English-based pronunciation standarts of English. Received pronuncation

British E Pronunciation Standards and Accents(BEPS) comprise English English(EE), Welsh English(WE), Scottish English(ScE) and Northern Ireland English(NIE).

EE: roughly speaking the non-RP accents of E may be grouped like this:

1. Southern accents

1)Southern accents (Great London, Cockey, Surray, Kent, Essex, Hertfordshire, Buckinghamshire);

2)East Anglia accents (Lincolnshire, Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire, bedfordshire, Northamptonshire, Leicestershire);

3)South-West accents (Gloucestershire, Avon, Somerset, Wiltshire).

2. Northern and Midland accents.

1) Northern accents (Northumberland, Durham, Cleveland)

2) Yorkshire accents:

3)North-West accents (Lancashire, cheshire)

4)West Midland (Birmingham,Wolverhampton)

Received Pronunciation A pronunciation model is a carefully chosen and defined accent of a language. In the nineteenth century Received Pronunciation (RP) was a social marker, a prestige accent of an Englishman. "Received" was understood in the sense of "accepted in the best society". The speech of aristocracy and the court phonetically was that of the London area. Then it lost its local characteristics and was finally fixed as a ruling-class accent, often referred to as "King's English". It was also the accent taught at public schools. With the spread of education cultured people not belonging to upper classes were eager to modify their accent in the direction of social standards. A more broadly-based and accessible model accent for British English is represented in the 15th (1997) and the 16th (2003) editions – ВВС English. This is the pronunciation of professional speakers employed by the BBC as newsreaders and announcers. Of course, one finds differences between such speakers - they have their own personal characteristics, and an increasing number of broadcasters with Scottish, Welsh and Irish accents are employed. On this ground J.C. Wells (Longman Pronunciation Dictionary, 33rd edition - 2000) considers that the term BBC pronunciation has become less appropriate. According to J.C. Wells, in England and Wales RP is widely regarded as a model for correct pronunciation, particularly for educated formal speech.

6. Functional aspect of speech sounds.

Ph studies sounds as articulatory and acoustic units, phonology investigates sounds as units which serve communicative purposes. The unit of phonetics is a speech sound, the unit of phonology is a phoneme. Phonemes can be discovered by the method of minimal pairs. This method consists in finding pairs of words which differ in 1 phoneme, e.g. if we replace [b] by [t] in the word ban we produce a new word tan, ban-tan is a pair of words distinguished in meaning by a single sound change. 2 words of this kind are termed minimal pairs.

The phonemes of a lang form a system of oppositions, in which any one phoneme is usually opposed to any other phoneme in at least 1 position.

The founder of the phoneme theory was Baudouin de Courteney. His theory of phoneme was developed and perfected by Shcherba, who stated that in actual speech we utter a much greater variety of sounds than we are aware of, and that in every lang these sounds are united in a comparatively small number of sound types, which are capable of distinguishing the meaning and the form of words. It is these sound types that should be included into the classification of phonemes and studied as differentiatory units of the lang. The actually pronounced speech sounds are variants or allophones of phonemes. Allophones are realized in concrete words. They have phonetic similarity, at the same time they differ in some degree and are incapable of differentiating words, e.g. in speech we pronounce not the sound type [t] which is asperated, alveolar, forelingual, apical, occlusive, plosive, voiceless-fortis – according to the classificatory definition, but one of its variants, e.g. labialized in the word twice, dental in the word nineth, post-alveolar in try and so on. The number of sound types, or phonemes, in each lang is much smaller than the number of sounds actually pronounced.

Phonemic variants or allophones are very important for lang teaching, their mispronunciation doesn’t influence the meaning of the words, their misuse makes a person’s speech sound as foreign.

The variants used in actual speech are called subsidiary. Susidiary allophones can be positional and combinatory. Posit alloph are used in certain positions traditionally. Combinatory allophones appear in the process of speech and result from the influence of the phoneme upon another.

Each phoneme manifests itself in a certain pattern of distribution. The simplest of them is free variation, that is the variation of one and the same phoneme pronounced differently. Complementary distribution is another pattern of phoneme environment, when one and the same phoneme occurs in a definite set of context in which no other phoneme ever occurs. Contrastive distribution is one more pattern of phoneme environment.

