lexica unit without word stress.
J. Layer holds the view that lexical stress shows a culminative function: being
characteristic property of the word, it is thought to help the listener to judge how
many individual words the speaker has produced in a given utterance.
2. The IDENTIFICATORY function: correct lexical stress enables the listener to decode
the information in verbal conimuriication adequately, while misplaced word stresses
prevent understanding.
3. The DISTINCTI YE/CONTRAST WE function: word stress alone is capable of
differentiating the meanings of words or their forms. It should be mentioned though
that most words in most languages that use word stress linguistically do not
possess minimal pairs based on stress. But still there are about 135 pairs of words
of identical orthography in English which could occur either as nouns (with stress on
the penultimate syllable) or as verbs (with stress on the final syllable), with a very
small number of cases the location of lexical stress alone being the differentiating
factor: import (noun) -- import (verb), `insult (noun) -- insult (verb).[4;130]
V. Variation in word stress
The stress patterns of some English words are liable to variations of different kinds.
There is free variation of stress location due to some rhythmic and analogical
pressures, both of which entail in addition considerable changes of sound pattern in
words[3;182], e.g.
1) in some words of three syllables, there is variation between---and-`-patterns: deficit, integral (adj), exquisite.

2) similarly, in words of four syllables, there is variation between first and secon
syllable stressing: hospitable, formidable, despicable.
Pronunciation patterns of such words due to the variation in stress placement have
the status of alternative pronunciation formswhich occur in educated usage.
Cases of variable stress placement caused by the context is known as `stressshift.
When a word of several syllables has a stress near the end of thc word, and is
followed by another word with stress near its beginning, there is a tendency for the
stress in the first word to move nearer the beginning if it contains a syllable that is
capable of receiving stress, e.g. the word academic in isolation usually has the
stress or the penultimate syllable /-dem-/. However, when the word year follows, the
stress often found to move to the first syllable /k-/; the whole phrase `academic
year will have the primary stress on the word year, so the resulting stress pattern
will be `academic `year. In isolation, we say fundamental and Japanese with
primary stress on -ment and -nese, in connected speech these words may have a
different pattern: greater stress on fund- and Jap-.
VI. English Word Stress - Does It Really Matter?
Yes and No.
Yes, if you are a non-native speaker speaking to a native English speaker.
No, if you are a non-native English speaker speaking to another non-native speaker.
English language teaching theory has traditionally been based on native English
forms, more specifically British and American English varieties. In todays
international community however, where more than 1 billion non-native English
speakers use English as a lingua franca, teaching theory is changing to focus on
English as an International Language (EIL).
According to linguist Jennifer Jenkins research on the English language, there are
certain factors in English pronunciation that can influence the degree of intelligibility
between a speaker and listener. Word stress is one of these factors if you are
speaking with a native English speaker, but Jenkins has found that when two nonnative speakers interact in EIL, word stress has little influence on intelligibility.
So why are native speakers so stressed about word stress?
Stress indicates identity
Anyone who has ever zapped between BBC and CNN has probably noticed the
differences between standard British and standard American word stress. It has
caused quite a CONtroversy (US), or should I say, "conTROVersy" (UK).
To a native English speaker, a certain word stress is considered appropriate or
inappropriate depending on where the person is from. "Inappropriate" word stress
can really rub listeners the wrong way because it deviates from their norm and
indicates that the speaker is an "other" - an outsider. This can be quite FRUStrating
(US)/frusTRATing (UK) for the non-native speaker who is just trying to get his point
across.
After hours spent in a language LABoratory (US), or laBORatory (UK) if you prefer,
non-native English speakers are still at a loss when it comes to speaking to native
speakers internationally.
"So which variety is correct?" This is the most common question. Answer: "It
depends who you ask!" Stress indicates different meanings of identical words
In one case however, word stress can cause problems whether you are a native
speaker or non-native speaker of English: words which are spelled the same, but
have different meanings (and different word stress).
Word stress can also differentiate a words part of speech - more specifically whether
the word is a noun or a verb. There are many examples of words which in their noun
form take their stress on the first syllable, but in the verb form are stressed on the
second syllable. Say the following words out loud: PROgress - proGRESS, OBject obJECT, REcord - reCORD.
We would never say, "She wants to REcord a REcord one day," but rather, "reCORD
a REcord." Unfortunately this isnt a blanket rule, and there are plenty of English

