Phonetics as a branch of linguistics 1 страница

structure and functions of the speech sounds. - This branch of linguistics is called phonetics.

Phonetics is an independent branch of linguistics like lexicology or grammar. These linguistic sciences study language from three different points of view. Lexicology deals with the vocabulary of language, with the origin and development of words, with their meaning and word building. Grammar defines the rules governing the modification of words and the combination of words into sentences. Phonetics studies the outer form of language; its sound matter.Phonetics occupies itself with the study of the ways in which the sounds are organized into a system of units and the variation of the units in all types and styles of spoken language.

Theoretical Phonetics has the following branches: articulatory, acoustic,auditory,functional /phonologicalEach branch of Theoretical Phonetics investigates the appropriate aspect of speech sounds.Articulatory Phonetics investigates the functioning of one’s speech apparatus and mechanism. It is based on profound knowledge of physiology and the structure of one’s speech apparatus. While investigating the articulatory aspect of speech sounds both subjective and objective methods are employed: the method of direct observation (concerning the lips & the tongue movements) – subjective method and X-ray photography and X-ray cinematography (objective methods). Acoustic Phonetics studies the acoustic properties of sounds (quantity, timber/voice quality, intensity, the pitch of the voice and temporal factor) in terms of the frequency of vibration and the amplitude of vibration in relation to time. The analysis begins with a microphone, which converts the air movement into corresponding electrical activity. While investigating the acoustic aspect of speech sounds special laboratory equipment is employed: spectrograph, intonograph, sound analyzing & sound synthesizing machines.

Auditory Phonetics is aimed at investigating the hearing process which is the brain activity.

Functional Phonetics presupposes investigating the discriminatory (distinctive) function of speech sounds.

2) Everyone who starts learning a foreign language first of all is introduced into practical or normative phonetics. It studies the material form of phonetic phenomena in relation to meaning. It teaches how to pronounce sounds correctly and what intonation to use to convey this or that meaning or emotion. It is called normative because we are to teach the "norm" of English pronunciation.

Theoretical phonetics 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.

Other two important branches of phonetics are special and general phonetics. Special phonetics may be subdivided into descriptive and historical. Special descriptive phonetics is concerned with the study of the phonetic structure of one language only in its static form, synchronically and the domain of special historical phonetics is the phonetic structure of a language in its historical development, diachronically. Historical phonetics is part of the history of a language. Its aim is to trace and establish the successive changes in the phonetic system of a given language at different stages of its historical development. It is very important for the study of the modern phonetic system because without a historical approach it is impossible to understand how this modern phonetic system has developed and what further changes it is likely to undergo.

General phonetics studies all the sound-producing possibilities of the human speech apparatus and the ways they are used for purposes of human communication by means of language, it finds out what types of speech sounds exist in various languages of the world, how they are produced and what role they play in forming and expressing thoughts; it also determines the nature, types and role of other phonetic means, such as word stress and intonation. General phonetics is based on the material which the special phonetics of a great number of languages provides; it also uses data of other sciences: physics, biology, psychology, speech pathology, etc. So it makes a number of general conclusions concerning the complex nature of speech sounds, analyses phonetic phenomena from different points of view and formulates phonetic theories. On the one hand general phonetics is based on the data of special phonetics; on the other hand it provides valuable theoretical material which enables us to understand and to interpret correctly different phonetic phenomena of concrete languages.

Another important division is into phonology and phonetics. According to the conception of the Prague Linguistic School phonetics and phonology are two independent branches of science, phonetics is a biological science which is concerned with the physical and physiological characteristics of speech sounds, and phonology is a linguistic science which is concerned with the social functions of different phonetic phenomena. Another term for this branch is functional phonetics.

The father of Phonology is Prince Nicholas Trubetskoi. His work "Fundementals of Phonology" separates phonetics and phonology, saying that they are not related and that phonetics is not part of linguistics, but a biological science that deals only with the physiological aspect of speech sounds.

Nevertheless it doesn't seem logical to separate function from phonetic forms, thus excluding phonetics from the linguistic sciences. So nowadays most phoneticians consider both phonetics and phonology part of linguistics.

Phonetics itself is subdivided into 3 sub branches, each dealing with special aspects of sounds, their production by a speaker and perception by a listener.

Phonetic processing starts on a neurophonetic level, in the brain of a speaker, where the formation of the concept takes place. The human brain controls the behaviour of the articulatory (or speech) organs and makes them move in a particular way. The branch of phonetics which is concerned with the study of speech sounds as regards their production by the human speech organs is called articulatory (physiological) phonetics. In other words it deals with the way human organs join to produce sounds. Articulatory basis of a language is a set of articulation tendencies characteristic for a particular language community, so articulatory gesturing is culturally specific and not universal.