Minimal distinctive features are discovered through oppositions. This method helps to prove whether the phonemic difference is relevant or not, whether the opposition is single, double or multiple, [d], [t] have only one distinctively relevant feature – single opposition. If there are two distinctively relevant features, the opposition is double. Бодуэн-де-Куртене defined the phoneme as a physical image of a sound, he originated the so called “mentalist” view of the phoneme.

7. Emphasis (stress)

Any word spoken in isolation has at least one prominent syllable. We perceive it as stressed. Stress in the isolated word is termed word stress, stress in connected speech is termed sentence stress. Stress is indicated by placing a stress mark before the stressed syllable: /'/.

Stress is defined differently by different authors. B. A. Bogoroditsky,

for instance, defined stress as an increase of energy, accompanied by an

increase of expiratory and articulatory activity. D. Jones defined stress as

the degree of force, which is accompanied by a strong force of exhala­

tion and gives an impression of loudness. H. Sweet also stated that stress

is connected with the force of breath.

Word stress 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.

In different languages one of the factors constituting word stress is usually more significant than the others. According to the most important feature different types of word stress are distinguished in different languages.

If special prominence in a stressed syllable or syllables is achieved mainly through the intensity of articulation, such type of stress is called dynamic, or force stress.

If special prominence in a stressed syllable is achieved mainly through the change of pitch, or musical tone, such accent is called musical, or tonic. It is characteristic of the Japanese, Korean and other oriental languages.

If special prominence in a stressed syllable is achieved through the changes in the quantity of the vowels, which are longer in the stressed syllables than in the unstressed ones, such type of stress is called quantitative.

Qualitative type of stress is achieved through the changes in the quality of the vowel under stress.

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.

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 quantity of long vowels and diphthongs can be preserved in pretonic and post-tonic position in English.

All English vowels may occur in accented syllables, the only exception iswhich is never stressed. English vowelstend to occur in unstressed syllables. Syllables with the syllabic /1, m, n/ are never stressed.

Stress can be characterized as fixed and free. In languages with fixed type of stress the place of stress is always the same. For example in Czech and Slovak the stress regularly falls on the first syllable. In Italian, Welsh, Polish it is on the penultimate syllable.

In English and Russian word-stress is free, that is it may fall on any syllable in a word. Stress in English and in Russian is not only free but also shifting. In both languages the place of stress may shift, which helps to differentiate different parts of speech, e.g. 'insult — to in'sult, `import — to im'port.

When the shifting of word-stress serves to perform distinctive function. V. Vassilyev terms this suprasegmental phonological unit form distinctive accenteme, when it serves to distinguish the meaning of different words, the term is word-distinctive accenteme.

Stress performs not only distinctive function, it helps to constitute and recognize words and their forms.

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 words examination, opportunity.

They mark the strongest syllable with primary accent with the numeral 1, then goes 2, 3, etc.

American descriptivists (B. Bloch, G. Trager) distinguish the following degrees of word-stress: loud /'/, reduced loud /^/, medial /`/, weak, which is not indicated. H. A. Gleason defines the degrees of stress as primary /'/, secondary /^/, tertiary /`/, weak /~/. H. Sweet distinguishes weak /~/, medium, or half-strong /:/, strong and extrastrong, or em­phatic stress /;/.

V.A. Vassilyev, D. Jones, R. Kingdon consider that there are three degrees of word-stress in English: primary — strong, secondary — partial, weak — in unstressed syllables. For example: certification

Most English scientists place the stress marks before the stressed syllables and don't mark monosyllabic words,

Some American scientists suggest placing the stress marks above the vowels of the stressed syllable.

8. Phonetics as a science.

Ph. Is not a separate, independent science. Ph. Is an independent brahch of linguistic like lexecology, grammar and stylistics. It studies the sound matter, its aspects and functions. Ph. formulates the rules of pronounciation for separate sounds and sound combinations.

Through the system of rules of reading Ph is connected with grammar and helps to pronaunce correctly singular and plural forms of nouns, the past tense forms and past participles of English regular verbs (d is pronaunced after voiced cons., t is pronaunced after voiceless cons. Wish-wished, id is pronounced after t want-wanted, s is pronaunced after voiceless cons., z is after voiced cons. and iz after sibilants (свистящие)).

