Glossary

Write a brief definition for the following key terms from the course of theoretical phonetics. Give examples where relevant.

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minimal pairs consonant phoneme pitch range allophone bilabial reduction International Phonetic Alphabet affricate vocal cords vowel intonation vowel length accent central vowels Received Pronunciation commutation test diphthong invariant labiodental assimilation nasal Low Fall sonorant

syntagm tail constrictive diglossia intonation pattern lip position prosody glide syllable Low Rise pre-head extra-linguistic factors fricative front vowels pitch communicative centre hesitation pause mid vowels Estuary Engish intonation styles nucleus Fall-Rise head stress

Academic style – also scientific style, a style of speech used in lectures, scientific discussions, conferences, etc

Accent – 1) type of pronunciation, that is the way sounds, stress, rhythm and intonation are used in the given language community.

2) see stress.

Accommodation -modifications of consonants under the influence of the neighbouring vowels and vice versa.

Acoustic Phonetics – science which deals with the physical property of sounds.

Affricates - noise consonants produced with a complete obstruction which is slowly released and the air stream escapes from the mouth with some friction.

Allophones – variants of a phoneme, usually occur in different positions in the word, cannot contrast with each other and are not used to differentiate the meaning.

Alveolar – sounds produced with the tip of the tongue against the upper teeth (alveolar) ridge.

American English – the national variant of the English language spoken in the USA.

Amplitude - the distance to which the air particles are displaced from their position of rest by the application of some external force.

Apical – sounds articulated with the tip of the tongue.

Applied Phonetics – a branch of phonetics used for practical purposes in speech therapy and logopedia.

Articulatory Phonetics – also Physiological Phonetics, a branch of phonetics which is concerned with the study of speech sounds as regards their production by the human speech organs.

Ascending head – a type of head in which syllables form an ascending sequence.

Assimilation - The modification of a consonant by a neighbouring consonant in the speech chain.

Auditory Phonetics – a branch of phonetics which is concerned with the way our auditory mechanism works to process speech information, also Perceptual Phonetics.

Back vowels – vowels formed with the tongue in the back part of the mouth.

Back-advanced vowels - vowels formed with the tongue in the back-advanced position in the mouth.

Back-lingual – see velar.

BBC English – the accent used on BBC radio and TV channels, is considered a standard English spoken in Great Britain, also Received Pronunciation.

Bilabial – sounds produced when both lips are active.

Bilingualism - the command of 2 different languages by a person.

British English - the national variant of the English language spoken in Great Britain.

Broad transcription – also phonemic transcription, provides special symbols for all the phonemes of a language.

Broad variations – a subclass of the vertical positions of the tongue which in this case is placed slightly lower in the mouth cavity.

Cacuminal – sounds articulated with the tip of the tongue curled back.

Central vowels – sounds articulated when the front part of the tongue is raised towards the back part of the hard palate.

Checked vowels – short stressed vowels followed by strong voiceless consonants.

Checkness – a vowel property which depends on the character of articulatory transition from a vowel to a consonant

Close vowels – sounds articulated when the tongue is raised high towards the hard palate.

Closed syllable – a syllable which ends in a consonant.

Coda - one or more phonemes that follow the syllabic phoneme.

Communicative centre – a word or a group of words which conveys the most important point of communication in the sentence or the utterance.

Commutation test – the procedure of substituting a sound for another sound in the same phonetic environment with the aim of establishing the phonemic system of a language

Comparative Phonetics – a branch of phonetics which studies the correlation betweenthe phonetic systems of two or more languages

Consonant – a sound made with air stream that meets an obstruction in the mouth or nasal cavities.

Conversational style – also conversational style, a style of speech used in everyday communication.

Declamatory style - a style of speech used in stage speech, recitations, etc.

Delimitation - segmentation of speech into phrases and intonation groups.

Dental - sounds produced with the blade of the tongue against the upper teeth

Descending head - a type of head in which syllables form an descending sequence

Descriptive Phonetics – a branch of phonetics that studies the phonetic structure of one language only in its static form, synchronically.

Devoicing – a process that results in a voiced consonant being pronounced as voiceless.

Dialect – a variety of language which differs from others in vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation.

