Syllable formation theories. Main problems of the phonetic aspect of syllable in English

There are many theories of syllable formation: 1) Ancient theory of correspondence between the number of vowels and the syllables; 2) the expiratory theory – according to it, syllables are formed by breath-puffs. The theory has been abandoned, because we now know that in speaking, we take a new breath at the end of a syntagm, that no increase of breath force necessarily accompanies every syllable; 3) the sonority theory – is based upon the fact that each sound has a different carrying power. By means of linguistic experiments, the creator of this theory, prof. Otto Jespersen has proved that the least sonorous sounds(for which the mouth is closed) - /p,t,k/ have the least carrying power. The most sonorous sounds are foe which the mouth is wide open, thus these sounds have the most carrying power - /o, o:, a:, æ/. According to O. Jespersen, each sound is characterized by a certain degree of sonority which is understood as acoustic property of a sound that determines its perceptibility. According to this sound property a ranking of speech sounds could be established: <the least sonorous> voiceless plosives voiced fricatives -^voiced plosives voiced fricatives sonorants close vowels ->open vowels <the most sonorous>. In the word plant for example we may use the following wave of sonority: [pla:nt]. According to V.A. Vasssilyev the most serious drawback of this theory is that it fails to explain the actual mechanism of syllable formation and syllable division. Besides, the concept of sonority is not very clearly defined.

Although it is a step forward in solving the problem of the syllable, it does not help deter­mine the principle of syllable division, of drawing a line of demarcation between two adjoining syl­lables. Prof. L.V. Scherba used two theories for this purpose: 1) the muscular tension theory; 2) the three types of consonants theory. He explained the phenomenon of syllable formation by muscular tension impulses. The fact that syllables cannot be further subdivided in connected speech proves that, in speaking muscular tension impulses follow one another. Each impulse has its strongest point - the peak of prominence and its weakest point - the valley of prominence. Valleys of prominence correspond to the points of syllabic division. The end of one syllable and the beginning of the next can be ascertained by deter­mining the type of consonants which take part in forming the syllables. Consonants may be of three types: 1) initially strong; 2) finally strong; 3) geminate.

That is to say, consonants may be pronounced in three different ways: 1. The beg innin g of a consonant may be more energetic, while the end may be weaker; 2. The beginning of a consonant may be weak, and its end - more energetic; 3. A consonant may be pronounced in such a way that both the beginning and the end are energetic with a weakening of muscular tension in the middle. Acoustically, they give the impression of two consonants:

1. it, us, oath, add; 2. may. tea, new; 3. penknife, what time? midday meal.

At the beginning of the 50s prof. N.I. Zhinkin of Moscow proclaimed his ‘loudness theory’. It is based upon the series of experiments that were originally ment to determine the nature of Russian word stress and partly sentence stress.

His experiments have led him to the conclusion that syllables are due to a rise and fall in loudness and not to breath puffs or anything else. He asserts, on the basis of his experiments, that ever}' phoneme possesses a specific inherent loudness which manifests itself when sounds are pro­nounced in sequences.

The so-called expiratory (chest pulse or pressure) theory was introduced by R.H. Stetson. This theory is based on the assumption that expiration in speech is a pulsating process and each syl­lable should correspond to a single expiration. So the number of syllables in an utterance is deter­mined by the number of expirations made in the production of the utterance. This theory was strong­ly criticized by Russian and foreign linguists. G.P. Torsuyev, for example, wrote that in a phrase a number of words and consequently a number of syllables can be pronounced with a single expira­tion. This fact makes the validity of the theory doubtful.

12. Phonotactics as a branch of phonology. Basic rules of syllable division. Typical phonotactic possibilities in the structure of English syllables and words. Phonological constraints on sound clusters in onset and coda.

1. Phonotactics as a branch of phonology.

Every language has phonemes, and every language has its own common patterns in which phonemes are arranged to form syllables and the syllables are arranged to form larger units. In some languages all syllables consist of one consonant followed by one vowel (CV), so that no word has a cluster of consonants or of vowels; any word has the form CV, or CVCV, or CVCVCV..., depend­ing on how many syllables it has. In English there are never more than two vowels in sequence in a single word (as in neon, poet, cruel, radio), but clusters of two, three, or more consonants are fairly common: prescribe, district,splints, tempts, for example. Still, not just any two, three, or more con- cluster. There are definite limits, or constraints, on co-occurrence. Phonotactics is the part of phonology which studies and describes such constraints. Phonotactics varies from language to language but there are general tendencies across languages.

* When a syllable onset has more than one consonant, the less sonorant sounds tend to be first, fol­lowed by more sonorant sounds.

*When a syllable coda has more than one consonant, the more sonorant sounds tend to be first, fol­lowed by less sonorant sounds.

In other words, the more sonorant sounds tend to be closer to the syllable nucleus, obstruents < [+son] consonants < vowels.

This is called the Sonority Scale or Sonority Sequencing Generalization.

