Comparing the sound systems of English and Russian

Wе can now make an attempt at comparing the sound systems of two languages, English and Russian. The contrastive method will help us reveal systemic, distributional and realizational characteristics of each particular sound system, their common features and their distinguishing features.

Systemic differences will reveal which sounds are contrastive in either language or dialect and what features these contrasts are based on, which contrasts are more powerful than the others. Thus we will learn the relations between the elements of the system; an important point is the number of contrastive elements, phonemes, in the inventory and the ways they maybe modified in various phonetic contexts. The vowel system of RP, for example, consists of 20 phonemes, while in American English and Scot­tish Standard English there are only 15-16 vowel phonemes. American English lacks /d/ as in stop, box and a few diphthongs. Scottish English does not distinguish /u:/ and /u/ in fool, full and /ae/ and /a:/ in bat, bath and also lacks centering diphthongs on account of/r/ preservation as in here, beer which are pronounced as /hir/, /bir/.

Distributional differences will show how certain sounds are distributed over the lexicon (lexical distribution) and which of them are allowed at the beginning or at the end of a word or a syllable (structural distribution). For example, American English and British English have both /ae/ and /a:/ phonemes but in American English /ae/ is used not only in the words like cat, badbut also in words like ask, dance in which British English has /a:/ phoneme. The sounds, therefore, have different lexical distribution. Structural difference may be illustrated by the use of/r/ sound: in British English r can be found only before a vowel like in rye, bread but not after a vowel where it is vocalized as in beer, car. In American English r is not vocalized, or vocalized only partially, and we can hear [bir], [kar] with [r] at the end of a word or a syllable.

Realizational differences are differences in phonetic detail which demonstrate how similar sounds in two languages or dialects may share one feature but differ in the other(s). In the pronunciation of American [r] the tongue is curled back, it is retroflex, while in Scottish English it is trilled, like in Russian [P]. Practise the word right, try in two ways and you will feel the difference.

We will now see how similar distinctions can be found in comparing English and Russian systems of phonemes.

2.4.1. Consonants: systemic differences

Let us start by looking at the phonemic inventories of English and Russian:

Table 4 Phoneme Inventories in English and Russian

	English	Russian
Vowels		5(6)
Consonants

The first observation we can make will be concerned with the number of phonemes in the two systems: English appears to belong to the vocalic type with a highly elaborate system of vowel phonemes, while Russian can be referred to the consonantal type of language because it has a large number of contrasts in the system of consonants.

However, when we start comparing the inventories of consonants of English and Russian we discover a number of consonants which can be found only in English. They are: one (bi)labial /w/, two (inter)dental fricatives, one voiceless and one voiced, /0/ and /3/, one nasal velar /g/ and one glottal voiceless fricative /h/. In Russian there is only one sound, a velar voiceless fricative /x/ which is not to be found in English.

Which sounds, then, constitute the exceeding number of the Russian consonant inventory? These are palatalized counterparts of all Russian non-palatalized consonants. It shows that palatalization is phonemic in Russian, it is a distinguishing feature of Russian as compared with English. Compare: сел, съел — [s'el], [sjel] with the English sell [sel].

In English, as we have already seen, palatalized consonants may occur in onsets of syllables before front vowels, such as a clear [1], for example, but they do not create a phonemic contrast with any non-palatalized allophones. A "clear", palatalized [1] and a "dark", non-palatalized [i] are in complementary distribution: the former appears before front vowels and the latter in all the other positions. For example, in the words little, label, lull the first [1] is palatalized and the second is non-palatalized: [lift], [leiM], [Ы]. If you pronounce a clear [1] at the end of the words, it may give you a French accent or an Irish accent but the meaning of words will not be changed.

In Russian palatalized and non-palatalized sounds are different phonemes because they distinguish words; both palatalized and non-palatalized phonemes may occur at the beginning and at the end of words: был — бил, пыл — пил, ныл — Нил, мыл — мил, пол — Поль, мол — моль, гол — голь.

Thus palatalization is phonemic in Russian and allophonic (non-phonemic) in English.

2.4.2. Consonants: realizational and distributional differences

There are realizational features which are quite essential for creating the articulatory bases of English and Russian. As is well known, both English and Russian have coronal consonants: /t, d, n, s, z, 1/ and /т, д, н, с, з, л/.

