On the suprasegmental level

On the segmental level

As a result we distinguish the following style-forming means:

degree of assimilation, i.e.

reduction, or

elision,

Sometimes whole syllables may be elided. Unstressed conjunctions and prepositions, such as and and of are particularly often elided, e.g.: boys ’n’girls, cup ‘o’ tea,. In conversational speech vowels and consonants in unstressed syllables within polysyllabic word regularly elide, e.g. camera /"k{mr@/. Complex consonant clusters are also often reduced or simplified, e.g.: twelfths becoming /"twelTs/ or /"twelfs/;

smoothing,

liaison, /li^|eIz^@n/ (or linking)

(e.g., the linking /r/ or /g/ when they are followed by a vowel like in there is /De@rÿ Iz/, looking at /lUkINÿ {t/. Another aspect of liaison in English is the movement of a single consonant at the end of an unstressed word to the beginning of the next if that is strongly stressed, for example not at all, where for many speakers the /t/of at becomes initial and therefore strongly aspirated in the final syllable all, etc. All these phenomena depend on the degree of formality and carefulness of speech, and thus they may serve to distinguish phonetic styles At the same time it should be mentioned that assimilation, reduction, elision, etc., which are natural, are typical of any pronunciation style, caused by an unconscious economy of pronunciation efforts universal for all the languages.

It appears that each style of pronunciation is characterized by a specific set (combination) of certain segmenatal and prosodic features not typical of other styles.

Phonetic styles have not been exhaustively studied yet. Most of the researches concentrated mainly on distinguishing different types of speech activity (reading aloud – spontaneous speech). For example, D.Crystal and D.Davy who established the following differences between informal conversational English as opposed to written English read aloud:

In formal conversational English is also characterized by the unexpected use of dialect forms, elements of very formal language, slips of the tongue, hesitant drawls, uneven tempo, significant variations in loudness, paralinguistic features (laugh, giggle, cough, etc.).

As we see the first attempts to the study of phonetic styles disclose numerous distinctions in pitch range, pitch level, pitch interval, rate of pitch change, rhythmical organization of speech, types of pauses, temporal modifications, voice quality, etc. This means that much remains to be done in this field of phonetic science.

The problem of phonetic styles is of considerable importance to the teachers of foreign languages. When choosing the teaching norm it is necessary to determine not only the type of pronunciation but also the style to be taught to foreigners especially at the initial stage.

Further phonostylistic studies will enable the learner to perceive and recognize the speech social specificity and to adapt his/her ear to the speech social acceptability in the shortest possible time. Besides further experimental studies will make it possible to produce the classification of pronunciation styles based on phonetic principles, namely: on the interaction of segmental and prosodic features of speech.

3. Informational style and its register. It is sometimes qualified as “formal, or neutral”, since it is least of all influenced by extralinguistic factors. There are some varieties of oral representation of different text belonging to this style:

4. Scientific or Academic style. It is both intellectual and volitional. The most pure manifestation of this style is realized in

5. Publicistic or Oratorial style. It is a very broad label because there is a great deal of overlap between academic, publicistic and declamatory style.

.

6. Declamatory (Artistic or Belles-lettre) style: fiction, drama, poetry. It serves for many kinds of linguistic activity. There are two varieties of oral representation of written literary texts:

Дата добавления: 2014-01-11