words which sound the same both as verbs and as nouns: travel, picture, promise
and visit are a few examples.
So what is the non-native English speaker to do? Sticking to the form you are most
comfortable with.
Communication is a two-way street with compromise and understanding at both
ends. If you meet people who cant accept the way you speak, then theyre probably
not worth speaking with anyway!
Conclusion
Stressed words are the key to excellent pronunciation and understanding of English.
Word stress is not an optional extra that you can add to the English language if you
want. It is part of the language! English speakers use word stress to communicate
rapidly and accurately, even in difficult conditions. If, for example, you do not hear a
word clearly, you can still understand the word because of the position of the stress.

LECTURE 7.
Suprasegmental Phonology
Prosody of English Language
Aims
To introduce students to the main topics of prosody in spoken English, drawing on
both phonetics and phonology, and to equip students with the knowledge and
ability to analyse prosodic aspects of spoken English both phonetically and
phonologically.
At the end of this module students will have an understanding of the main elements
of the prosody of English:
Intonation, timing and rhythm
The relationship of prosodic aspects of speech to other aspects generally
known as segmental
Some of the kinds of functions served by prosodic aspects of speech in
English
The phonological treatment of prosodic aspects of speech various methods
for measuring prosodic aspects of speech and the problems associated with
them

At the end of this module students will be able to analyse data first-hand using a
tool for the instrumental analysis of speech and present their own analyses of data
of various types and qualities to a high standard.
The word prosody comes from ancient Greek, where it was used for a song sung
with instrumental music. In later times the word was used for the science of
versification and the laws of metre, governing the modulation of the human
voice in reading poetry aloud. In modern phonetics the word prosody and its
adjectival form prosodic are most often used to refer to those properties of speech
that cannot be derived from the segmental sequence of phonemes underlying
human utterances. Examples of such properties are the controlled modulation of the
voice pitch, the stretching and shrinking of segment and syllable durations, and the
intentional fluctuations of overall loudness. On the perceptual level these properties
lead amongst other things to perceived patterns of relative syllable prominences,
coded in perceived melodical and rhythmical aspects of speech. In modern
generative phonology (Selkirk, 1984; Nespor and Vogel, 1986), the word prosody
has been given a somewhat different meaning, as it refers to non-segmental
aspects of abstract linguistic structure, such as a particular type of constituent
structure and the presence or absence of accents, that are, at least potentially,
systematically reflected in the phonetic rendition of utterances. Of course, the
phonetic and phonological meanings of the word prosody might be considered two
sides of the same coin: although phonologists give primacy to an abstract
description of the phenomena concerned, they look for empirical evidence in the
realm of speech. Phoneticians rather start from observations on real speech, but the
abstract notions they come up with to account for the observed phenomena are
phonological by nature. In this lecturer we will take our starting position in the
phonetic domain. From a phonetic point of view we observe that human speech
cannot be fully characterised as the manifestation of sequences of phonemes,
syllables or words. In normal speech we hear for example that pitch moves up and
down in some nonrandom way, providing speech with recognizable melodical
properties. We also hear that segments or syllables are shortened or lengthened,
apparently in accordance with 2 some underlying pattern. We hear that some
syllables or words are made to sound more prominent than others, that the stream
of words is subdivided by the speaker into phrases made up of words that seem to
belong together, and that, one level higher up, these phrases can be made to sound
as if they relate to each other, or, alternatively, as if they have nothing to do with
each other. Properties of speech that cannot be derived from the underlying
sequence of phonemes are often called suprasegmental properties of speech,
including whether speakers speak soft or loud, whether they speak in a normal, a
hoarse or a breathy voice, whether they articulate carefully or slurringly, or even
whether they would speak with an unusual posture of the vocal tract and the larynx
so as to disguise their voice. Typically prosodic features of speech are not reflected
in normal orthography, nor in conventional segmental phonetic transcriptions. In
this lecture the treatment of prosody on the phonetic level will be limited to
speaker-controlled aspects of voice pitch, organized in perceived speech melody or
intonation, and speaker-controlled aspects of speech timing, organized in the
perceived rhythmical structure of speech.
I. Prosodic features (sometimes known as suprasegmental phonology) are those
aspects of speech which go beyond phonemes and deal with the auditory qualities
of sound. In spoken communication, we use and interpret these features without
really thinking about them. There are various conventional ways of representing
them in writing, although the nuances are often hard to convey on paper.
Pause. Pause as hesitation is a non-fluency feature. However, intentional pauses
are used to demarcate units of grammatical construction, such as sentences or