The English coronal phonemes are alveolar, and they are also the most frequently used English consonants which create the most powerful contrasts such as: /n -1/ in name — tame (nasal, lenis — oral, fortis), /t - d/ as in ten — den (fortis — lenis), /d - s/ day — say (plosive, lenis — fricative, fortis). The most frequent English consonants are listed below:

Table 5 English Consonants: 10 most frequent

n - 7.58	d - 5.14	1 - 3.66	r - 3.22	к - 3.22
t - 6.42	s - 4.81	9 - 3.55	m - 3.22	w - 2.81

Concerning the Russian consonants which are similar to the English most frequently occurring consonants /n, t, d, s, 1/ we can state that the Russian coronal consonants are all dental (not alveolar): /т, д, н, л, с, з/. It is very important for creating the specific colouring of Russian speech: the tongue moves to the front, the front and the middle parts of the tongue are raised, most consonants are palatalized.

Another important feature of consonants is that English voiceless consonants are fortis, while English voiced consonants are lenis. The characteristics of the Russian consonants are similar but in comparison with their English counterparts Russian voiceless consonants are much weaker and shorter in duration, and are never pronounced with aspiration. Compare: time, тайм — [t^haim], [тайм].

Compare the relative amount of time occupied by English and Russian consonants (Table 6). English voiceless consonants are leading:

Table 6 Comparing English and Russian consonants

Consonants	English	Russian
Voiceless	0.26	0.18
Voiced	0.14	0.11-0.13

(after V.D. Arakin)

The Russian voiced consonants, unlike the English ones, are fully voiced in the word-initial position but that feature is completely neutralized in the word-final position (structural distribution, from the point of view of the position in the word): дуб, бил - [дул], [б'ил], зуб, вяз - [зуп], [в'ас].

Neutralization of the voiced-voiceless contrast in the word-final position is a distinguishing feature of the Russian language.

In English, voiced consonants are devoiced at the beginning of words and partially devoiced at the end of words. In the word bet, for instance, the initial /b/ is weak and devoiced, but it is not confused with /p/ because in pet the initial sound is aspirated while in bet it is not: [p^het] — [pet]. In the word-final position /t/ is not confused with partially devoiced /d/ in bed due to the length of the preceding vowel: it is longer before a voiced consonant. We can represent it like this: bed [be:t] — bet [bet]. Thus in English there are other phonetic clues taken by the listener to recognize the word: presence or absence of aspi­ration or the length of the preceding vowel. For the English ear a voiceless but weak and unaspirated consonant at the beginning of a word sounds like an English "voiced" consonant which is also weak and unaspirated: Таганка was pronounced by the English teacher in Moscow as [йэ'длпкэ].

In comparing English and Russian it is important to note to what extent the process which is common for the two sound systems affects the allophones. In Russian the opposition voiced/voiceless is completely neutralized in the word-final position. In English consonants are partially devoiced at the beginning and at the end of words but the degree of devoicing is incomparable to Russian complete devoicing at the end of words. Compare: обед, столб — bed, lab.

Similarly, Russian voiceless consonants are stronger than Russian voiced ones but in English the contrast is so much greater that many linguists claim that only English voiceless consonants are really strong and may be termed fortis. One of the phonetic cues is their length and the length of the preceding vowel: English voiceless consonants are strong and long.

Of special interest is the phenomenon of aspiration which is structur­ally constrained: its varying degree in voiceless plosives depends on the position in the syllable and the phonetic context. Aspiration is the strongest in onsets before a stressed vowel, it is weaker in codas and in the unstressed syllables, it disappears in a position after the sound /s/. Compare the three degrees of /p/ aspiration in: party, reaper, spa. Actually only in the first word /p/ is aspirated: ['p^ha.ti].

In English there are a few consonants which are structurally constrained:

• the velar nasal /rj/ may be found only in codas, i.e. syllable-finally: sing, reading;

• in RP /r/, together with /w/ and /h/, is not to be found in codas; they occur only before a vowel: write, white, height;

• the sound /3/ never appears at the beginning of a word or a syllable except for words of French origin: Jean, measure.

In Russian all consonants may appear at the beginning (initial position, onset) and at the end (final position, coda) of the syllable.