Sound interchange is another manifestation of the connection of Ph with grammar, e.g. this connection can be observed in the category of number. Thus the interchange of f/v, s/z, th/the helps to differenciate singular and plural forms of such words as basis- bases, and also man-men, foot-feet. Vowel interchange is connected with the tense forms of irregular verbs (sing-sang-sung). Vowel interchange can also help to distinguish between: 1) nouns and verbs (bath-bathe), 2) adj and nouns (hot-heat), 3) verbs and adj (moderate-moderate), 4) nouns and nouns (shade-shadow), 5) nouns and adj (type-typical). Vowel interchange can also be observed in onomatopoetic compaunds (звукоподражательные сложные слова): hip-hop, flap-flop, chip-chop. Consonants can interchange in different parts of speech, e.g. in nouns and verbs (extent-extend, mouth-mouth).

Ph is also connected with grammar through its intonation component. Sometimes intonation alone can serve to single out the logical predicate. Pausation may also perform a differentiatory function. If we compare 2 similar sentences pronaunced with different places of pause, the meaning will be different.

Ph is also connected with lexicology. It is only due to the presence of stress in the right place, that we can distinguish certain nouns from verbs (formed by convercion).

Homographs can be differentiated only due to pronaunciation, because they are identical in spelling: bow(ou луг)-bow(au поклон), row(ou ряд)-row(au шум).

Due to the position of word accent we can distinguish between homonymous words and word groups.

Ph is also connected with stylistics; first of all through intonation and its components: speech melody, utterance (произнесение) stress, rythm, pausation and voicetember which serves to express emotions.

Ph is also connected with stylistics through repetition of words, phrases and sounds. Repetition of this kind serves the basis of rythm, rhyme and alliteration. The repetition of identical or similar sounds, which is called alliteration, helps to impart (передавать) a melodic effect to the utterance and to express certain emotions.

Theoretical significance of Ph is connected with the further development of the problem of the study and description of the Ph system of a national language and different languages, the study of the correspondences between them, the description of changes in the Ph system of languages.

Practical significance of Ph is connected with teaching foreign languages, speech correction, teaching deaf-mutes, film doubling.

9. Style – different manner of non-verbal expression. The choice of a speech style is situationally determined. Any act of verb.com-n is changed by certain int-nal peculiarities which depend on such extra-ling-c factors (effect the situation) as: 1) the purpose of com-n; 2) social setting of curc-s; 3) social identity of the speeker; 4) individual speech habits; 5) em-nal state of the speeker. An int-l style – a s-m of interrelated int-nal means, which is used in a certain social spere and serves the def-te aim of com-n.

Clas-n by Sh.Bally: 1) highly elevated style; 2) elaborate pron-n (тщательное); 3) slow coll.pron-n; 4) fluent coll.pron-n. Clas-n by Sokolova, Gintovt, Kanter: 1) inform-al – formal; radio, press; 2) scientific – accad.; 3) declamatory; 4) publicific; 5) conversational. Inform-n: intellectual, emotional, volitional.

There are 5 styles by Sokolova, 1.informational style (speech of announces, oral representation of any kind of information written text, formal conversation) 2.scientific, academic st (a lecture o a scientific subject reading aloud a piece of scientific prose) 3.publicistic st (public discurse on a political topic economic) 4.conversational, familiar (the way of everyday communication) 5. declamatory (reading aloud any piece of prose o poetry)

Informational style:

1 a formal manner of presentation with occasionally interested оvertones and a number of hesitation and breath-taking pauses.

2 normal or increased loudness, moderate or rather slow rate (tempo of speech), varied pitch levels, ranges and intonation patterns.

3 businesslike, rather reserved voice timbre, systematic rhythm, the accentuation of the semantic centres through the use of expressive high falls and falling-rising tones, the use of several low falls within an intonation group and a phrase.

4 centralized accentuation, subjective isochrony contrasting with the rhythmicality achieved by the use of final categoric falls.

The academic style:

l The academic style represents the language of factual information, thus attitudinal and emphatic functions of intonation are of secondary importance here.