Different articulations produce different acoustic effects, or different speech sounds. Consequently, speech sounds have a second aspect, a physical or, more exactly, an acoustic one, which constitutes the domain of acoustic phonetics. Acoustic phonetics involves knowledge of physics as it deals with the physical property of sounds. Any sound is a pressure disturbance transmitted through an elastic medium. When articulatory gesturing starts it causes disturbance (a sound wave) in the medium, which is transmitted from one particle of the medium to another and is reproduced as a sound wave travels from the source to the listener.

Perceptual or auditory phonetics is concerned with the way our auditory mechanism works to process speech information. There is a boundary line between reception (which doesn't involve understanding) and perception (which involves decoding and understanding). Phonetic perception is a product of sensation and interpretation of speech elements which take place in a human brain.

Phonetics is also divided into two major components: segmental phonetics, which is concerned with individual sounds ("segments" of speech) and suprasegmental phonetics whose domain is larger units of connected speech: syllables, words, phrases and texts.

There are a number of other divisions of phonetics. We may speak about comparative phonetics whose aims are to study the correlation between the phonetic systems of two or more languages and find out the correspondences between speech sounds and intonation structures. Its data are extremely useful in teaching and learning a foreign language as they show differences and similarities of the phonetic systems of two or more languages and predict possible difficulties for the learners. It should be mentioned that the most difficult phonetic phenomena are those absent in the mother tongue. For example, the sounds [ð-θ] cause a lot of difficulties for the Russian students of English, as there are no sounds with similar articulations in the Russian language. On the other hand the most stable and persistent pronunciation mistakes are made in those phenomena which are similar in the two languages but not exactly the same. For example, falling intonation. In English it goes to the very bottom of the voice, while in Russian it is not so steep and it does not reach the same low note as in English.

The data of applied phonetics are essential for practical purposes in speech therapy and logopedia. It helps to correct speech defects and to teach deaf-mutes (or people who do not speak as a result of an accident or some disease) to speak.

Experimental phonetics deals with research work which is carried out with the help of different technical devices, machines for measurements and for instrumental analysis.

Phonetics as a whole and all of its branches have not come into being all at once: they developed gradually, and their development was closely connected with and determined by the development of other branches of linguistics and other sciences.

3) So our further point should be made in connection with the relationship between phonetics and social sciences. Language is not an isolated phenomenon; it is a part of society. No branch of linguistics can be studied without taking into consideration at least the study of other aspects of society. In the past two decades we have seen the development of quite distinct interdisciplinary subjects, such as sociolinguistics (and sociophonetics correspondingly), psycholinguistics, mathematical linguistics and others. As their titles suggest, they are studied from two points of view and thus require knowledge of both.

Sociophonetics studies the ways in which pronunciation functions in society. It is interested in the ways in which phonetic structures vary in response to different social functions. Society here is used in its broadest sense, it includes such phenomena as nationality, regional and social groups, age, gender, different situations of speaking - talking to equals, superiors, on the “job”, when we are trying to persuade, inform, agree and so on. The aim of sociophonetics is to correlate phonetic variations with situational factors. It’s obvious that these data are vital for language learners who are to observe social norms and to accommodate to different situations they find themselves in.

One more example of interdisciplinary overlap is the relation of linguistics to psychology. Psycholinguistics 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. Phonosemantics studies the relations between the sound structure of a word and its meaning. There is some data proving that the sounds that constitute a word have their own “inner” meaning, which causes certain associations in the listener’s mind. For example, close vowels produce the effect of “smallness”, and voiceless consonants sound more “unpleasant” and “rude” than their voiced counterparts, etc. Some sounds are associated with certain colours. These data may be helpful in teaching, for example, “tying” together the sound structure of a word and its meaning, thus facilitating the process of memorising new words.

Scientists have always been interested how children acquire their own language without being taught. They hope that these data might be useful in teaching grown-up people a foreign language, too.

Pragmalinguistics is a comparatively new science, which 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. Correspondently the domain of pragmaphonetics is to analyse the functioning and speech effects of the sound system of a language.

Phonetics is closely connected with a number of other sciences such as physics (or rather acoustics), mathematics, biology, physiology and others. The more phonetics develops the more various branches of science become involved in the field of phonetic investigation. Phonetics has become important in a number of technological fields connected with communication.

Phoneticians work alongside the communication engineers in devising and perfecting machines that can understand, that is respond to human speech, or machines for reading aloud the printed page and vice versa, converting speech directly into printed words on paper. Although scientists are still dissatisfied with the quality of synthesized speech, these data are applied in security systems, answering machines and for other technical purposes.