Diglossia – a phenomenon when an individual may speak RP in one situation a native local accent in other situations.

Dynamic stress – force accent based mainly on the expiratory effect.

Diphthong - a vowel which consists of two elements, strong (a nucleus) and weak – (a glide).

Diphthongoid – a vowel articulated when the change in the tongue position is fairly weak, in this case the articulated vowel is not pure, but it still consists of one element.

Direct methods – methods of phonetic investigation which consist in observing the movements and positions of one's own or other people's organs of speech in pronouncing various speech sounds, as well as in analysing one's own kinaesthetic sensations during the articulation of speech sounds and in comparing them with the resultant auditory impressions.

Discourse - a larger context in which sentences occur.

Dorsal – sounds produced when the blade of the tongue is active.

Duration - the quantity of time during which the same vibratory motion, the same patterns of vibration are maintained.

Elision - complete loss of sounds, both vowels and consonants, often observed in spoken English.

Enclitic – unstressed words or syllables which refer to the preceding stressed word or syllable.

Estuary English - a variety of modified regional speech, a mixture of non-regional and local south-eastern English pronunciation and intonation. Estuary English speakers place themselves “between Cockney and the Queen”.

Experimental Phonetics – a branch of phonetics which deals with research work carried out with the help of different technical devices for measurements and for instrumental analysis

Extra-linguistic factors – non-linguistic factors, such as the purpose of utterance, participants and setting or scene of speaking, which result in phonostylistic varieties.

Familiar style – see conversational style.

Forelingual – sounds articulated with the front part of the tongue

Fortis consonants – voiceless consonants pronounced with strong muscular tension and strong expiratory effect.

Free variants - variants of a single phoneme which occur in a language but the speakers are inconsistent in the way they use them, as for example in the case of the Russian words " галоши/ калоши ".

Free vowel - a weak vowel followed by a weak (lenis) voiced consonant or by no consonant at all.

Frequency - a number of vibrations per second.

Fricative - constrictive noise consonants articulated when the air escapes with friction through the narrowing formed by speech organs.

Front vowels – vowels in the production of which the body of the tongue is in the front part of the mouth cavity and the front of the tongue is raised.

Front-retracted vowels - vowels produced with the body of the tongue in the front but retracted position in the mouth cavity.

Functional Phonetics – see phonology.

General American - the national standard of the English language spoken in the USA.

General Phonetics - a branch of phonetics that studiesall the sound-producing possibilities of the human speech apparatus and the ways they are used for purposes of human communication by means of language.

Glide – the second weak element of English diphthongs.

Glottal - sounds articulated in the glottis.

Glottal stop – a sound heard when the glottis opens suddenly and produces an explosion resembling a short cough.

Glottis - the opening between the vocal cords, through which the air passes.

Hard palate – the roof of the mouth.

Head – part of the intonation group, contains stressed syllables preceding the nucleus with the intervening unstressed syllables.

Hesitation pause - silent or filled pause mainly used in spontaneous speech to gain time to think over what to say next.

Historical Phonetics - a branch of phonetics that studies the phonetic structure of a language in its historical development, diachronically.

Idiolect - individual speech of members of the same language community

Informational style - a style of speech used by radio and television announcers conveying information or in various official situations.

Instrumental methods - methods of phonetic investigation based upon registering or computing machines and technical devices

Intensity - a property of a sound produced by the amplitude of vibrations.

Interdental – sounds articulated with the tip of the tongue projected between the teeth.

International Phonetic Alphabet – a set of symbols adopted by the International Phonetic Association as a universal system for the transcription of speech sounds.

Intonation - pitch (or melody) variations used to convey meaning. See also prosody

Intonation group – an actualized syntagm.

Intonation pattern - pitch movements together with loudness and the tempo of speech extending over an intonation group.

Intonation style – a complex of interrelated intonational means which is used in a social situation and serves a definite aim of communication.

Intonogramme – the picture of the sound wave of a syllable, word or an utterance received with the help of intonograph.

Intonograph – a technical device which gives pictures of sound waves of syllables, words and utterances.

Kinetic – relating to motion.

Labial – sounds articulated by the lips.

