Lecture 1. The Subject-matter of Phonetics

Phonetics deals with speech sounds. In Greek phōnētikós means: per­taining to voice and sound.

The significance of phonetics is evident, since speech is the most im­portant means of human intercourse:

In the process of historical development the need for communication created and perfected speech organs, gradually men learned to pronounce and modulate speech sounds into combinations of words and sentences.

Sounds of speech are segments interconnected with minimal distinc­tive units — phonemes. Supersegmental units of speech — tone, stress and intonation are longer units of speech: syllables, words and intona­tion groups.

Ancient objects, drawings, and written documents show that voice and speech always fascinated men. Written documents and evidences from ancient civilizations point to an awareness of speech, its origin and abnormalities a long time ago.

In India more than 2,000 years ago there flourished a science of pho­netics more advanced than any that has since been known until very re­cent times. The results, embodied in a series of Sanskrit texts, were first introduced to the West only some 80 years ago.

Here are some data connected with the history of phonetic develop­ment:

1829 — laryngoscope was invented,

1852 — first observations of the vocal cords were made,

1877 — gramophone was invented,

1886 — International Phonetic Association (IPA) was founded. IPA started publications of a special phonetic magazine "Le Mattre Phonetique". It stated phonetic symbols for sounds of many existing lan­guages.

Writing transcription symbols one should use the form of print rather than handwriting, e.g. /bed/ not bed, /tip/ not tip, /bit/ not bit.

Some shapes of the transcription symbols demand special attention.

/θ/ is written as capital O with a cross-stroke.

/ð/ is like a reversed 6 with a cross-stroke.

/f/ does not descend below the line.

Don't use any capital letters.

Don’tconfuse orthography and phonemic representation.

Slant brackets are used to mark off phonemic transcription, square brackets are used for allophones.

It is not necessary to show any punctuation.

If necessary question marks and exclamation marks (?!) may be used to give an indication of intonation. Commas, full stops, inverted com­mas, hyphens, etc. should be excluded since they can be confused with intonation or stress markings.

Abbreviations and numbers should be transcribed in their full spoken form, e.g. USA /'ju: 'es 'ei/.

Primary stress is indicated by ['] before the stressed syllable, e.g. fa­ther /'fa:ðə/. Secondary stress is shown by [ֽ] before the syllable, e.g. examination /ig ֽzæmi'neiςən/.

The basic principle of transcription we use in our textbook is called "phonemic". It means that a set of symbols is used to represent the sounds that can be distinctive. Replacing one phoneme by another in a minimal pair can change the meaning of the word, e.g. /kil — mil/. /k/ and /m/ are different phonemes. Square brackets are used to single out allophones, e.g. "nasalised" vowels, [ai] in /mais/, retroflex [t] in /trai/, [x] in Scot­tish "loch".

Phonetics is an independent branch of linguistics like lexicology, gram­mar and stylistics. It studies the sound matter, its aspects and functions.

Phonetics is connected with linguistic and non-linguistic sciences: acoustics, physiology, psychology, logic, etc.

The connection of phonetics with grammar, lexicology and stylistics is exercised first of all via orthography, which in its turn is very closely connected with phonetics.

Phonetics formulates the rules of pronunciation for separate sounds and sound combinations. The rules of reading are based on the relation of sounds to orthography and present certain difficulties in learning the English language, especially on the initial stage of studying. Thus, vowel sounds, for instance, are pronounced not only as we name the letters corresponding to them: the letter a as /ei/, the letter e as /i:/, the letter i as /ai/, the letter y as /wai/, the letter u as /ju:/, the letter o as /ou/, but a can be pronounced as: /æ/ — can, /a:/ — car, /εə/ — care; e can be pro­nounced as:/e/ — them, /ε:/ — fern, /ıə/ — here, etc.

The Russian and English orthography differ in the number of letters for one single sound.

In the Russian writing system one letter corresponds to one sound. There are special letters in the Russian alphabet: я, ю, е, ё, they represent /й/ plus a vowel: A, У, E, O. Letter combinations for one sound are exceptions in the Russian writing system, they are сч, зч, жж – счастье /шٰ/; извозчик /шٰ/; дрожжи /жٰ/.

English orthography widely uses letter combinations to represent vo­wels and consonants.

Given below are some tables that may help you to pronounce and write English words correctly.

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