4) Methods applied in investigating the sound matter of the language have changed greatly with the development of technology and computer science. From the beginning of phonetics the phonetician has relied mainly on what he could feel of his own speech and on what he could hear both of his own and the informant’s speech. Such methods are called direct and 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 (muscle tense) during the articulation of speech sounds and in comparing them with the resultant auditory impressions. Investigation by means of this method can be effective only if the persons employing it have been specially trained and have acquired considerable skills in associating the qualities of the perceived sound with the nature of the articulations producing it.

Instrumental methods were introduced into phonetics in the last century to supplement the impressions deriving from the human senses. These methods are based upon registering or computing machines and technical devices, such as spectrograph, intonograph, x-ray photography and cinematography, laryngoscope and some others. The introduction of machines for measurements and for instrumental analysis into phonetics has resulted in their use for detailed study of many of the phenomena which are present in the sound wave or in the articulatory process at any given moment. These techniques can be very useful both for discovering in detail how English speakers produce their speech sounds, and for demonstrating to learners of English their pronunciation. Computers can provide additional pronunciation training, displaying useful information on the screen and being a powerful visual aid for effective phonetic practice. One more advantage of the modern experimental study of speech is the enormous amount of varied spoken speech data stored on computers. It facilitates the process of looking for cross-language differences and similarities. The data obtained from instrumental analysis supplement and verify those obtained by means of direct observation, thus making the research results more detailed and precise.

5) Let us consider the phoneme from the point of view of its three aspects. Firstly, the phoneme is a functional unit. It means that the opposition of phonemes in the same phonetic environment differentiates the meaning of words, grammatical forms and even the whole phrases: [slɜʊ - blɜʊ], [tu:θ - ti:θ] (slow - blow; tooth - teeth); [hi: wəz ˈhɜ:d ˎbædlɪ - hi: wəz ˈhɜ:t ˎbædlɪ] (He was heard badly - He was hurt badly). Phonemes are in parallel distribution; they appear in the same phonetic context and form a semantic contrast.

6) Secondly, the phoneme is material, real and objective. That means that it is realised in speech in the form of speech sounds, its allophones (or actually pronounced speech sounds).

Allophones of the same phoneme must meet the following requirements:

- though they possess similar features, they frequently show considerable phonetic difference;

- they never occur in the same phonetic context, so they can’t be opposed to each other and can’t differentiate the meaning. In this case allophones are said to be in complementary distribution.

Those allophones which do not undergo any significant changes in the chain of speech (for example, when they occur in an isolated position) are called principal. At the same time there are predictable changes, which sounds undergo in different phonetic context (especially under the influence of the neighbouring sounds, intonation, etc.). Such allophones are called subsidiary or secondary.

The examples below illustrate the articulatory modifications of the phoneme [t] in various phonetic contexts:

[t] in "tea" is a bit palatalized; in "not there" it is dental; in "not quite" it loses its plosion; in "little" it is pronounced with the lateral plosion; in "not many" - with the nasal plosion; in "try" it becomes post-alveolar; in "stare" - non-aspirated. In spite of the differences in the pronunciation of [t] in different positions it can be easily noticed that all its allophones possess some common features, all of them are forelingual, fortis stops.

It goes without saying that in teaching English pronunciation the difference between the allophones of the same phoneme should be considered. The starting point is, of course, the articulation of the principal allophone, but special training of the subsidiary allophones should be provided too.

But in fact, no speech sounds are absolutely alike. Apart from predictable changes there are stylistic, dialectal, individual, occasional modifications. In fact, we pronounce phones. Most of social information (the locality he/she lives in, age, sex, occupation, emotional state, etc.) about the speaker comes not from phonemic distinctions, but from phonetic ones.

7) Not let's consider the third aspect of the phoneme. As we have already said it is an abstract linguistic unit. Native speakers may not realise the difference between allophones, though they are quite aware of the phonemes of their language. It happens because this difference doesn’t affect the meaning. Sounds which have similar functions in the language (in other words they cannot differentiate the meaning) tend to be considered the "same" by the community using that language, while those which have different functions tend to be classed as "different". So native speakers abstract themselves from the difference between the allophones of the same phoneme because it has no functional value. At the same time they understand that they can’t change any of the articulatory features which are common to all the allophones of the same phoneme without destroying the meaning. This functionally relevant bundle of articulatory features is called the invariant of the phoneme. Neither of the articulatory features that form the invariant of the phoneme can be changed without affecting the meaning.

