The Phoneme Theory in Russia and other countries

Main phonological schools.

Methods of the phonemic analysis

Types of allophones and main features of the phoneme

Definition of the phoneme and its functions

The Phoneme Theory in Russia and other countries

Outline

II. Phoneme as a unit of language

Questions

1. What do you know about the history of phonetic development?

2. What are the objects of phonetic investigation?

3. How is phonetics connected with other sciences?

4. What is the significance of phonetics in teaching languages?

5. What is the difference between phonetics and phonology?

6. What are the main branches of phonetics?

7. What are the aspects of speech sounds?

8. What are the methods and devices of phonetic investigation?

The founder of the Phoneme Theory was the Russian scientist Baudouin-de-Courtenay who was the head of the Kazan Linguistic School. The 1^st period of his work was characterized by morphological approach. Baudouin-de-Courtenay tried to analise phonemes according to their functions in morphemes. He perceived that the same morpheme was not always represented by the same combination of sounds. Baudouin-de-Courtenay introduced a new term “homogeneous” to define the sounds that make up a phoneme and he distinguished 2 types of homogenes:

- divergents – variants of the same sound arising from the phonetic laws functioning in English at the present time;

- correlates (having mutual relation) – sounds that are different in character and the different qualities of which cannot be explained by the existing laws of the language.

In other words Baudouin-de-Courtenay tried to explain the phenomenon of alternation. His diver-gents and correlates represent phonetic and historical alternations.

During the 2^nd period (psychological approach) he defined the phoneme as a physical image of a sound. He also regarded phonemes as fictitious units and considered them to be only perceptions of articulatory movements and the muscular sensations. This approach is also called mentalistic / physical.

In 1950-es a new standpoint has arisen; the originator is S. K. Showmyan. New approach to the phoneme may be termed " cybernetic ". The phoneme is proclaimed to be incognizable by direct perception; it is therefore termed a " construct " which requires a special conceptual apparatus in order to be cognized.

In the 1^st period L. V. Shcherba was under the influence of I. A. Baudouin. L. V. Shcherba, like Baudouin, considers phonemes "perceptions", but his phonemes are "generic perceptions". Moreover, he was the first to advance the idea of the distinctive function of phonemes.

The principal points of L. V. Shcherba's phoneme theory are:

1) the theory of phonemic variants (they represent phonemes in actual speech.);

2) the theory of phonemic independence.

In the 2^nd period of his work, Prof. L. V. Shcherba revised his phoneme theory. In his book on French phonetics he treats phonemes as "sound types" which are capable of distinguishing the meaning and the form of words. The various sounds that we actually utter and which are the individual representing the universal (the phoneme), will be called phonemic variants. Thus, he created the materialistic phoneme theory. Academician Shcherba defined the phoneme as a real independent distinctive unit which manifests itself in the form of its allophones. This approach comprises the abstract, the functional.

Ferdinand de Saussure viewed phonemes as the sum of acoustic impressions and articulatory movements. He also viewed phonemes as disembodied units of the language formed by the differences separating the acoustic image of one sound from the rest of the units. Language in his opinion contains nothing but differences. This approach is called abstractional / abstract.

N. S. Trubetskoy (the head of the Prague Linguistic School) defined the phoneme as a unity of phonologically relevant features of a sound. Relevant feature is the feature without which we can’t distinguish one phoneme from another. This approach is called functional.

Phonemes can be neutralized. In this case we receive an archi-phoneme. That is a unity of relevant features common to both phonemes (but it is an abstraction) (e.g. wetting – wedding in AmE). In case of archi-phoneme we cannot distinguish one phoneme from another. Thus the distinctive function of the phoneme is lost.

By the way, N. S. Trubetskoy developed de Saussure's principle of the separation of speech from language by proclaiming a new science – phonology as distinct from phonetics.

According to Trubetzkoy, phonetics is a biological science, and should concern itself with the sounds of a language as they are pronounced and as they are heard, without paying any attention to their function in the language. Phonology is a linguistic science, and should concern itself with the distinctive features of a language only.

Another kind of approach to the nature of the phoneme was expressed by a British scholar, the head of the London School of Phonology, Daniel Jones. He defined the phoneme as a family of sounds in a given language which are related in character and are used in such a way that no one member ever occurs in a word in the same phonetic context as any other member.

In his monograph he expounds his new theory, which may be called " atomistic ". He breaks up the phoneme into atoms and considers different features of phonemes as independent phenomena. Thus, he speaks of the different qualities of the same phoneme as "phones", a number of which forms the corresponding phoneme. He also speaks of different degrees of length as "chrones" which are com-bined into "chronemes" (the long and the short chronemes in English). In the same way, he distin-guishes tones and tonemes in tone languages, strones and stronemes (different degrees of stress).

The American Linguistic School (Blumfield, Sapir, etc) defined the phoneme as a minimum unit of distinctive sound features and as an abstractional fiction. The phoneme theory in America may also be characterized as structuralism.

The Copenhagen trend (L. Hjelmslev) tries to represent all linguistic phenomena as a series of "relations" and mathematical "ratios". This approach to linguistic problems is called " algebraic ".

Summing up what has been said we may state that the phoneme comprises material, real and objective features and at the same time distinctive abstractional and generalized ones (because it represents all the relevant features which are present in all the allophones of the phoneme). It exists in the material form of speech sounds (allophones). Phonemes are linguistically important, for their function in a language is to distinguish words and morphemes from one another. Phonemic variants have no distinctive function as such.

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