Labiodental – sounds articulated with the lower lip against the edge of the upper teeth

Laryngoscope – a special device which helps to observe the vocal cords, epiglottis and the glottis.

Larynx – part of the vocal tract containing the vocal cords.

Lateral – sounds produced when the sides of the tongue are active.

Lateral plosion – sudden release of air which escapes along the sides of the tongue.

Lax – historically short vowels in the articulation of which muscular tension of speech organs is weak.

Lenis consonants - voiced consonants pronounced with weak muscular tension.

Lip rounding – a position of the lips when their corners are brought toward one another so that the mouth opening is reduced.

Loudness - the intensity of sound is produced by the amplitude of vibrations.

Manner of articulation – one of the principles of consonant classifications which is connected with the type of obstruction to the air stream.

Maximum onsets principle -

Medio-lingual - sounds produced with the front part of the tongue raised high to the hard palate

Minimal pair - a pair of words or morphemes which are differentiated by one sound only in the same position.

Modifications of sounds – positional and combinatory changes of sounds in connected speech.

Monophthong – a vowel articulated when the tongue position is stable, in this case the articulated vowel is pure, it consists of one element.

Mouth cavity – the cavity between the teeth and the pharynx.

Narrow transcription – also phonetic transcription, provides special symbols for all the allophones of the same phoneme

Narrow variations - a subclass of the vertical positions of the tongue which in this case is raised slightly higher in the mouth cavity

Nasal consonants – sounds articulated when the soft palate is lowered and the air stream goes out through the nose.

Nasal Cavity – the cavity inside the nose which is separated from the mouth cavity with the soft palate and the uvula.

Nasal plosion – sudden release of air by lowering the soft palate so that the air escapes through the nose.

National variants - the language of a nation, the standard of its form, the language of its nation’s literature.

Neutral vowel – a mid central vowel, also schwa.

Neutralisation – the loss of qualitative and quantitative characteristics of vowels in unstressed positions.

Noise consonants – consonants in the production of which noise prevails over voice, the air stream passes through a narrowing and produces audible friction (compare with sonorants).

Normative Phonetics – see Practical Phonetics.

Notation – another term for transcription.

Nuclear tone - a significant change of pitch direction on the last strongly accented syllable in an intonation pattern. In general nuclear tones may be falling, rising and level or a combination of these movements.

Nucleus – 1) the last strongly accented syllable in an intonation pattern;

2) the most prominent part of a diphthong;

3) the centre of a syllable, usually a vowel.

Obstructer mechanism – a group of speech organs which form obstructions during articulation of consonants, it includes tongue, lips, hard and soft palate and teeth.

Occlusive – sounds produced when a complete obstruction to the air stream is formed.

Onset - sounds that precede the nucleus of a syllable.

Open syllable - a syllable which ends in a vowel.

Open vowels – vowels produced when the tongue is in the low part of the mouth cavity.

Opposition – see phonetic oppositions.

Oral consonants - sounds articulated when the soft palate is raised and the air stream goes out through the mouth.

Organs of speech – the human organs which together with biological functions take part in sound production.

Palatal – sounds produced with the front part of the tongue raised high to the hard palate.

Palatalisation – softening of consonants due to the raised position of the middle part of the tongue towards the hard palate.

Palato-alveolar - sounds made with the tip or the blade of the tongue against the teeth ridge and the front part of the tongue raised towards the hard palate, thus having two places of articulation (two foci).

Paralinguistics – a branch of linguistics which is concerned with non-verbal means of communication.

Perceptual Phonetics – see Auditory Phonetics.

Pharynx – the part of the throat which connects the larynx to the upper part of the vocal tract.

Phonation – voicing, the vibration of the vocal cords.

Phone – a sound realised in speech and which bears some individual, stylistic and social characteristics of the speaker.

Phoneme - the smallest further indivisible language unit that exists in the speech of all the members of a given language community as such speech sounds which are capable of distinguishing one word of the same language or one grammatical form of a word from another grammatical form of the same word.

Phonemic transcription – see broad transcription.

Phonetic mistakes – pronunciation mistakes made when an allophone of some phoneme is replaced by an allophone of a different phoneme.

Phonetic oppositions - comparison of sounds, words and morphemes in order to single out their minimal distinctive features.