For example, the invariant of [t] consists of the following articulatory features: occlusive, forelingual and fortis. How can we prove it? If we change the occlusive articulation for constrictive, [t] will be replaced by [s] (tea-sea; tick-sick); if we change the forelingual articulation for backlingual [t] will be replaced by [k] (bat-back; tick-kick); if the fortis articulation is changed for lenis [t] will be replaced by [d] (bet-bed; tear-bear). That is why it is possible to state that occlusive, forelingual and fortis characteristics of the phoneme [t] are generalized in the mind of the speaker into the invariant of this phoneme.

8) Cases of consonant modifications in a speech chain are described more often than those of vowel modifications. Phoneticians usually identify assimilation of place, manner and voicing in consonants.

Now let us see what qualitative features of consonant sounds may be changed in the process of their interrelation.

The most common sounds which undergo assimilation of place are plosives and nasals:

• the alveolar [t – d - n] followed by the interdental [θ - ð] become dental as in at the, in the, seventh, said that;

• the alveolar [t - d] become post-alveolar under the influence of the post-alveolar [r] as in tree, dry, get rid of;

• the alveolar [t - d] become affricates if followed by the palatal [j] (as in fortune [ˈfɔ:ʧu(:)n], did you [ˈdɪʤu(:)];

• the alveolar [t - d] are bilabial before a bilabial consonant (in rapid casual speech) as in meat pie [ˈmi:p-paɪ];

• the bilabial [m] is actually labio-dental followed by the labio-dental [f-v] as in some fruit;

• the alveolar [n] assimilates to the velar consonants, becoming velar [η] as in donkey [ˈdɒηkɪ];

• the alveolar [n] is palato-alveolar followed by [ʧ-ʤ] (bunch, change);

• the alveolar [s-z] are post-alveolar before [ò] as in does she [ˈdʌʃʃi], horse-shoe [ˈhɔ:ʃʃu:].

The manner of articulation also changes as a result of assimilation. We observe:

• loss of plosion as in glad to see you, great trouble

• lateral plosion as in settle, at last

• nasal plosion as in not now, at night

Assimilation of voice is also found in English but in a very limited way compared to the Russian language. Only regressive assimilation of voice is found across word boundaries and then only of one type: if the following consonant is voiceless fortis it influences the preceding voiced lenis consonant and makes it devoiced (as in of course [əfˈkɔ:s], but the voiceless fortis consonant will never become voiced and lenis (as in I like this [aɪ ˈlaɪk ðɪs]). It should be noted that it is typical of many foreign students of English to allow regressive assimilation of voicing, thus creating a very strong impression of a foreign accent, and this is something that should obviously be avoided.

The pronunciation of the suffixes “-ed” of regular verbs, “-s” of plural nouns and possessives is based on progressive assimilation. It is pronounced as [t] after voiceless consonants (except t) and [d] after vowels and voiced consonants (except d), for example, described [dɪsˈkraɪbd] – passed [pa:st], cats [kæts] - dogs [dɒgz], Pit’s [pɪts] - David’s [ˈdeɪvɪdz].

Lip position may be affected by the accommodation: consonants become labialized under the influence of the neighbouring back vowels, as in boot, moon, etc.

The position of the soft palate is also involved in the process of accommodation. Slight nasalization is sometimes heard in vowels under the influence of the neighbouring nasal sonorants [m][n] as in meaning, end, some interesting men.

Elision or complete loss of sounds is characteristic of rapid, casual speech. Here are some typical examples of consonant elision:

• in clusters of three plosives or two plosives plus a fricative, the middle plosive may disappear as in next day [neksˈdeɪ], acts [æks];

• [l] tends to be lost when preceded by [ɔ:] as in all right [ɔ:ˈraɪt], always [ˈɔ:wɪz];

• final –f is often lost in of before consonants as in waste of time [ˈweɪst əˈtaɪm];

• the initial h- may be lost in the pronouns and auxiliary verbs in casual speech as in What has he said? [ˈwɒt əz i ˈsed];

• examples of historical elision are quite numerous in English: know [nɜʊ], castle [ka:sl], listen [ˈlɪsn].

It is important for foreign students of English to be aware of the fact that when native speakers of English talk to each other, quite a number of phonemes that the foreigner might expect to hear are not actually pronounced or their pronunciation is changed. Selective, analytic listening will help to recognize what is being said and will bring more confidence to students.

9) The articulation of English vowels is adapted to that of consonants only to a very slight extent. To a Russian, they do not seem to change at all in connected speech compared with Russian vowels, which are strongly modified by consonants.