clauses. These can be indicated in writing by full stops, colons, semi-colons and
commas.
Pitch. Different pitch levels, or intonation, can affect meaning. The most obvious
example is the way in which speakers raise the pitch at the end of a question, and
this is indicated by a question mark in writing. However, patterns of rise and fall can
indicate such feelings as astonishment, boredom or puzzlement, and these can be
shown in writing only in a special transcription.
A recently-fashionable use of pitch variation is inlift, in which the speaker raises
the pitch of the voice in an interrogative way in the middle of a sentence, as if
seeking confirmation of the listeners comprehension. The popularity of this speech
feature has been attributed to Australian soaps, but it already seems to be in
decline.
Stress. Stress, or emphasis, is easy to use and recognise in spoken language, but
harder to describe. A stressed word or syllable is usually preceded by a very slight
pause, and is spoken at slightly increased volume.
At word level, stress can differentiate between, for example, the noun desert and
the verb desert, a distinction which cannot be shown in ordinary writing: a reader
will have to rely on the context to determine which is meant.
At sentence level, which word is stressed can alter the meaning of the sentence.
Consider the sentence I like your red shoes. There is a good deal of difference
between I like your red shoes; I like your red shoes; I like your red shoes; and I like
your red shoes. In writing, this can only be shown typographically, through the use
of italics or underlining. In such cases, a writer will generally italicise the whole
word, even if, in a polysyllabic word, only one syllable actually carries stress.
In any sentence, some words will be stressed more than others: lexical words
(nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs) are more likely to be carry primary stress
than grammatical words are.
Volume. Apart from the slight increase in loudness to indicate stress, volume is
generally used to show emotions such as fear or anger. In writing, it can be shown
by the use of an exclamation mark, or typographically with capitals or italics (or
both).
Tempo. Tempo, or speed, is to some extent a matter of idiolect. Whilst its use is not
wholly systematic, it can indicate the difference between, for example, impatience
and reflectiveness. It can be shown in writing only through unspoken words,
e.g. Certainly not, he snapped.

Functions of Prosody
"The functions of prosody are manifold. . . . Prosody is for instance involved
in matters such as sentence and word segmentation, syntactic phrasing,
stress, accentuation, phonological distinctions in tone languages. Prosody
also features pragmatic and expressive functions. A given sentence in a given
context generally expresses much more than its linguistic content (the same
sentence, with the same linguistic content may have plenty of different
expressive contents or pragmatic meanings). Examples of expressive content
are: the identity of the speaker, her/his attitude, mood, ages, sex,
sociolinguistic group, and other extralinguistic features. Examples of
pragmatic meaning encompass the speaker/listener attitudes (aggressive,
submissive, neutral, etc.), the relationships of the speaker and her/his
discourse (belief, confidence, assertiveness, etc.), and various other aspects
of the specific speech act performed."
(Christophe d'Alessandro (Orsay), "Voice Source Parameters and Prosodic
Analysis."Methods in Empirical Prosody Research, ed. by Stefan Sudhoff.
Walter de Gruyter, 2006)

LECTURE 8.