Phonetic transcription – see narrow transcription.

Phonetics – a branch of linguistics which is concerned with the human noises by which the thought is actualized. Phonetics analyses the nature of these sounds, their combinations and their functions in relation to the meaning.

Phonological analysis – analysis whose aim is to determine which differences of sounds are phonemic/non-phonemic and to find the inventory of the phonemes of this or that language

Phonological mistakes - pronunciation mistakes made when an allophone of the phoneme is replaced by another allophone of the same phoneme; in this case the meaning of the word is affected.

Phonology - also Functional Phonetics, a branch of phonetics that is concerned with the social functions of different phonetic phenomena.

Phonosemantics – a branch of psycholinguistics that studies the relations between the sound structure of a word and its meaning.

Phonostylistics – a branch of phonetics that studies the way phonetic means of the language function in various oral realizations of the language.

Phonotactics - the study of the possible phoneme combinations of a language.

Physiological Phonetics – see Articulatory Phonetics.

Pitch – the auditory characteristic of a sound, it corresponds to the fundamental frequency (the rate of vibrations of the vocal cords).

Pitch level – a particular height of pitch.

Pitch range – the interval between two pitch levels or two differently pitched syllables or parts of a syllable.

Place of articulation – the place in the vocal tract where the air stream is obstructed.

Plosives – consonants produced when the air stream is completely stopped for a short time, also stops.

Post-alveolar - sounds articulated with the tip or the blade of the tongue against the back part of the teeth ridge

Power mechanism - a group of speech organs which supplies energy for sound production, it includes lungs, diaphragm, windpipe, bronchi.

Practical Phonetics – a branch of phonetics which teaches how to pronounce sounds correctly and what intonation to use to convey this or that meaning or emotion. It is called Normative Phonetics because teaches the "norm" of English pronunciation.

Pragmalinguistics – a branch of linguistics that studies what linguistic means and ways of influence on a hearer to choose in order to bring about certain effects in the process of communication.

Pragmaphonetics – a branch of Pragmalinguistics whose domain is to analyse the functioning and speech effects of the sound system of a language.

Pre-head - the unstressed syllables which precede the first stressed syllable of the head.

Primary stress – the strongest stress compared with the other stresses in a word.

Principal allophone - allophones which do not undergo any significant changes in the chain of speech.

Proclitic - unstressed words or syllables which refer to the following stressed word or syllable

Prosody - a complex unity formed by significant variations of pitch, tempo, loudness and timbre.

Psycholinguistics – a branch of linguistics which covers an extremely broad area, from acoustic phonetics to language pathology, and includes such problems as acquisition of language by children, memory, attention, speech perception, second-language acquisition and so on.

Publicistic style - a style of speech used in public discussions on political, judicial or economic topics, sermons, parliamentary debates

Qualitative – connected with the spectral characteristics of a sound.

Quantitative – referring to the length of a sound.

Received Pronunciation (RP) – the national standard of the English language spoken in Great Britain.

Reduced vowel – a weakened vowel.

Reduction - weakening (either qualitative or quantitative) of vowels in unstressed positions.

Resonator mechanism - a group of speech organs which can change their shape and volume, thus forming the spectral component of the sound, it includes nasal and mouth cavities. Rhyme

Rhythm - recurrence of stressed syllables at more or less equal intervals of time in speech.

Rhythmic group - a speech segment which contains a stressed syllable and a number of unstressed ones. The most frequent type of an English rhythmic group includes 2-4 syllables, one of which is stressed.

Rounded – a sound articulated with added lip rounding.

Schwa – see neutral vowel.

Scientific style – see academic style.

Secondary allophones - allophones which undergo some predictable changes in different phonetic context.

Secondary stress – a less strong stress than the primary one, usually precedes the primary stress in a word.

Segmental Phonetics – a division of phonetics which is concerned with individual sounds ("segments" of speech)

Segmentation – division of speech into phrases and intonation groups.

Semantic centre – see communicative centre.

Sentence stress – the greater degree of prominence given to certain words in an utterance.

Sociolinguistics – a branch of linguistics that studies the way the language interacts with society.

Soft palate – the back, soft part of the hard palate.