In English we can speak about the quantitative and qualitative modification of vowels. The quantitative modification is the shortening of the vowel length when it occurs in an unstressed position (as in ˈwindow, ˈphoneme, etc) or before a voiceless consonant (as in heat, past, etc.).

Qualitative modification of most vowels occurs in unstressed positions. In these cases the quality of the vowel is reduced to the neutral sound as in statesman [ˈsteɪtsmən], economic [ˌi:kəˈnɒmɪk].

In rapid colloquial speech elision or complete omission of the unstressed vowel can take place as in perhaps [pʰˈhæps], today [tʰˈdeɪ], correct [kˈrekt].

5.4. Stylistic modifications of sounds

We have viewed the sound modifications mostly within the norm of English sound system, but without any special attention to their stylistic distinctions. However the number and degree of sound modifications depend not only on linguistic factors (such as the neighbouring sounds and distribution of sounds in connected speech) but on extra linguistic ones as well.

Stylistic oppositions are usually observed in the two large marginal types of pronunciation - formal and informal. Formal speech suggests unemotional information on the part of the speaker. It is characterised by careful articulation and relatively slow speed. Informal speech implies everyday conversation; it is relaxed and rather rapid and is characterized by the use of simplified sound forms. The character of sound modifications in relation to situational factors of speech communication is only beginning to be the object of thorough instrumental analysis.

One of the most important factors that results in the increased number of sound modifications is the character of relationship between the speaker and the listener and the degree of formality in their discourse. The other extra linguistic factors that determine the degree of sound modifications are the degree of preparedness, the form of communication (a monologue or a dialogue), the number of participants, etc. Native speakers usually don’t have any difficulties in understanding rapid casual speech though sounds simplifications are not registered in the listener’s mind and he/she is not usually aware of the changes since they do not affect the meaning.

Here are some examples of sound simplifications typical of relaxed casual speech:

• most vowels in unstressed positions are neutralized, especially in grammatical words: because [bɪkəz], according to [əˈkədɪη], have [əv];

• the diphthongoids [i:] and [u:] become diphthongs and then monophthongs: believe [bəˈlɪv], few [fiʊ];

• diphthongs are monophthongized and then might undergo qualitative reduction as well: where [wɛ], really [ˈrɛlɪ], now they [ˈna ðe] – [ˈnʌ ðə];

• vowel elision is very frequent: it’s [ts], different [ˈdɪfr(ə)nt], phonetics [ˈfnetɪks];

• the degree of voicing or devoicing of consonants increases and ends with the elision of the sound: must be [mʌst bi - mʌst bpi - mʌst pi - mʌs pi];

• the glottal stop is often observed before the modified plosive consonant: Great Britain [ˈgreɪʔ ˈpbrɪtn], couldn’t come [ˈkʊdηʔ ˈkʌm];

• the palatal [j] affects the manner of articulation of the preceding [t-d] and [s-z]: as you like [əʒ u ˈlaɪk], last year [ˈla:sʧˈjɪə], student [ˈsʧu:dnt];

• there is a strong tendency for elision of consonants: and the [ən ðə], a box of matches [əˈbɒks əˈmæʧəz].

It is clear that there is a great variety in the way sounds are pronounced in a speech chain. Most phoneticians agree that it would not be practical or useful to teach all learners of English to produce these extreme cases of sound modifications, but it is important that learners of English are made aware of the problems that they will meet in listening to colloquial casual speech.