2 High falling and falling-rising terminal tones are widely used for logical and contrastive emphasis; the rhythmic organization of a scientific text is properly balanced by the alternation of all prosodic features.

3 The prosodic features of the academic-style reading are not greatly varied.

4 The phonostylistic characteristics of scientific discourse reading a overloaded with variations in tempo, loudness, pauses, pitch levels and ranges.

^ Publicistic style:

1intellectual and volitional information.

2 volitional and desiderative information.

3 attitudinal and emphatic meanings of intonation.

4 a combination of appropriate prosodic features which are realized in other phonostyles.

The declamatory style is called an artistic intonation style, the acquired style of the stage because:

l this style manifests itself in a written form of the language read aloud or recited.

2 attitudinal, volitional and intellectual functions of intonation come to the fore in this style, having the status of a style-ifferentiating value.

3 this style is performed on the stage, on the screen, on the radio, in a classroom.

4 this style is realized through all sorts of emotional and expressive devices requiring professional skills.

Conversational style:

1 Some pauses in the given context are used in places related closely to the grammatical structures.

2 The distribution of the pauses is correlated with falling terminal tones, the main factor of rhythmicality in informal English.

3 The pauses are made in between the words that mark the boundaries of phonetic wholes.

A number of pauses occur in appropriate places where they break the syntactic junctures in the given context.

Functional styles. There are 5 styles by Sokolova, 1.informational style (speech of announces, oral representation of any kind of information written text, formal conversation) 2.scientific, academic st (a lecture o a scientific subject reading aloud a piece of scientific prose) 3.publicistic st (public discurse on a political topic economic y etc) 4.conversational, familiar (the way of everyday communication) 5. declamatory (reading aloud any piece of prose o poetry)

Phonostylistic is a part of linguistics it studies the way phonetic means of the language function in various oral realizations. phonost is concearned with the study of phonetic expressive means from stylistic pint of view. Functional style is – complex of different varieties of speech realized in all kinds of extra linguistic situation.

10. Phonemes. In a language or dialect, a phoneme (from the Greek: φώνημα, phōnēma, "a sound uttered") is the smallest segmental unit of sound employed to form meaningful contrasts between utterances[1].

Allophones are the linguistically non-significant variants of each phoneme. In other words a phoneme may be realised by more than one speech sound and the selection of each variant is usually conditioned by the phonetic environment of the phoneme. Occasionally allophone selection is not conditioned but may vary form person to person and occasion to occasion (ie. free variation).

A phoneme is a set of allophones or individual non-contrastive speech segments. Allophones are sounds, whilst a phoneme is a set of such sounds.

e.g. Pit[phit] spit[spit] In English, [p] and [ph] are allophones of the /p/ phoneme.

2 types of allophones: principal and subsidiary

Principal are the allophones which don’t undergo any changes in the flow of speech => they are the closest to the phoneme) Ex: [t] -> [to:k]

In the articulation of a subsidiary allophone we observe predictable changes under the influence of the phonetic context.

Ex: [d] – occlusive plosive stop, forelingual, apical-alveolar, voiced lenis (the phoneme)

[do:], [dog] – the principal allophones

[d] is slightly palatalized before front vowels and [j]: [ded], [did ju:]

without plosion before another stop: [gud dei], [bad pain]

with nasal plosion before nasal sonorants [m], [n]: [‘s^nd]

before [l] a literal plosion: [midl]

followed by “r” – [pst alveolar [d]: [dr^m]

before interdental sounds it becomes dental: [bredth]

when followed by [w] it becomes labialized: [dwel]

in word final position it’s partly devoiced: [ded]

They are all fore-lingual lenis stops, but they show some differences. The allophones of the same phoneme never occur in the same phonetic context.

We can’t pronounce a phoneme, we pronounce allophones, which are accompanied by several social and personal characteristics. The actual pronounced sounds which we hear are formed with stylistic, situational, personal and etc. characteristics. They are called phones.

11. Phonetics and phonology are related, dependent fields for studying aspects of language. Phonetics is the study of sound in speech; phonology is the study (and use) of sound patterns to create meaning. Phonetics focuses on how speech is physically created and received, including study of the human vocal and auditory tracts, acoustics, and neurology. Phonology relies on phonetic information for its practice, but focuses on how patterns in both speech and non-verbal communication create meaning, and how such patterns are interpreted. Phonology includes comparative linguistic studies of how cognates, sounds, and meaning are transmitted among and between human communities and languages.