2.4.3. Vowels: systemic differences

There are 5 (or 6) vowel phonemes in Russian and 20 vowel phonemes in RP English. That means that there are finer distinctions of vowel quality in English due to:

• a greater number of front/back oppositions among the English low (open) vowels compared to Russian: 3 vs. 1. In Russian there are no back open vowels like the English /a:/ and /ю/, neither do we have fully front vowels like /ae/, /at/;

• a greater number of high/low oppositions in English than in Russian: 4 vs. 3. In English such pairs of vowels as /u: - u/, /i: -1/ show a difference both in height and in front-back position;

• in English there are oppositions according to the stability of articulation which account for the presence of 11 monophthongs and 9 diphthongs; in Russian there are 5 (or 6) monophthongs only

Not all vowel contrasts are equally important: the functional load of front vowel contrasts is greater. Compare their frequency of occurrence (see Table 7):

Table 7 Vowel Frequency in English (first 10)

3 - 10.74	e - 2.97	ae- 1.75	i: - 1.65	э: - 1.45
i - 8.33	ai- 1.83	ei- 1.71	эо- 1.51	о: - 1.37

2.4.4. Vowels: realizational and distributional differences

Structurally, the English vowels are more restricted with reference to the syllable type in which they occur. Most English short vowels, with the exception of the schwa vowel /э/, and /i/ /u/ in certain contexts, may never occur in an open syllable. Thus only long tense vowels, both monophthongs and diphthongs, may occur in an open syllable in English.

In Russian there are no restrictions of the kind to the vowel occurrence with reference to the syllable structure. There is one constraint determined by the phonetic context which makes the status of the phoneme /ы/ questionable in Russian: the /ы/ phoneme can be found only after a non-palatalized consonant as in мыл, пыл. (Russian scholars who belong to Moscow School claim that there are only 5 vowel phonemes in Russian, and [ы] is an allophone of/и/.)Another very important feature of English vowel realization depends on he phonetic context (phonetic environment): positional length. Vowels are ongest in an open syllable, they are slightly shorter before a voiced lenis onsonant, they are the shortest when followed by a voiceless fortis conso-ant. Compare the length of the vowel [i:] in the words see, seed, seat. Thus English vowel length depends mainly on the following consonant.

The historical length is important for RP only. In Scottish English and in American English there is no distinction between historically long and historically short vowels (or at least it is not very consistent). The overall contrast between historically long and historically short vowels in RP gives the duration ratio of 1.5:1.0. In American English, however, the average data is 1.2:1.0, with certain environments facilitating the prolongation of the so-called historically short vowels to the extent of their exceeding length.

It is also very important to mention the fact that all English long vowels are tense and free, while all short stressed vowels are considered lax and checked. Most of the back vowels are also rounded. Since most of these features, with the exception of length, are indispensable ones, they can hardly be called realizational.

Due to greater vowel space occupied by each Russian vowel they enjoy greater freedom of realization: each vowel phoneme may be realized in the form of at least three allophones in a stressed position and two unstressed ones (see Figure 11).

Figure 11. Russian vowel allophones (after L.L. Kasatkin).

Russian vowel quality depends mainly on the preceding consonant,

which may be either palatalized or non-palatalized (velarized). Besides, it maybe nasal. Thus in Russian there are at least 15 allophones (correspond­ing to 5 phonemes in a stressed position) which are contextually bound:

after a non-palatalized consonant, which is perceptually a strong position for /а, о, у/ when their quality is least affected as in там, том, тур;

• after a palatalized consonant, which is a strong position for /и/ and / e/ as in диво, иди, дед, тебе; in this case vowels /а, о, у/ are affected most, they become more front as in тяпка, тетка, тюрки;

• after a nasal consonant vowels are partially nasalized and between two nasals they are completely nasalized: нос, нонсенс, няня.

The English and the Russian vowel systems have one very important feature in common: vowels are weakened, or reduced, in an unstressed position which makes the schwa-vowel /з/ the most frequent vowel in both languages. That means that vowel distinctions are neutralized in an unstressed position. However there may be differences in the unstressed po­sitions which affect vowel quality most, to the degree of complete elision. In Russian, for instance, vowels are reduced most in an unstressed syllable which immediately follows the stressed (accented) one. For example: 'рано, 'рана, \bwels /а, о, э/ are affected most in all positions: с[ъ]поги, з[ъ]ло-той, мак[ъ]м, сок[ъ]л. There are certain rules of vowel quality changes in Russian, especially in the initial unstressed syllable preceding the stressed one. The quality differences may be socially and regionally marked. Compare the ways people pronounce the first unstressed vowel in the words Москва, конечно, хорошо in Moscow and in other areas of Russia (the variants may be a-like, ы-like or o-like).

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