10) THE NATURE OF ENGLISH WORD STRESS A word, as a meaningful language unit, has a definite phonetic structure. The phonetic structure of a word comprises not only the sounds that the word is composed of and not only the syllabic structure that these sounds form, it also has a definite stress pattern. The auditory impression of stress is that of prominence. And if a word contains more than one syllable, the relative prominence of those syllables differs. There may be one prominent syllable in a word as compared to the rest of the syllables of the same word (as in "important"), there may be two equally prominent syllables (as in "misbehave"), two unequally prominent syl- lables (as in "e,xami’nation") or more prominent syllables (as in ' unreliability" And this correlation of degrees of prominence of the syllables in a word forms the stress pattern of the word, which is often called the ac­centual structure of a word. The stress patterns of different words may coincide. Thus the words "mother", "table", "happy", "after" have an identical stress pattern i though their sound structures have nothing in common. The stress pattern of these words differs from that of "analyse", "prominent", "syllable", "charac­ter", which is Monosyllabic words have no stress pattern, because there can be establi­shed no correlation of prominence within it. Yet as lexical units monosyllables are regarded as stressed. The stress patterns of words are generally perceived without difficulty. People easily distinguish between "subject" and "subject". Actual speech does not consist of isolated words. And the stress pattern of a word is deduced from how the word is accented in connected speech. On the other hand, the stress pattern of a word is only its potential pattern in an utterance. Though English words generally retain their stress patterns in con­nected speech, there occur numerous instances when the stress pattern, of a word is altered. Cf. 'unhappy - He was ٰso unٰhappy. He ٰremembered those ٰunhappy ٰdays. Thus, word stress may be said to be a word—level concept, which should not be confused with utterance stress. Word stress be tangs to the word when said in isolation. Whereas utterance stress belongs to the utterance. The placement of utterance stress is primarily conditioned by the situa­tional and linguistic context. It is also conditioned by subjective factors: by the speaker's intention to bring out words which are considered by him to be semantically important in the situational context. As for the stress pattern of a word, it is conditioned only by objective factors: pronunciation tendencies and the orthoepic norm. One cannot distort the stress pattern of a word on one's own, because such a distortion will make speech unintelligible. As stated above, the auditory impression of stress is that of prominence. So a stressed syllable on the auditory level is a syllable that has special promi­nence. The effect of prominence may be produced by a greater degree of loud­ness, greater length of the stressed syllable, some modifications in its pitch and quality. Acoustic analysis shows that the perception of prominence may be due to definite variations of the following acoustic parameters: intensity, duration, frequency, formant structure. All these parameters generally interact to pro­duce the effect of prominence. In different languages stress may be achieved by various combinations of these parameters. Depending upon which parameter is the principal one in producing the effect of stress, word stress in languages may be of different types. There are languages with dynamic word stress. Stress in such languages is mainly achieved by a greater force of articulation which results in greater loudness, on the auditory level, and greater intensity on the acoustic level. The stressed syllables are louder than the unstressed ones. All the other parameters play a less important role in producing the effect of stress in such languages. In languages with musical word stress prominence is mainly achieved by variations in pitch level, the main acoustic parameter being fundamental frequency. Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese are languages with musical word stress (or tonic word stress). The meaning of the words in those languages depends on the pitch levels of their syllables. Swedish word stress is characterized as dynamic and musical, because both loudness and pitch variations are relevant factors in producing promi­nence. For instance, the Swedish word "Anden" with falls in pitch on both syllables means "soul", but when pronounced with a fall in pitch on the first syllable and tow pitch on, the second syllable means "duck". In languages with quantitative word stress the effect of stress is mainly based on the quantity of the sound, i.e. its duration. In such languages vowels in the stressed syllables are always longer than vowels in unstressed syllables. Russian word stress is considered to be mainly quantitative though it has been proved that duration is not the only parameter that produces the effect of stress in Russian. Besides those types of word stress, linguists distinguish qualitative word stresses in many languages the quality of vowels in stressed syllables is unobscured and consequently differs greatly from the quality of vowels in unstressed syllables. What type of word stress is English word stress? What is its acoustic nature? Until recently, English word stress was considered to be dynamic, as stress was generally correlated with loudness. But numerous investigations of the acoustic nature of English word stress have made it clear that stress in English does not depend on intensity alone, and that English word stress is of a complex nature. Thus, D. Fry synthesized pairs of words (such as "object—object").on monotones, and varied the relative durations and intensities of the two vowels. His experiment showed that as long as duration and intensity were increased together, reinforcing each other, there was agreement on which of the syllables was the most prominent one; but, when increased separately, du­ration appeared to