2. Basic rules of syllable division. As A.A. Kalita writes, in English the vowel of the syllable may be preceded by up to three consonants as in stress (CCCVC) and followed by up to four as in texts (CVCCCC); this is the most general statement of the possibilities of phoneme sequences in the English language. English does not exploit all the possible clusters of phonemes in the word and in the syllable. For instance, long vowels and diphthongs do not precede final /q/, sounds /e, æ, d, ʌ / never occur finally. The types of consonant clusters permitted are subject to constraints. It is the feature of English that in initial posi­tion, i.e. before the vowel, there can be any consonant except / ŋ/; the sound /ʒ/ is rare in a word initial position, but it does appear in rather recent borrowings like gigolo, jabot; no consonant com­binations are possible with / θ, z, ʧ, ʤ/; such consonant clusters as /pw, bw, tl, dl, mh, sr, sj, spw, fs, hr, stl/ never occur initially. Clusters of two consonants before the vowel have one of two forms: Isl + C as in stay, swim, sleep, etc. or C + /w, j, r, 1/ as in twin, beauty, creame, plain, etc. J. D. O'­Connor noted that final clusters are more complex in English than initial ones since they express grammatical meanings of plurality, tense, ordinal number, e.g. /-ksts/ as in texts, /-kst/ as in mixed, /-mpst/ as in glimpsed, /-ksθ / as in sixth, / ŋθs/ as in strengths. According to their position in the phonetic structure of a word clusters can be divided into: (1) prevocalic, (2) postvocalic and (3) in­tervocalic.

3. Typical phonotactic possibilities in the structure of English syllables and words.

Syllable formation in English is based on the phonological opposition vowel - consonant. Vowels are usually syllabic while consonants are not with the exceptions of [1], [m], [n], which be­come syllabic in a final position preceded by a noise consonant bottle [botl], bottom [botm], button [b ʌtn] and [r] (in those accents which pronounce [r]) perhaps [præps].

The structure of English syllables can be summarized as follows: • Manv syllables have one or more consonants preceding the nucleus. These make up the syllable onset: me, so, plow. Many syllables have one or more consonants following the nucleus. They make up the syllabic coda. They are traditionally known as closed syllables: cat, jump. The English language has developed the closed type of syllable as the fundamental one while in Russian it is the open type that forms the basis of syllable formation.

4. Phonological constraints on sound clusters in onset and coda.

When we looked at the nature of vowels and consonants in lecture No 1 (articulatory aspect) it was shown that one could decide whether a particular sound was a vowel or a consonant on pho­netic grounds (in relation to how much they obstructed the airflow) or on phonological grounds (vowels and consonants having different distributions). We find a similar situation with the syllable, in that it may be defined both phonetically and phonologically. Phonetically (that is, in relation to the way we produce them and the way they sound), 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 this centre (that is, at the beginning and end of the syllable), there will be greater obstruction to airflow and/or less loud sound. We will now look at some examples:

a) What we might call a minimum syllable would be a single vowel in isolation, e.g. the words 'are' / a:/, 'or' / o: /, 'err' / ɜ:/. These are preceded and followed by silence. Isolated sounds such as m, which we sometimes produce to indicate agreement, or / ʃ /, to ask for silence, must also be re­garded as syllables.

b) Some syllables have an onset (that is, they have more than just silence preceding the cen­tre of the syllable): 'bar' /ba:/, 'key' /ki:/, 'more' /mo: /.

C) Syllables may have no onset but have a termination: 'am' /aem/, 'ought' / o:t/, 'ease' /i:z/.

d) Some syllables have onset and termination: 'run' /rn/, 'sat' /saet/, 'fill' /fil/.

There are still problems with this phonetic description of the syllable, particularly in the mat­ter of deciding on the division between syllables. We will look at two words that are good examples of this difficulty. Most of English speakers feel that the word 'going' /'gaoiri/ consists of two sylla­bles; presumably we can decide that the o in the middle is the dividing point between the two sylla­bles, since the articulation is slightly closer to obstructing airflow than the vowels next to it. This still leaves unanswered the question of whether the o belongs to the first or to the second syllable; of course, we know that the o is part of the ao diphthong phoneme, but this is a fact of phonology, nor of the phonetic structure of the syllable. Another difficult case is the word 'extra' /'ekstra/. One problem is that by some definitions the s in the middle, between k and t, would be counted as a syl­lable, which most English speakers would reject. They feel that the word has two syllables. How­ever, opinions usually differ as to where the two syllables are to be divided; the possibilities are (us­ing the symbol + to signify a syllable boundary): 'e+kstra/ 'ek+stra/ 'eks+tra/' 'ekst+ra/ 'ekstr+a/.

Usually the second or third possibilities are chosen; it is not possible to say which of these is the correct choice.

