Лекциялар жинағы Мамандығы: 5В011900 «Шетел тілі: екі шетел тілі»
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- Psycholinguistics
| Instrumental methods deriving from physiology and physics were introduced into phonetics in the second half of the last century in order to supplement and indeed to rectify the impressions deriving from the human senses, especially the auditory impressions, since these are affected by the limitations of the perceptual mechanism, and in general are rather subjective.
The use of instruments is valuable in ascertaining the nature of the limitations and characteristics of the human sensory apparatus by providing finer and more detailed analysis against which sensory analysis can be assessed. In a general way, the introduction of machines for measurements and for instrumental analysis into phonetics has resulted in their use for detailed study of many of the phenomena which are present in the sound wave or in the articulatory process at any given moment, and in the changes of these phenomena from moment to moment. This is strictly an instrumental method of study. This type of investigation together with sensory analysis is widely used in experimental phonetics. The results available from instrumental analysis supplement those available from sensory analysis. Practically today there are no areas of phonetics in which useful work can and is being done without combining these two ways of phonetic investigation. The "subjective" methods of analysis by sensory impression and the "objective" methods of analysis by instruments are complementary and not oppositive to one another. Both "objective" and "subjective" methods are widely and justifiably used in modern phonetics. Articulatory phonetics borders with anatomy and physiology and the tools for investigating just what the speech organs do are tools which are used in these fields: direct observation, wherever it is possible, e.g. lip movement, some tongue movement; combined with x-ray photography or x-ray cinematography; observation through mirrors as in the laryngoscopy investigation of vocal cord movement, etc. Acoustic phonetics comes close to studying physics and the tools used in this field enable the investigator to measure and analyse 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 analysing the result in terms of frequency of vibration and amplitude of vibration in relation to time. The use of such technical devices as spectrograph, intonograph and other sound analysing and sound synthesizing machines is generally combined with the method of direct observation. The pictures on p. 11 may be a good illustration of the use of such a device as the intonograph. The methods applied in auditory phonetics are those of experimental psychology. As was stated above, phoneticians cannot act only as describes and classifiers of the material form of phonetic units. They are also interested in the way in which sound phenomena function in a particular language, how they are utilized in that language and what part they play in manifesting the meaningful distinctions of the language. The branch of phonetics that studies the linguistic function of consonant and vowel sounds, syllabic structure, word accent and prosodic features, such as pitch, stress and tempo is called phonology. In linguistics, function is usually understood to mean discriminatory function, that is, the role of the various elements of the language in the distinguishing of one sequence of sounds, such as a word or a sequence of words, from another of different meaning. Though we consider the discriminatory function to be the main linguistic function of any phonetic unit we cannot ignore the other function of phonetic units, that is, their role in the formation of syllables, words, phrases and even texts. This functional or social aspect of phonetic phenomena was first introduced in the works by I.A.Baudouin-de-Courtenay. Later on N.S.Trubetskoy declared phonology to be a linguistic science limiting articulatory and acoustic phonetics to anatomy, physiology and acoustics only. This conception is shared by many foreign linguists who investigate the material form and the function of oral speech units separately. Soviet linguists proceed from the truly materialistic view that language being the man's medium of thought can exist only in the material form of speech sounds. That is why they consider phonology a branch of phonetics that investigates its most important social aspect1. Phonology possesses its own methods of investigation which will be described later in the course. Apart from its key position in any kind of scientific analysis of language phonetics plays an important part in various applications of linguistics. A few may be mentioned here. A study of phonetics has, we believe, educational value for almost everyone, realizing the importance of language in human communication. It is fair to mention here that though language is the most important method we have of communicating, it is manifestly not the only method. We can communicate by gestures, facial expressions, or touch, for instance, and these are not language. The study of the complex of various communication techniques is definitely relevant to teaching a foreign language. Through study of the nature of language, especially of spoken language, valuable insights are gained into human psychology and into the functioning of man in society. That is why we dare say that phonetics has considerable social value. As regards the learning of specific foreign languages, there has never been a time in the world when the ability of growing numbers of people to speak one another's language really well has been of such significance as now. Some training in linguistics and phonetics in general, and in the pronunciation of particular language is coming more and more to be considered equipment for a teacher of foreign languages in school or special faculties making him more efficient in his routine work on the spoken language, as well as in the variety of other things, such as coping with audio-visual aids like tape-recorders and language laboratories or in knowing what to do about any of his pupils who have defective speech. A knowledge of the structure of sound systems, and of the articulatory and acoustic properties of the production of speech is indispensable in the teaching of foreign languages. The teacher has to know the starting point, which is the sound system of the pupil's mother tongue, as well as the aim of his teaching, which is a mastery of the pronunciation of the language to be learnt. He must be able to point out the differences between these two, and to arrange