be more important than intensity. D. Bolinger's experiments have.shown that pitch movement in English is also one of the most important cues' for prominence. But it is not the pitch direction that is significant in English, it is the pitch contrast that really matters. In other words, variations in the pitch direction will not change the meaning of a word. For example, "abstract″, ″abstract″, "abstract" remain to be one and the same word. But a relatively wide departure from a monotone level is always perceived as a change in the degree of prominence. A. Gimson notes that if a synthesized nonsense word /ilplel9e/ is presented to English listeners, with no pitch, intensity or length variations but with vowels of different quality, the vowels which are the most sonorous (i.e. the most open vowels), will be judged most prominent. In this nonsense word /ס/ and /æ/ are usually judged as the points of greatest prominence. This shows what an important role the inherent quality of a vowel plays in produc­ing the effect of prominence. Thus, as far as English word stress is concerned, relative prominence in the listener's mind is created by an interaction of four acoustic parameters: intensity, fundamental frequency, duration and formant structure. The peculiarity of this interaction, still remains a controversial problem and a very complicated one. What complicates the matter is that in English a vowel in an unstressed syllable may be non—reduced and longer than in a stressed syllable (as in "pil­low", "compound"). Vowels differ in their intensity as well; for example, the intensity of /i/ is much lower than that of /a:/ or /o:/. Besides that, the quantity of English vowels also differs: in identical phonetic environment an open vowel is longer than a close vowel. It is a universal rule for most languages (/a: >o:>3:>u:>i:>æ> ס > e > ΰ > i/). Moreover, a vowel following a lenis voiced consonant tends to have lower pitch than one which follows a fortis voiceless consonant(cf. "dear" — "tear", "bee" — "tea").Yet an Englishman easily distinguishes a stressed syllable from among the unstressed despite the diversity in the acoustic characteristics of stressed syllables. Therefore stress in English manifests itself in various ways, either the intensity, or duration of the stressed syllable may increase, or the spectrum of the stressed vowel may be sharpened, or the fundamental frequency may show a distinct rise (or fall). There may also be a combination of any of these para­meters (see Fig.9). As for Russian word stress, it is considered to be primarily quantitative (because in Russian a stressed syllable is about 1.5 times longer than an unstressed syllable) and, secondarily, it is qualitative and dynamic. LINGUISTICALLY RELEVANT DEGREES OF WORD STRESS One of the main questions for the linguist is to determine the number of contrastive degrees of word stress in a language. How many contrastive degrees of word stress exist in English? How many degrees of word stress are linguistically relevant in English? Instrumental investigations show that a polysyllabic word has as many degrees of prominence as there are syllables in it. D. Jones has indicated the degrees of prominence in the word "opportunity". The most prominent syl­lable is denoted by figure 1, the second degree of prominence — by figure 2, and so on. 2 4 1 5 3 pətju:niti But not all these degrees of prominence are linguistically relevant. The problem is to determine which of these degrees are linguistically relevant. There are two views of the matter. Some (e.g. D. Jones, R. Kingdon, V. Vassilyev [110]) consider that there are three degrees of word stress in English: primary (or strong stress), secondary (or partial stress) and weak (the so—called "unstressed" syllables have weak stress). Secondary stress is chiefly needed to define the stress pattern of words containing four or more syllables, and compound words. E.g. "e,xami’nation", ",qualifi’cation", '’hair—,dresser". All these degrees of stress are linguistically relevant as there are words in English the meanings of which depend upon the occurrence of either of the three degrees in their stress patterns. E.g. "’import— im’port", ",certifi’cation — cer,tifi’cation". But auditory analysis shows that there are certain positions in the stress patterns of English words where the vowel generally remains unobscured and its duration is considerable, though the syllable it occurs in does not actually bear primary or secondary stress. This can be clearly seen in verbs ending in "-ate", "-ize", "-y" (e.g. "elevate", "recognize", "occupy") and in such words as "portray", "canteen", "austere". Besides, this can also be observed in GA nouns ending in "-ary", "-ory", "-ony" (e.g;, "dictionary", "territory", "ceremony") On this account some American linguists (G.Tragef, A.Hill) distinguish four degrees of word stress: primary stress I' I (as in "cupboard"),. secondary stress / ^/ (as in "discrimination"),. tertiary stress/ ٰ/ (as in "analyse"), weak stress / ˇ/ (as in "cupboard", but very often the weakly stressed syllable is left unmarked). American phoneticians consider that secondary stress generally occurs before the primary stress (as in "examination"), while tertiary stress occurs after the primary stress (as in "handbook", "specialize"). Though the second view seems to be more exact, the distinction between secondary and tertiary degrees of stress is too subtle to be noticed by an untrained ear. Linguistically, tertiary word stress can be taken for a variant of secondary word stress, as there are no words in English the meanings of which depend on whether their stress pattern is characterized by either secondary or tertiary stress. That is why the stress pattern of English words may be /defined as a cor­relation of three degrees of stress. THE STRESS PATTERNS OF ENGLISH WORDS There are languages in which stress always falls on the first syllable (as in Czech and Finnish), or on the last syllable (as in French and Turkish). Word stress in such languages is said, to be fixed. The stress patterns of the bulk of_ English words are regular