Шымкент университеті «Шетел филологиясы» кафедрасы
“ Ағылшын тілінің теориялық фонетикасы”
Күндізгі және сырткы оқу студенттеріне арналған лекциялар жинағы
Мамандығы: 5В011900 «Шетел тілі: екі шетел тілі»
Курс: 3
Семестр: 5
Кредиттер саны: 5
Шымкент 2020г
НЕДЕЛЯ 1
LECTURE 1.PHONETICS AS A SCIENCE Theoretical phonetics which is mainly concerned with the functioning of phonetic units in the language. Theoretical phonetics, as we introduce it here, regards phonetic phenomena synchronically without any special attention paid to the historical development of English.
This course is intended to discuss those problems of modern phonetic science which are strongly concerned with English language teaching. The teacher must be sure that what he teaches is linguistically correct. We hope that this book will enable him to work out a truly scientific approach to the material he introduces to his pupils.
In phonetics as in any other subject, there are various schools of thought whose views sometimes coincide and sometimes conflict. Occasional reference is made to them but there is no attempt to set out all possible current approaches to the phonetic theory because this book does not seem to be the place for that.
We shall try here to get away from complex sounding problems of theoretical phonetics by producing thumb-nail definitions, which will provide an easier starting point in this subject. The authors will try to explain exactly why it is important to emphasize that phonetics should be studied scientifically, and follow this up by analysing the object of study, pronunciation, in some detail. All of this assumes, we hope, a considerable amount of interest to the future teacher of English. However, it would be naive of an author to expect anyone to work systematically through so many pages of the text without there being some advance interest or special reason for doing so. This introductory course will be accompanied by further reading, on the one hand, and with a system of special linguistic tasks, on the other, which will enable the students to approach professional problems; to satisfy their applied interest in the scientific study of their subject.
As you see from the above, this book is intended to consider the role of phonetic means in the act of communication, to serve as a general introduction to the subject of theoretical phonetics of English which will encourage the teacher of English to consult more specialized works on particular aspects.
The authors of the book hope that the readers have sufficient knowledge of the practical course of English phonetics as well as of the course of general linguistics, which will serve as the basis for this course.
Phonetics is itself divided into two major components: segmental phonetics, which is concerned with individual sounds (i.e. "segments" of speech) and suprasegmental phonetics whose domain is the larger units of connected speech: syllables, words, phrases and texts. The way these elements of the phonetic structure of English function in the process of communication will be the main concern of all the following chapters.
The description of the phonetic structure of English will be based on the so-called Received Pronunciation which will be specified in Chapter VI.
The present volume attempts to survey the system of phonetic phenomena of English giving priority to those which present special interest to teaching activity. To start with it is necessary to realize what kind of English is used in the process of teaching. We all agree that we are to teach the "norm" of English, as a whole, and the "norm" of English pronunciation in particular. There is no much agreement, however, as far as the term "norm" is concerned. This term is interpreted in different ways. Some scholars, for instance, associate "norm" with the so-called "neutral" style. According to this conception stylistically marked parameters do not belong to the norm. More suitable, however, seems to be the conception put forward by Y. Screbnev, who looks upon the norm as a complex of all functional styles (27). We have given priority to the second point of view as it is clearly not possible to look upon the pronunciation norm as something ideal which does not, in fact, exist in objective speech. We look upon the norm as a complex unity of phonetic styles realized in the process of communication in accordance with varying extralinguistic and social factors.
In the following chapter we are going to dwell on the problems concerned with stylistic variation of oral speech including the analysis of the conditions under which the utterance is produced, the relationship between the utterance and the extralinguistic and social situation, etc.
As was mentioned in the introduction, pronunciation is by no means homogeneous. It varies under the influence of numerous factors. These factors lie quite outside any possibility of signalling linguistic meaning so it is appropriate to refer to these factors as extralinguistic. The chapter that follows is based on the idea that information about stylistic variations in learning, understanding and producing language is directly useful for the design, execution and evaluation of teaching phonetics. The branch of phonetics most usually applied for such information is phonostylistics. It is the purpose of this chapter to offer brief, readable and scholarly introduction to the main themes and topics covered by current phonostylistic studies.
