The specific character of English prosodic basis as compared with Russian

Typology of accentual structures

(из лекций): Degrees of stress

1) primary (strong)

2) secondary (alw preceeds the primary stress: e*xami*nation);

3) tertiary (alw follow the primary stress: *terri*tory, *dictio*nary, *cere*mony);

4) weak (unstressed)

In Russian: 2 degrees of stress:

- primary

- unstress

The dictionary of accents marks some long words with 2 stresses.

The differences in the number of stresses → differences of the rhythm.

1) omission of the secondary stress (examination)

2) omission of the tertiary stress (dictionary)

3) degree of reduction of the pretonic vowel (in Rus this vowel is not reduced)

4) reduction of unstressed posttonic vowel in all E words without exceptions (*photogr[а:]ph)

Билет 13

Prosody is “a term used in suprasegmental phonetics and phonology to refer collectively to variations in pitch, loudness, tempo and rhythm ”. (Crystal).

Recently voice quality has been added to the list of prosodic features.

The range of the voice in English is much wider than in Russian.

Comparing English and Russian we pay attention to following characters:

English falling tone is steeper and reaches the bottom of the voice range.

It sounds like an angry Russian tone of voice. Cf.: English ‘Do. Russian «Да».
English rising tone is slow and starts as a level tone before it rises to the middle of the pitch range.

In case of polysyllabic realization the stressed syllable remains on the bottom line while the unstressed

syllables go up and reach the medium level. It sounds implicator even menacing to a Russian ear.

Russian rise is more abrupt, and starts on a higher level. In a polysyllabic word the stressed syllable goes up while the unstressed syllables go down. Cf.:

RP gradually descending stepping head is composed of each stressed syllable going down a little with the unstressed syllables,

ideally, keeping up or, actually, going slightly down. It is more natural for a Russian speaker to drop the unstressed syllables down

to the bottom of the range right after the first stressed syllable or, in case of scandent series, let them drift up.

All these pitch movements of the Russian unstressed syllables create the flavor of Russian speech unattainable by foreign learners. Cf.:

There are structural constraints on how many syllables are necessary for the realization of a single tone.

The specific feature of English, as compared with other European languages, is the ability of English complex tones

to be realized on a single syllable. Thus English is characterized by compression of pitch change within one vowel,

for instance, which can be seen in the rise-fall-rise on a word No. It can sound playful and full of other connotations

thanks to pitch modulation in one vowel only. This phenomenon is unparalleled in Italian, for instance.

Italian needs at least two syllables to realize that tone.

Rhythm:The proportion of accented and unaccented syllables is:English (RP)1:2. RP speech is described

as clipped, pointed contrastive in the length of accented and unaccented syllables.Russian- 1:3.

Дата добавления: 2015-05-31