Sonorants - consonants in the production of which noise prevails over voice, the air stream passes through a narrowing and produces audible friction (compare with sonorants).

Sonority – a degree of loudness relative to that of other sounds with the same length, stress and pitch.

Special Phonetics – a branch of phonetics which is concerned with the study of the phonetic structure of one language only.

Spectrogram – a picture of the spectrum of sounds, their frequency, intensity and time.

Spectrograph – a device which carries out the spectral analysis of speech.

Stops – see plosives

Stress – a greater degree of prominence which is caused by loudness, pitch, the length of a syllable and the vowel quality.

Stress-timed languages – in these languages stressed syllables tend to occur at relatively regular intervals irrespectively of the number of unstressed syllables separating them.

Strong vowel – the full form of a vowel in the stressed position.

Stylistic modifications - sound changes which happen under the influence of extra-linguistics factors.

Subsidiary allophone – see secondary allophone.

Suprasegmental Phonetics – a division of phonetics whose domain is larger units of connected speech: syllables, words, phrases and texts

Syllable - a sound sequence, consisting of a centre which has little or no obstruction to airflow and which sounds comparatively loud; before and after this centre there will be greater obstruction to airflow and less loud sound.

Syllable-timed languages - in these languages all syllables, whether stressed or unstressed, tend to occur at regular time-intervals and the time between stressed syllables will be shorter or longer depending on the number of unstressed syllables separating them.

Syntagm - a group of words which is semantically and syntactically complete.

Tail - any syllables between the nucleus and the end of the utterance.

Tamber – the same as timbre.

Tempo - the rate of the utterance and pausation.

Tense - historically long vowels in the articulation of which muscular tension of speech organs is great.

Terminal tone - the nucleus and the tail of the utterance.

Tertiary stress – a less strong stress than the primary one, usually follows the primary stress in a word.

Theoretical Phonetics – a branch of phonetics which is mainly concerned with the functioning of phonetic units in the language. It discusses the problems of phonetics in academic terms and gives a scientific approach to the phonetic theory.

Timbre - voice quality.

Tone languages - the meaning of words in these languages depends on the variations of voice pitch in relation to neighbouring syllables.

Tongue – the most movable and flexible speech organ.

Transcription – the system of symbols to represent speech in written form.

Unstressed – bearing no stress.

Utterance – a spoken sentence or a phrase.

Uvula – the end of the soft palate.

Velar – consonants produced with the back part of the tongue raised towards the soft palate

Vibrator mechanism - a group of speech organs which vibrate while the air passes through, thus producing voice, it includes larynx, vocal cords, glottis.

Vocal cords – two soft folds in the larynx which can be brought together and apart, thus producing voice.

Voice quality – timbre.

Voiced consonants – sounds produced when the vocal cords are brought together and vibrate.

Voiceless consonants - sounds produced when the vocal cords are brought together and vibrate.

Vowel – a sound in the production of which no obstructions are made.

Weak form – the unstressed form of a sound or a word.

Windpipe – trachea or air passage.

Word stress - a greater degree of prominence on one of the syllables in a word.

REFERENCES:

1. Соколова М.А., Гинтовт К.П. и др. Практическая фонетика английского языка - М.: Высшая школа, 1997. – 384 с.

2. Соколова М.А., Гинтовт К.П., Тихонова И.С., Тихонова Р.М. Теоретическая фонетика английского языка - М.: Высшая школа, 1997. – 384 с.

3. Шевченко Т.И. Теоретическая фонетика английского языка – М.: Высшая школа, 2006. – 191 с.

4. Celce-Murcia, Marianne, Donna M.Brinton, Janet M.Goodwin. Teaching Pronunciation: a Reference for Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages. – Cambridge: Cambr. Univ. Press, 1996.

5. Pennington, Martha C. Phonology in English Language Teaching: an International Approach. – Longman: London and New York, 1996.

6. Roach P. English Phonetics and Phonology. - Cambridge: Cambr. Univ. Press, 1987

7. Rosewarne David. Estuary English: Tomorrow’s RP? - English Today, January 1994.

8. Vassilyev V.A. English Phonetics: A Theoretical Course. – M., 1970.

[1] C – consonant; V - vowel

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