Methods: we distinguish between subjective, introspective methods of phonetic investigation and objective methods.

The oldest, simplest and most readily available method is the method of direct observation. This method consists in observing the movements and positions of one's own or other people's organs of speech in pronouncing various speech sounds, as well as in analyzing one's own kinaesthetic sensations during the articulation of speech sound in comparing them with auditory impressions.

Objective methods involve the use of various instrumental techniques (palatography, laryngoscopy, photography, cinematography, X-ray photography and cinematography and electromyography). This type of investigation together with direct observation is widely used in experimental phonetics. The objective methods and the subjective ones are complementary and not opposite to one another. Nowadays we may use the up-to-date complex set to fix the articulatory parameters of speech - so called articulograph.

Acoustic phonetics comes close to studying physics and the tools used in this field enable the investigator to measure and analyze the movement of the air in the terms of acoustics. This generally means introducing a microphone into the speech chain, converting the air movement into corresponding electrical activity and analyzing (Ксень, это слово у Красы через «s», но, по-моему, тут «z») the result in terms of frequency of vibration and the amplitude of vibration in relation to time. The spectra of speech sounds are investigated by means of the apparatus called the sound spectrograph. Pitch as a component of intonation can be investigated by intonograph.

The acoustic aspect of speech sounds is investigated not only with the help of sound-analyzing techniques, but also by means of speech-synthesizing devices.

There are different types of oppositions:

1) single

the opposed sounds differ in one articulating feature only: [pen] – [ben]

voiceless voiced

2) double

the opposed sounds differ in 2 distinctive features: [pen] - [den]

bilabial forelingual voiceless voiced

3) triple (multiple)

the opposed sounds differ in 3 distinctive features: [pen] - [then]

voiceless voiced

bilabial interdental

occlusive stop constrictive fricative

There are some problems - sometimes sounds cannot be opposed:

Ex: [h] is never used in final position;

[n-носовое] is never in the initial position.

In such cases we rely on the knowledge of the native speaker and phonetic similarities or dissimilarities.

12. Unemphatic intonation. Sentence Stress.

Standard unemphatic falling intonation is the most common type of intonation in English. It is used in statements (declarative sentences), special questions, commands (imperative sentences), exclamatory sentences, in the first part of disjunctive questions and in the last part of alternative questions. (Different types of sentences are described in Basic Word Order in the section Grammar.) The final fall in English is used on the last stressed syllable of a sentence and falls stronger and deeper than the fall in Russian.

Statements

Special questions

Commands

Exclamatory sentences

Alternative questions

You can listen the examples of falling intonation in different types of sentences in Listening for Falling and Rising Intonation (AmE) and Listening for Intonation in Questions and Answers (AmE) in the section Phonetics.

Meaning of falling intonation – quiet, unemphatic style. At the same time, falling intonation conveys certain emotions, such as completion, finality, confidence. Falling intonation sounds more categorical, confident, and convincing than rising intonation. Compare the use of the falling tone and the rising tone in the second part of tag questions.

Tag questions

Note that the falling tone is always used in the first part of tag questions (disjunctive questions). Despite the fact that tag questions are asked to get confirmation and agreement, the answer may be affirmative or negative. (Read more about different types of questions, including tag questions, in Word Order in Questions in the section Grammar.)

High fall may be used for extra emphasis in informal situations to express lively interest and friendliness in statements, for example, in greetings and exclamations. High fall starts higher than the standard fall, and the stressed syllable on which it takes place is pronounced more loudly and has stronger stress. High fall is common in everyday speech, but language learners should use it with caution and not too often because it is very expressive and emphatic.

Change of standard patterns of falling intonation also has meaning. It is very important to understand what this change might signal.

A statement with falling intonation gives information, while a statement with rising intonation may become a surprised question or may imply a request to repeat.

A special question with falling intonation asks for information, while a special question with rising intonation usually signals more interest on the part of the speaker.

A general question with rising intonation asks for information and expects "yes" or "no" for an answer, while a general question with falling intonation usually signals the speaker's confidence in getting an affirmative answer.