adequate training exercises. Ear training and articulatory training are both equally important in modern language teaching. The introduction of technical equipment – disks, tape-recorders, language laboratories, etc. – has brought about a revolution in the teaching of the pronunciation of foreign languages. In our technological age phonetics has become important in a number of technological fields connected with communication. On the research side much present-day work in phonetics entails the use of apparatus, and is concerned with the basic characteristics of human speech. Much basic research is to be done with the phonetician working alongside the psychologist on auditory perception as such and on the perception of speech in particular. The phonetician is further needed to work in conjunction with the mathematician and the communications engineer in devising and perfecting machines that will understand, that is respond to human speech, for the simpler programming of computers, machines that will produce with a high degree of intelligibility recognizable human speech synthetically, machines that will reliably distinguish and identify individual speakers, machines for reproducing human speech in audible or visible forms. For instance, in the experimental stage are devices for "reading" the printed page, that is for converting the printed symbols or letters into synthetic speech. A little further away as yet, but apparently well within the bounds of possibility is the automatic or phonetic typewriter, which will convert speech directly into printed words on paper. Because of the obvious practical importance of advances in these fields it is certain that further collaboration will develop between phonetics and sound engineering, to the mutual benefit of each. For those who work in speech therapy, which handles pathological conditions of speech, phonetics forms an essential part of the professional training syllabus. Phonetics also enters into the training of teachers of the deaf and dumb people and can be of relevance to a number of medical and dental problems. An understanding of phonetics has proved extremely useful in such varied spheres as the following: investigations in the historical aspects of languages, and in the field of dialectology; designing or improving systems of writing or spelling (orthographies for unwritten languages, shorthand, spelling reform), in questions involving the spelling or pronunciation of personal or place names or of words borrowed from other languages. Our further point should be made in connection with the relationship between phonetics and social sciences. A cardinal principle underlying the whole linguistic approach is that language is not an isolated phenomenon; it is a part of society, and a part of ourselves. It is a prerequisite for the development of any society. From the above you may see that phonetics enters into a number of specialized fields and that it is not possible to restrict the investigation of any phonetic phenomenon by the methods of linguistics only. No branch of linguistics can be studied without presupposing at least the study of other aspects of society. The way in which phonetics overlaps in its subject matter with other academic studies has become well appreciated over the last few years, and in the past two decades we have seen the development of quite distinct interdisciplinary subjects, such as sociolinguistics (and sociophonetics correspondingly), psycholinguistics, mathematical linguistics and others. These, as their titles suggest, refer to aspects of language which are relevant and susceptible to study from two points of view (sociology and linguistics, psychology and linguistics and so on), and which thus requires awareness and development of concepts and the techniques derived from both. Sociophonetics studies the ways in which pronunciation interacts with society. It is the study of the way in which phonetic structures change in response to different social functions and the deviations of what these functions are. Society here is used in its broadest sense, to cover a spectrum of phenomena to do with nationality, more restricted regional and social groups, and the specific interactions of individuals within them. Here there are innumerable facts to be discovered, even about a language as well investigated as English, concerning, for instance, the nature, of the different kinds of English pronunciation we use in different situations – when we are talking to equals, superiors or subordinates; when we are "on the job", when we are old or young; male or female; when we are trying to persuade, inform, agree or disagree and so on. We may hope that very soon sociophonetics may supply elementary information about: "who can say, what, how, using what phonetic means, to whom, when, and why?" In teaching phonetics we would consider the study of sociolinguistics to be an essential part of the explanation in the functional area of phonetic units. Finally, we would like to mention one more example of interdisciplinary overlap, that is the relation of linguistics to psychology. Psycholinguistics as a distinct area of interest developed in the early sixties, and in its early form covered the psychological implications of an extremely broad area, from acoustic phonetics to language pathology. Nowadays no one would want to deny the existence of strong mutual bonds of interest operating between linguistics, phonetics in our case and psychology. The acquisition of language by children, the extent to which language mediates or structures thinking; the extent to which language is influenced and itself influences such things as memory, attention, recall and constraints on perception; and the extent to which language has a certain role to play in the understanding of human development; the problems of speech production are broad illustrations of such bounds. The field of phonetics is thus becoming wider and tending to extend over the limits originally set by its purely linguistic applications. On the other hand, the growing interest in phonetics is doubtless partly due to increasing recognition of the central position of language in every line of social activity. It is important, however, that the phonetician should remain a linguist and look upon his science as a study of the spoken form of language. It is its application to linguistic phenomena that makes phonetics a social science in the proper sense of the word, notwithstanding its increasing need of technical methods, and in spite of its practical applications. жүктеу/скачать 221,88 Kb. Достарыңызбен бөлісу:
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