The Abstract aspect

The phoneme is a minimal language unit.

The phoneme belongs to the language, the allophone – to the speech. 3) The founder of the Phoneme Theory was the Russian scientist Boudoin-de-Courtenay who was the head of the Kazan Linguistic School. 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. This approach is called mentalistic/ physical. 4) Trubetskoy (the head of the Prague Linguistic School) defined the phoneme as a unity of phonologically relevant features. Relevant feature is the feature without which we can’t distinguish one phoneme from another. This approach is called functional. Sumup what has been said we may state that the phoneme comprises material, real & 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).

20. A knowledge of the structure of sound systems, and of the articulatory and acoustic properties of the production of speech is very important in the teaching of foreign languages. Phonetics are concerned with the human sounds by which our thoughts are realised: the nature of these sounds, their combinations, and their functions in relation to the meaning of what we pronounce, of what we say. Phonetics studies the sound system of the language, that is phonemes (sounds), word stress, syllabic structure and intonation (prosody). Phonetics are divided into 2 major components: segmental phonetics, which are concerned with individual sounds and suprasegmental phonetics (syllables, words, phrases and texts). Articulatory phonetics border with anatomy and physiology and the tools for investigating just what the speech do are tools which are used on these fields: direct observation, wherever it is possible-lip movement, some tongue movement; vocal cord movement. Articulatory phonetics has been the dominating branch, and most descriptive work has been done in articulatory terms with the help of the methods mentioned above. And now there is enough knowledge of how the sounds in English are articulated.

Neither linguistic theory nor the linguistic description can do without phonetics.

The process of speech production is realized in the folowing scheme:

1.the message is formed and incoded in the brain of the speaker (linguistic / psychological level)

2.it is transmitted to the organs of speech and some sounds are articulated (physiological stage)

3.the movement of the organs of speech produces sound waves (physical/ acoustic stage)

4.the sound waves are perceived, identified and decoded by the listener

5.’Phoneme’ is used to mean ‘sound’ in its contrastive sense, and ‘ allophone ’ is used for sounds which are variants of a phoneme. The realizations of phonemes are called allophones. Allophone - вариант фонемы, зависящий от фонетического окружения. allophone - any of several speech sounds that are regarded as contextual or environmental variants of the same phoneme. In English the aspirated initial (p) in pot and the unaspirated (p) in spot are allophones of the phoneme /p/. The allophones which don’t undergo any distinguishable changes in the chain of speech are called principal. Subsidiary allophones occur under the influence of the neighbouring sounds in different phonetic situations. e.g.1) /d/ is slightly palatalized before front vowels and the sonorant /j/, e.g. deal,day. 2) /d/ is pronounced without any plosion before another stop: good dog, bedtime. 3) /d/ is post-alv. when followed by /r/: dry. 4)/d/ is labiolized when followed by labial /w/: dwell.

21. Standard English (S.E.) is a term generally applied to a form of the English language that is normative for educated speakers. It encompasses grammar, vocabulary, spelling, and to some degree pronunciation. In the United Kingdom, (RP) is sometimes considered "standard" or "proper".3 forms of RP: Conservative, General, and Advanced. Conservative RP refers to a traditional accent associated with older speakers with certain social backgrounds; General RP is often considered neutral regarding age, occupation, or lifestyle of the speaker; and Advanced RP refers to speech of a younger generation of British speakers. /ð/ is more often a weak dental plosive; the sequence /nð/ is often realised as [n̪n̪].

/l/ is velarised in the syllable coda.

Unless preceded by /s/, fortis plosives (/p/, /t/, and /k/) are aspirated before stressed vowels; when a sonorant /l/, /ɹ/, /w/, or /j/ follows, this aspiration is indicated by partial devoicing of the sonorant

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