Methods of investigation

There are 3 methods of investigation: the direct observation method, the linguistic method and the experimental method.

The direct observation method comprises three important modes of phonetic analysis: by ear, by sight and by muscular sensation. Investigation by this method can be effective if a person has been specially trained to observe movements of his own and other people’s speech organs. A phonetician undergoes a special training in the course of which his “phonetic ear” is developed. By a “phonetic ear” is meant the capability to distinguish the exact quality of sounds pronounced in various sound sequences or in isolation.

The aim of the linguistic method is to determine in what way all phonetic features such as sound, stress and intonation are used in a language to convey a certain meaning.

The experimental method is based on the use of a special apparatus, such as the laryngoscope, the artificial palate, the magnetic tape recorder and others.

Lecture 2.

1.The approach of a phoneme in its historical aspect.

1a. B. de Courtenay’s theory.

1b. Scerba’s theory and other phoneticians’ approach.

2. The Phoneme theory abroad.

The approach of a phoneme in its historical aspect

The phoneme is the main trend of the phoneme theory. Most linguists consider the phoneme as one of the basic language units. But not all of them have described it in the same way. The majority of them agree that the phoneme serves to distinguish morphemes and words being a functional unit.

The phoneme has two main functions: a) to serve as a material integument of words and morphemes; b) to differentiate the meaning of words, their grammatical forms and morphemes.

2. The phoneme is the result of generalization. It is a dialectical unit of the general and the particular.

The theory of the phoneme is being developed into two main directions in our country: the Kazan linguistic school, the St. Petersburg linguistic school. There are many different linguistic schools on the phoneme abroad: the Prague phonological school, the London phonological school, the American phonological school and the Copenhagen phonological school.

There are four main approaches to the nature of the phoneme.

B. de Courtenay’s theory ( the Kazan linguistic school)

The phoneme theory came into being in Russia. The founder of the phoneme theory is the Russian linguist Prof. Baudauin de Courtenay (he was also, the founder of the Kazan linguistic school). His work on the phoneme theory may be roughly subdivided into two periods. During the first stage of the development of the phoneme theory, he considered a phoneme to be a component of a morpheme. He stated that one and the same morpheme was always represented by the same combination of sounds.[as in Slavonic languages]. He centered his attention mainly on the phenomenon of phonetic and historical alternations. This stage is also called the morphological approach.

In the second stage, he abandoned this conception in the 90^th of the XIX century and began to search for a unit not bound by the limits of a morpheme. He defined a phoneme as an idea of a sound which appears in the mind of a speaker before the sound is uttered.This approach is called the mentalistic or psychological. It regards the phoneme as an ideal “mental image” or a target at which the speaker aims. Baudouin de Courtenay asserts that a speech sound is a fictitious unit, an invention of the scientists. The phoneme is a complex perception of the articulatory movements and of the muscular sensations, connected with them together with the resulting acoustic impressions, all of which react on the mind simultaneously.

Scerba’s theory and other phoneticians’ approach ( the St. Petersburg linguistic school)

This theory was further developed by Prof. Scerba, Krushevsky and by other Soviet and foreign linguists. According to Scerba sounds must be studied not only from the acoustic points of view, but as sounds capable of distinguishing one word of a language from other words of the same language. They fulfill a communicative function in speech. According to Scerba, a phoneme is realized in speech in concrete sound combinations, which he calls allophones. The most typical, which may be pronounced in isolation, represent a speech element, opposed to other sounds. The number of phonemes in a given language is defined by the principal members. In English there are 44 phonemes, in Russian – 36. The principle points of Scerba’s phoneme theory are: the theory of phonemic variants and the theory of phonemic independence.

Phonemic variants are very important, because they may develop into new phonemes; on the other hand, a phoneme may stop functioning and may become a phonemic variant. For example: three pairs of consonants: [θ] – [ð], [f] – [v], [s] – [z] were variants of the same phoneme in Old English, but in present-day English these 6 consonants are independent phonemes.

The main point of the theory of phonemic independence is that phonemes have a certain amount of independence. Scerba proves it in two ways: a phoneme is capable of expressing a meaning by itsel f: [ʃ:] in many languages commands silence. Exclamations like [ou], [a] express different emotions. The second proof is the fact that: “ elements of perception are often associated with elements of sound perceptions ”. For example, the non-palatalized [л] in many words such as пил, бил, дала is associated with the idea of the Past Tense in Russian, the phoneme [а] (корова) is associated with the idea of the subject, [у] in воду – with the idea of the object. Owing to these semantic perceptions elements of our sound perceptions possess a certain independence.

L.V. Scerba claims that the history of the development of phonemes is practically based upon the development of phonemic variants.

In the second period of his work, Prof. Scerba L.V. revised his phoneme theory. He treats phonemes as “ sound types ”. Various sounds that we actually utter and which are the individual representing the universal, he called phonemic variants.

The theory of the phoneme was then further developed by Scerba’s disciple Prof. L. R. Zinder. A phoneme is understood as a historical category. It functions in a language at a certain stage of its development. It may be characterized as a unit of different aspects:

1. its material and objective aspects. It really exists in a language. It is a concrete sound, characterized by definite formation and definite acoustic qualities.

2. It exists independently in the speech of all the members of the community; it does not depend on the will of an individual, it is obligatory for all, as it is a product of the historical development of a given collective body. Thus, it is a social phenomenon.

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