and Stable. Yet English word stress is said to be free. It is free in the sense that stress is not fixed to any parti­cular syllable in all the words of the language. Though word stress in English is called free, there are certain tendenciesin English which to a certain extent regulate the accentuation of words. The linguists who have made a thorough analysis of English stress patterns have agreed upon the existence of two main accentuation tendencies in English: the recessive tendency and the rhythmic tendency. According to the recessive tendency, stress falls on the first syllable which is generally the root syllable {e.g. "mother", "father", "sister", "brpther", "ready", "window") or on the second syllable in words which have a prefix of no special meaning (e.g., "become", indeed, forgive, behind")... The recessive tendency in stressing words is characteristic of words of Anglo—Saxon origin, but the tendency has also influenced many borrowings (e.g. "excellent, garage"). In present—day English 74% of words containing two syllables have the stress pattern _,_, and 26% have the pattern _ _,_. In words of three syllables 55% have the stress pattern,_ _ _, whereas only 39% have the pattern j and 6% have the pattern j In the English language a considerable part of the vocabulary consists of monosyllabic words, some of which are stressed, others not. This created the rhythmic tendency to alternate stressed and unstressed syllables; According to the rhythmic tendency, stress is on the 3rd syllable from theend'intensity", possibility"). It is the usual way of stressing four—syllabled words (e.g. "political, de­mocracy, identify, comparison"). 36% of words of four syllables have the pat­ tern j, 33% have the pattern M, 29% have the pattern L, and in 2% the stress falls on the last syllable. In rapid colloquial speech the two tendencies very often coincide as one of the vowels is elided (e.g. "terit(o)ry, diction (a) ry,'lit(e) rature,'temp(e) ra-ture"). The rhythmic tendency remains a strong one and it affects the stress pat­terns of a large number of words in modern English. Thus, in some polysyllabic words there is a tendency nowadays to avoid a succession of weak syllables, especially if these have / e/ or / i /. As a result, there appears a stress shift with a rhythmic alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables. This tendency is clearly evident in the new pronunciation of the following words; 'exquisite _, _ _ or ex’quisite _, _ The new variants of pronunciation of these words and many more English words have been accepted and included in Everyman's English Pronouncing Dictionary by D. Jones as either second or even first variants of pronunciation,, It has also been noticed that the stress of the parent word is often retained in the derivatives. Cf. 'personal —,perso'nality, nation — nationality, This regularity is sometimes called the retentive tendency in English. There is one more tendency in English:' the tendency to stress the most important elements in words. Such meaningful prominence is given to nega­tive prefixes "un—", "in—", "mis—" (e.g. "unknown", "inartistic", "misbeha­ve"), such prefixes as "ex—", "vice—", "sub—", "under—", (e.g. "ex—president' "vice—president", "sub—editor", "under—mine"), suffix "—teen" (e.g. "thir­teen", "fourteen"), semantically important elements in compound words (e.g. "Well— known", "red—hot", "bad—tempered"). These are the tendencies that to some extent regulate the placement of stress in English words and condition their stress patterns. THE FUNCTIONS OF WORD STRESS. Word stress has a constitutive function, as it moulds syllables into a word by forming its stress pattern. Without a definite stress pattern a word ceases to be a word and becomes a sequence of syllables. Word stress has a distinctive function in English, because there exist different words in English with analogous sound structure which are differentiated in speech only by their stress patterns. E.g., N o u n /Adjective Verb 'insult in’sult 'abstract,ab’stract or ‘abstract 'accent or ‘accent,ac’cent or ‘accent Is it the different degrees of stress or rather the stress patterns that distinguish one word from another? There exist different views of the problem. Some linguists (G. Trager, A. Hill) regard degrees of word stress as phonological units, which can distin­guish words. They consider degrees of word stress to be separate phonemes. Alongside the generally accepted phonemes they have introduced into the phonemic' inventory 4 stress phonemes: primary (or loud), secondary (or reduced loud), tertiary {or medial) and weak stress phonemes. But it may be argued that degrees of stress can be treated as phonemes, because they are not segments into which speech may be divided. Degrees of stress are superimposed on syllables just as other prosodic phenomena. V. Vassilyev states that in minimal pairs as "’import" — "im'poft" primary stress and weak stress form phonological oppositions (primary stress vs. weak stress). The distinction in the meaning of the words "certification-certification", according to V. Vassilyev, is based on the phonological opposi­tion of secondary stress vs. weak stress. On this account he treats the degrees of stress as phonological units, which he calls "accentemes". He distinguishes three word accentemes in English: primary accenteme, secondary accenteme, weak accenteme. Accentemes differ from phonemes, because accentemes are prosodic phonological units. Another view is expressed by G. Torsuyev, H. Kurath, A. Gimson and others. They think that it is the stress patterns of words that contrast with each other rather than degrees of stress. This viewpoint appears to be well—grounded. It is evident that degrees of stress can be perceived only in stress patterns as relatively strong, medium or weak stress, i.e. one syllable has stronger stress than any other, another syllable is less strong but stronger than the weak ones. Moreover, in one stress pattern se­condary stress may be stronger than primary stress in another stress pattern.

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