Problems of phonological analysis

Phonological analysis:
The two main problems:
1 the establishment of the phonemic inventory for a language (,
, )
Methods:
Distributional is based on the phonological rule, that different phonemes can
occur in one and the same position, while allophones of one and the same
phoneme occur in different positions (cat-rat/ cat-skate). Its possible to establish
the phonemic status of any sound just by contrasting it with the other sound
without knowing the meaning of the words.
Semantic attaches great importance to meaning. Its based on the
assumption that a phoneme can distinguish words only when opposed to
another phoneme or zero in an identical phonetic context (ask0-asks). Pairs of
words differing only in one sound are called minimal pairs.
2 the establishment of the inventory of phonologically relevant elements for a
given language.
L. Blomfield (American descriptive linguist) considered it impossible to identify
the phonemes of a language without recourse to meaning in the ordinary sense
of word.
Great phonemic dissimilarity entirely or greatly different sounds, such as a
vowel and a consonant cannot be allophones of the same phoneme.
Conditioned allophonic similarity the more or less similar sounds which are at
the same time more or less different, are allophones of the same phoneme if the
difference between them is clearly due to the influence of purely external
phonetic factors, such as neighbouring sounds, stress, etc..
The aim of the phonological analysis is, firstly, to determine which differences of
sounds are phonemic and which are non-phonemic and, secondly, to find the
inventory of phonemes of the language.
SEMANTIC METHOD is based on a phonemic rule that phonemes can distinguish
words and morphemes when opposed to one another. This method consists:
1) In finding minimal pairs of words and their grammatical forms. By minimal pair
we mean a pair of words or morphemes which are differentiated by only one
phoneme in the same position. For ex: cat-bat.
2) in systematic substitution () of one sound for another in order to find out
in which cases the phonetic context remains the same, such replacing leads to a
change of meaning.
a) the pronunciation of a different word form
b) the pronunciation of a meaningless sequence of sounds
c) a different repetition variant pronunciation of the same word or form.
DISTRIBUTIONAL METHOD
Two Laws of phonemic and allophonic distribution.
1) allophones of different phonemes always occur in the same phonemic context
2) allophones of the same phoneme never occur in the same phonemic context and
always occur in different positions.
If more or less different speech sounds occur on the same phonetic context, they
should be allophones of different phonemes.
There are three types of distribution: contrastive, complementary and free variation.
We should remind you here that the features of a phoneme that are capable of
differentiating the meaning are termed as relevant or distinctive. The features that
do not take part in differentiating the meaning are termed as irrelevant or nondistinctive. The latter may be of two kinds:
a) incidental or redundant features, for example, aspiration of voiceless plosives,
presence of voice in voiced consonants, length of vowels:

b) indispensable or concomitant features, for example, tenseness of English long

monophtongs, the checked character of stressed short vowels, lip rounding of back
vowels.
It is well to remember that a single opposition remains single if it members differ
from each other irrelevant both incidental and concomitant features.
In analyzing speech phoneticians carry out a phonetic and a phonological analyses.
Phonetic analysis is concerned with the articulatory and acoustic characteristics of
particular sounds and their combinations. Phonological analysis is concerned with
the role of those sounds in communication. The main problems in phonological
analysis are as follows: 1. The establishment of the inventory of phonemes of a
certain language. (The inventory of phonemes of a language is all phonemes of this
language. Every language has it's own inventory of speech sounds that it uses to
contrast meaning. English has one of the larger inventories among the world's
languages. Cantonese has up to 52 vowels when vowel + tone combinations are
considered. Many languages include consonants not found in English). 2. The
establishment of phonologically relevant (distinctive features of a language). 3. The
interrelationships among the phonemes of a language.
Problem 1. The establishment of the inventory of phonemes of a certain
language. The great variety of allophones complicates the identification of
phonemes in connected speech. There are two main methods of establishing
phonemes in a language: SEMANTIC and FORMAL, or DISTRIBUTIONAL. The
SEMANTIC method attaches great significance to meaning. It is based on the rule
that a phoneme can distinguish words when opposed to another phoneme or ZERO
in an individual phonetic position. The investigator studies the function of sounds by
collecting MINIMAL PAIRS (lexical or grammatical pairs of words that differ in only
one speech sound in the same position). If the substitution of one sound for another
results in the change of meaning, the commuted sounds are different phonemes.
E.g. if we replace /b/ by /f/ in the word PAIR, we get a new word FAIR. This pair of
words is distinguished in meaning by a single sound change. So the phonemes /p/
and /f/ contrast in English. The opposition /p/versus/f/ is called PHONOLOGICAL
OPPOSITION. In PAIR-AIR, /p/is opposed to /-/, this is called ZERO OPPOSITION.
Examples of grammatical pairs; SLEEP- SLEEPY, /-/ v /i/. Allophones cannot make up
minimal pairs. For example, /p/ in PIN and /p/ in spin are allophones of the
phoneme /p/ and no minimal pair can be found to distinguish them. Languages like
Cantonese, Mandarin, and Thai distinguish between them and they represent
distinct phonemes /p/ and /p/. In Korean /r/ in KOREA and /l/ in SEOUL are
allophones of the phoneme /l/. They are perceived by native speakers of Korean as a
single phoneme and have a single L letter. The difference is that /r/ is pronounced
before vowels. In Spanish, /z/ and /s/ are both allophones of /s/, while /z appears
only before voiced consonants, as in MISMO /mizmo/.
A series of minimal pairs, called a MINIMAL SET, can establish a larger group of
contrasts. That is how the inventory of E consonantal PH_mes can be established.
The series of words PIN, BIN, TIN, DIN, FIN, CHIN, GIN, KIN, SIN, THIN, SHIN, WIN
supplies us with 12 words which are different in respect of only one speech sound,
the first, consonantal phoneme of the sound sequence. These contrastive elements,
or phonemes, are symbolized as /p/, /b/, /t/, /d/, /f/, / / //, /k/, /s/, //, //, /w/. Other
sound sequences will show other consonantal oppositions, e.g.: (1) TAME, DAME,
GAME, LAME, MAIM, NAME, adding /g/, /l/, /m/, /n/ to the inventory. (2) POT, TOT,
COT, LOT, YACHT, HOT, ROT, adding /j/, /hr, /r/. (3) PIE, TIE, BUY, THIGH, THY, VIE,
adding // and /v/. (4) TWO, DO, WHO, WOO, ZOO, adding /z/. Such comparative
procedure reveal 22 consonantal phonemes, capable of contrastive function initially
in a word. But considering one position in a word is not sufficient. Phonemic
opposition in medial position discovers one more consonantal phoneme //, in words
LETTER, LEATHER, LEISURE. Phoneme // does not occur in initial position and is

rare in final position (ROUGE). In final position we do not find /h/, /r/, /w/, and /j/.
Phoneme // is common in medial and final positions but unknown initially. The
analysis will give us a total of 24 consonantal phonemes in English, of which six are
of restricted occurrence. Similar procedures may be used to establish the 20 vowel
phonemes of English, which makes the total inventory of 44 units in the English
language.
The FORMAL (DISTRIBUTIONAL)method does not resort to the meaning. It is
based on the rule that allophones of different phonemes can freely occur in one and
the same position, while allophones of one and the same phoneme cannot occur in
the same position. For example, as /p/ and /f/ freely occur in the same context (as in
PEA-FEE, PAN-FAN), they are different phonemes. But we can never find /p/
aspirated and non-aspirated in the same phonetic context in E. These sounds are
regarded as the allophones of one and the same phoneme /p/, whereas in Chinese
and Hindi aspirated and non-aspirated plosives /p/ are different phonemes: they
occur in the same phonetic environment and distinguish words.