We should point out right at the beginning that phonostylistics is a rapidly developing and controversial field of study though a great deal of research work, has been done in it. It would not be accurate to say that phonostylistics is a new branch of phonetics. It is rather a new way of looking at phonetic phenomena. Linguists were until recently not aware of this way of analysis and awareness came only as a result of detailed analysis of spoken speech.
Before we go on to describe in detail what the problems and tasks of phonostylistics are we should want to give you some understanding of what gave a mighty impulse to this new way of looking at phonetic phenomena. The point is that during the first half of our century linguists have shown interest in written form of the language and so the emphasis in language study was laid on analysing written speech. It is only during the last thirty-five years that the situation has changed. It may be said that it was the invention of the tape-recorder and other technical aids that was the real turning point in phonetics and linguistics in general. Linguists got a good opportunity of studying the other form of language realization – spoken speech – the variety which had hitherto been largely or completely ignored. It is not only the absence of mechanical aids which accounts for the lack of linguistic research that has been carried out into this variety of language and the procedure difficulty of obtaining reliable data to investigate. There is, however, a further reason. Until quite recently theory and research on language was based on the assumption that it is only the written form of language realization that can serve a reliable object of investigation, while the spoken form is not worthy of scientific analysis because it produces deviations from the literary norm.
Nobody would want to deny the fact that spoken speech is the primary medium of 'language expression. So when linguists became involved in investigating language in use they realized that language is not an isolated phenomenon, it is a part of society. In real life people find themselves in various and numerous situations. In these situations language is used appropriately, i.e. people select from their total linguistic repertoires those elements which match the needs of particular situations.
This fact changed the whole approach to the language. Rather than viewing language as an object with independent existence, a thing to be described for its own sake, it became evident that it must be seen as a tool, a means to an end outside itself. That end is, of course, communication and it is only in the context of communicative situation that the essential properties of a linguistic system can be discovered and analysed.
So it is taken to be reasonably obvious that much of what people say depends directly or indirectly on the situation they are in. The nature of this dependency is fairly complicated and it would be quite unrealistic to attempt to analyse all aspects of it. We would like to point out two things that matter for the description that follows and stand out clearly. On the one hand, variations of language in different situations it is used in are various and numerous but, on the other hand, all these varieties have much in common as they are realizations of the same system. That means that there are regular patterns of variation in language, or, in other words, language means which constitute any utterance are characterized by a certain pattern of selection and arrangement.
The principles of this selection and arrangement, the ways of combining the elements form what is called "the style". Style integrates language means constructing the utterance, and at the same time differs one utterance from another.
It must be noted that the category of style is not new in linguistics. The branch of linguistics that is primarily concerned with the problems of functional styles is called functional stylistics. Stylistics is usually regarded as a specific division of linguistics, as a sister science, concerned not with the elements of the language as such but with their expressive potential.
We should point out here that we are not going into details as to the problems of stylistics. We shall only try to show how phonostylistics overlaps with functional stylistics and to explain why there is no simple correspondence between functional and phonetic styles.
It has been suggested that a functional style can be defined as a functional set of formal patterns into which language means are arranged in order to transmit information. A considerable number of attempts have been made in recent years to work out a classification of functional styles. But in spite of this fact it is still an open question in linguistics. In other words, there is no universal classification that is admitted by all analysts.
This fact can be accounted for by the following reasons. As was pointed out earlier, language events take place in situations. The factors that determine the usage of certain language means are quite numerous and various. Their interdependence and interconnection are of complex nature. Consequently it is difficult to decide which of the factors are of primary importance and should be considered the most reliable criterion.
In addition, language as a means of communication is known to have several functions. In the well-known conception suggested by academician V.V.Vinogradov (10), three functions are distinguished, that is the function of communication (colloquial style), the function of informing (business, official and scientific styles) and the emotive function (publicistic style and the belles-lettres style). Classification of this kind actually reflects some of the aspects of stylistic phenomena. However, the criterion of distinguishing styles does not seem accurate enough. It is obvious that what is called the emotive function is the general task of literature but not of style. Besides, the language of fiction should not be treated on the same footing with the functional style of a language.