Looking at syllables in this way, which at first seems the obvious thing to do, turns out not to be very useful. Looking at them from the phonological point of view is quite different. What this involves is looking at the possible combinations of English phonemes. It is simplest to start by look­ing at what can occur in initial position - in other words, what can occur at the beginning of the first word when we begin to speak after a pause. We find that the word can begin with a vowel, or with one, two or three consonants. No word begins with more than three consonants. In the same way, we can look at how a word ends when it is the last word spoken before a pause; it can end with a vowel, or with one, two, three or (in a small number of cases) four consonants. No word ends with more than four consonants.

13. Word accent/stress as a component of the word phonetic structure and its functions. Acoustic and perceptual cues to word accent. Types of word accent. Linguistically relevant degrees of word stress.

Accentual phonemes (word stress)

The word-stress fulfills the following functions:

· constitutive (helps to organize sound continuum into words)

· recognitive (helps to identify syllables as an accentual pattern of a word)

· distinctive (helps to distinguish the meanings of words: a present – to present)

English words may have a primary stress and a secondary one. Some parts of speech have two equivalent stresses:

→ compound adjectives: absent-minded, dark-eyed

→ phrasal verbs: to get on, to give up

The nature of Word Stress is very complex. Word Stress presupposes such factors as: force, tone, length, vowel color. In such European languages as Russian, German, French, English stress has a dynamic nature (a force character). Musical/ tone word stress may be found in Chinese, Japanese. According to the place of word stress it may be free or fixed. Fixed stress falls on a particular syllable in a polysyllabic word.

- the last syllable in French

- the last but one syllable I Polish

- the first syllable in Finish and Czech.

Russian and English have free word stress. The opposition of the stress may change to distinguish different parts of speech and members of paradigms (‘object – to ob’ject)

Acoustic nature of word stress. Acoustic analysis shows that the perception of prominence may be due to definite variations of the following acoustic parameters:

Acoustic level: intensity, duration, frequency, formant structures.

Auditory level: loudness, length, pitch, quality.

All these parameters generally interact to produce the effect of prominence. In different languages stress may be achieved by various combination of these parameters. Depending upon which parameter is the principal one in producing the effect of stress word stress in languages may be of different types. There are languages with dynamic word stress (intensity plays the main role). The stressed syllable are louder than the others, all the other parameters play less important role. Languages wit musical word stress(Japanese, Vietnamese, Chinese), quantitative word stress(Russian).

Until recently English word stress was considered to dynamic as stress was correlated with loudness, but the investigations of the acoustic nature of English word stress have made it clear that stress in English does not depend on intensity alone. English word stress is of a complex nature, it is created by an interaction of four parameters.

14. Word accentuation tendencies and basic stress patterns.Rhytmical patterns of lexical stress in words of Anglo-Saxon origin and in French borrowings. Some scholars, Chomsky and Halle (Chomsky, N., Halle, M., 1968. The Sound Pattern of English. Harper & Row, New York) make contrast between two ways of representing English word stress or accent. For Chomsky-Halle and for Garde, full vowels are always stressed; for the dictio­nary makers, full vowels can be either accented or unaccented. The dictionary representations, with alternating accented and unaccented syllables, suggest a natural way of assigning foot structure to syllables. Feet can be ternary, binary, or unary, but the latter are permitted only word finally. All syl­lables are assigned to some foot, with the exception that there are some word-initial syllables that remain unfooted (and by implication, unaccented). For most English words neither foot structure nor the location of accents is part of the lexical entry. Hence, there must be a set of metrification rules for creating feet. The location of the accents then is easily derived from the generated foot structures. The rules can be applied to various kinds of morphologically simple (underived) words. No additional mechanisms are required for morphologically complex forms. The metrification rules apply simultaneously to each morphological constituent. This manner of forming feet is not cyclic in accordance with the usual interpretation of that concept.

Many theories connected with word stress are connected with its Placement in different lan­guages. We may classify types of words stress in different languages in the following way. Lan­guages with:

fixed stress:

1. French (the stress falls on the last syllable): e.g. 1 'ecole, habiter, la maison etc.

2. Finish and Czech (The stress - on the 1^st syllable) e.g. Fin. - sauna; Czech podzim, Slovak jesen 3. Polish (The stress - on the last but one syllable) e.g. коЪщ1а - woman, pisklqta - nestling, zyciq -life free stress:

1. English e.g. 'appetite - be'ginning ~ ba'loon

2. Russian e.g. озеро - погода - молоко

Free word stress may fall on any syllable in the word and even exceed its bounds: compare Russian words for example: Голова - Головушка - Голову - На голову.

Despite the fact that word accent in English is free, there are certain factors that determine the place and different degree of word-stress. They are described by Vassiljev in the following way: 1) the recessive tendency results in placing the word stress on the initial syllable. It can be of two main types: - unrestricted recessive accent, which falls on the first syllable, - restricted recessive accent. 2) rhythmic tendency results in alternating stressed and unstressed syllables. The rhythmic stress affects the stress pattern of a great number of words in the E. language. This results in a secondary stress.

15. Suprasegmental phonology. Intonation as the complex semantic unity of suprasegmental phonology. Different approaches to the definition of intonation and its components.

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