A request in the form of a general question with rising intonation is normal and polite, while a request with falling intonation sounds like a command and may be impolite.

Language learners should understand what the change of standard patterns may signal, but it is advisable to use standard patterns of falling intonation in your own speech.

Sentence stress is the governing stress in connected speech. All words have their individual stress in isolation. When words are connected into sense groups (also called thought groups, i.e., logically connected groups of words), and sense groups are connected into sentences, content words keep their stress, and function words lose their stress. The most important words in the sentence receive stronger stress. The last stressed word in the sentence receives the strongest stress with the help of a fall or a rise.

13. In the USA the most widespread type of lang is GA. Like RP in GB GA in America is the social standard: it is religionally neutral, it is used by radio, by TV, in science, it is spoken by educated Americans.

1no opposition between historically long and historically short.

2[i] may be obscured as in rabbit [rэеbэt]

3[έ] – lower than the RP [e]

4[эе] – long, mostly nasaliezed, may turn into [e] as in marry, [эе] may be used instead of [a:], ask, past

5[3] - retroflex какуминальный согласный in medial and terminal position, bird, better

6[i:] – ‘barred’ препятствовать [i] in sister, horses

7[a] instead of[o], doll, rob

8[o]instead of [o:] as in law

9[Λ] turns into [3r], e.g. [h3ri] – hurry.

10in GA the distinction between monopthongs and diphthongs is not very consistent последовательный.

Principal pecularities of General American cons – s.

1. voiceless, fricative, labiovelar[ʍ]

2. the GA [r] is more sonorous than the RP [r]. It is retroflex.

3. [l] – predominantly преимущественно dark

4. [t] – short, voiced, intermediate between [d] and [t]

5. glottal stop?

6. [h] – voiced in intervocalic position, lost initially in unsterssed or weak forms within внутри a phrase.

7. [ju] may change into [t∫, dЗ ] in due, tune

8. [∫] – vocalized in asia

9. nasal twang налет as in man.

14. Intonation is a complex unity of sentence stress, rhythm, tempo, speech melody and voice timbre. Each syllable in a sense group is pronounced on a certain pitch level and bears a definite amount of loudness. Intonation patterns serve to actualize sense groups. Intonation is a language universal. According to R. Kingdon the most important nuclear tones in English are: Low Fall, High Fall, Low Rise, High Rise, and Fall-Rise.

The sense group is a group of words which is semantically and syntactically complex.

In Phonetics actualized sense groups are called intonation groups.

Intonation patterns containing a number of syllables consist of the following parts:

the prehead

the head (the 1st accented syllable)

the scale (begins with the 1st acc.syll.)

the nucleus (the last acc.syll.) – is the most important part of the intonation pattern.

the tail – conveys no particular information

The parts of intonation patterns can be combined in various ways expressing different meanings and attitudes.

The number of possible combinations is more than 100. But not all of them are equally important. That’s why the number may be reduced to fewer combinations that are important. Thus Prof. O’Connor gives 10 important tone-groups. Each intonation group has a communicative center (a semantic center). It conveys the most important piece of information. which is usually something new. The terminal tone arranges the intonation group both semantically and phonetically.

The functions of intonation:

constitutive (it presupposes the integrative function on the one hand when intonation arranges intonation groups into bigger syntactic units: sentences, syntactic wholes and texts)

delimitative (it manifests itself when intonation divides texts, syntactic wholes and sentences units that is intonation groups).

distinctive It is realized when intonation serves:

→ to distinguish communicative types of sentences (the communicatively distinctive function)

→ the actual meaning of a sentence (the semantically-distinctive function)

→ the speaker’s attitude to the contents of the sentence, to the listener and to the topic of conversation (the attitudinally-distinctive function)

→ the style of speech (the stylistically distinctive function)

the syntactically distinctive function (one and the same syntactic unit may be divided into a different number of intonation groups. This division may be important for the meaning).

→ the function of differentiating between the theme and the rheme of an utterance.

^ The rheme is the communicative center of an utterance. The theme is the rest of an utterance.

Each component of intonation has its distinctive function.

15. Rhythm is the regular alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables. It is so typical of an English phrase that the incorrect rhythm betrays the non-English origin of the speaker.