The other two above-mentioned functions cannot serve as a basis for distinguishing functional styles because there is no simple correspondence between the function and the style. For example, scientific style is used not only for informing people but also for communication of scientists in discussions, talks, speeches and so on. Colloquial speech, in its turn, always combines those two functions. What is to be taken into account here is the difficulty of distinguishing those two functions, which is one of the basic problems. In fact communication is the process of exchanging information. The actual difference between communicating and informing can be marked primarily in a dialogue – monologue opposition.
As was mentioned above, there exist various classifications of-functional styles. The terms that are most commonly dealt with are: scientific style, publicistic style, business style, belles-lettres style and colloquial style. The latter functions predominantly in everyday oral speech, though most scholars share the opinion that there is no simple correspondence between the styles and the forms of language realization.
We should note here that in the process of studying the characteristics of functional styles phonetic level of analysis has been completely ignored.
However, nobody would want to deny now that oral speech has its own specific characteristics and the quality of various forms and kinds of oral speech is by far larger than in written speech. So it is quite clear that description and comparison of all these variations is a matter of severe complexity as, on the one hand, each form is specific and, on the other hand, there are regular patterns of partial likeness between them. Now one thing is evident, that the sets of phonetic style-forming features do not correspond to functional styles in pure linguistic approach. They are characterized by different qualities.
We have mentioned above that certain nonlinguistic features can be correlated with variations in language use. The latter can be studied on three levels: phonetic, lexical and grammatical. The first level is the area of phonostylistics.
Summarizing, we may say that phonostylistics studies the way phonetic means are used in this or that particular situation which exercises the conditioning influence of a set of factors which are referred to as extralinguistic. The aim of phonostylistics is to analyse all possible kinds of spoken utterances with the main purpose of identifying the phonetic features, both segmental and suprasegmental, which are restricted to certain kinds of contexts, to explain why such features have been used and to classify them into categories based upon a view of their function.
Before describing phonetic style-forming factors it is obviously necessary to try to explain what is meant by extralinguisticsituation. We should note here that if a systematic exhaustive and ultimately realistic view of phonostylistic differentiation of oral speech is to be attained an orderly analysis of the communicative extralinguistic situation appears to be mandatory. The analysis shows that it can be defined by three components, that is purpose, participants, setting. These components distinguish situation as the context within which interaction (communication) occurs. Thus a speech situation can be defined by the co-occurrence of two or more interlocutors related to each other in a particular way, having a particular aim of communicating, communicating about a particular topic in a particular setting.
Firstly, a situation is connected with the purpose and the topic of the communication. For us purpose can be defined as the motor which sets the chassis of setting and participants going, it is interlinked with the other two components in a very intricate way. The purpose which is of interest to us here directs the activities of the participants throughout a situation to complete a task. Such purposes can be viewed in terms of general activity types and in terms of the activity type plus specific subject matter.
There appear to be a considerable number of quite general types of activities, for example: working, teaching, learning, conducting a meeting, chatting, playing a game, etc. Such activity types are socially recognized as units of interaction that are identifiable.
It is reasonable to assume that activity types available to members of a society are not simply random lists of all possibilities but are organized into clusters of activities that seem to be of the same order. So we might suggest that academic activities such as university lecturing, high-levelled school teaching, scientific reports, discussions, etc. as related to activity types are opposed to other groups of activity types, such as, for example, casual chat, whether of dentist and patient to schoolmates or neighbours. (One of the bases of such an opposition might be the degree of spontaneity or degree of preparedness of speech that would reveal clusters of pronunciation markers.)
It should be noted that activity type alone does not give an adequate account of the purpose in a situation. It only specifies the range of possible purposes that participants will orient to ward in the activity but not which specific one will be involved. People do not set out to lecture or to chat on something, they intend to lecture on physics, or literature, or art, to chat on weather or a book they have read. The notion of purpose re quires the specification of contents at a more detailed level than that of activity type. This we shall call "subject matter" or "topic" and we shall assume isomorphy between subject matter of the speech activity and topic of speech ignoring such situations when, for example, participants might be cooking while chatting about their work. But we should like to point out here that subject matter, in large part, will determine the lexical items encountered, the pronunciation being very slightly affected. That is why when the study of functional variants of pronunciation is concerned it is activity types that form the notion of the purpose of communication.