The units of the rhythmical structure of an utterance are stress groups or rhythmic groups. The perception of boundaries between rhythmic groups is associated with the stressed syllables or peaks of prominence.

Unstressed syllables have a tendency to cling to the preceding stressed syllables — enclitics, or to the following stressed syllables — proclitics. In English, as a rule, only initial unstressed syllables cling to the following stressed syllable, non-initial unstressed syllables are usually enclitics.

Each sense-group of the sentence is pronounced at approximately the same period of time, unstressed syllables are pronounced more rapidly. Proclitics are pronounced faster than enclitics.

Each sense-group of the sentence is pronounced at approximately the same period of time, unstressed syllables are pronounced more rapidly. Proclitics are pronounced faster than enclitics.

Rhythm is connected with sentence stress. Under the influence of rhythm words which are normally pronounced with two equally strong stresses may lose one of them, or may have their word stress realized differently, e. g.,Picca'dilly —,Piccadilly 'Circus — 'close to,Picca'dilly

Structural, semantic and sound devices for producing rhythmicality.

Phonetic devices make impression of rhythmicality and add considerably to the musical quality a poem has when it is read aloud:

1)The rhyme is the repetition of identical or similar terminal sound combination of words. Rhyming words are generally placed at a regular distance from each other.

2)The assonance occurs when a poet introduces imperfect rhymes often employed deliberatly to avoid the jingling sound of a too insistent rhyme pattern.

3)Alliteration is the repetition of the same sound at frequent intervals.

4)Sound symbolism (imitation of the sounds of animals) makes the description very vivid.

Structural or syntactical devices indicate the way the whole poem has been built, thus helping the rhythm to fulfil it`s constitutive function.

1)Repetition: poets often repeat single lines or words at intervals to emphasize a particular idea. Pepetition is to be found in poetry which is aiming at special musical effects or when a poet wants us to pay very close attention to something.

2)Syntactical parallelism helps to increase rhythmicality.

3)Inversion, the unusual word order specially chosen to emphasize the logical centre of the phrase.

4)Polysyndeton is syntactical stylistic device which actually stimulates rhythmicality of a poem by the repetition of phrases or intonation groups beginning with the same conjunctions `and` or `or`.

Semantic devices- impart high artistic and aesthetic value to any work of art including poetry:

1)Simile is a direct comparison which can be recognized by the use of the words `like` and `as`.

2)Metaphor is a stylistic figure of speech which is rather like simile, except that the comparison is not direct but implied and makes the effect more striking.

3)Intensification is a special choice of words to show the increase of feelings, emotions or actions.

4)Personification occurs when inanimate objects are given a human form or human feelings or actions.

16. Phonetics is a science devoted to the physical analysis of the sounds of human speech, including their production, transmission, and perception.

Phonetics is traditionally divided into two branches: acoustic, concerned with the structure of the acoustic signal itself, and articulatory, concerned with the way these sounds are produced.

Theoretical Phonetics studies speech sounds:

1) from every point of view.

Articulatory point of view - every speech sound is a complex of definite finely coordinated and differentiated movements and positions of the various speech organs.

Acoustic - speech sounds have certain physical properties.

Phonological - speech sounds are studied through the phonological oppositions.

Auditory - all of speech sounds have infinite number of features.

2) studies mechanisms of vowel and consonant production:

Vibrator mechanism - vocal cords

Resonator mechanism - oral cavity, nasal cavity

Obstructer mechanism - tongue, VC, teeth

Power mechanism - lungs, diaphragm

3) sounds are studied not only separately but in clusters and in speech. Thus we've come to kinetics and kinesthetic factors.

4) the matter of analysis:

- description - setting down as many as possible features which are present in sounds.

- classification - mentioning those features by which sounds utter.

One of the main subjects is intonation. Theoretical phonetics views it from the point of view of different schools and approaches:

Russian - intonation consists of speech melody, tones, change in pitch.

British - intonation is a contour, that is a unit of intonation consisting of pre-head, head, nucleus and tail.

American - intonation is pitch. Differences in pitch cause differences in meaning.

Speaking about sounds we usually view them in words, which consist of syllables. This is another subject of theoretical phonetics - syllable division and different approaches to it.

Поиск по сайту: