2015-09-06
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Phonetics (“phone” – Greek sound) – science of a sound. It’s an independent branch of Linguistics, it studies sound, it’s aspects and functions. It studies a semantic description of the sound in speech of any language. The way the are produced and perceived and their acoustic properties. It studies the sounds system of the language that it is segmental phonemes, word stress, syllabic structure and intonation.
Phonetics =an independent branch of linguistics which studies and gives a semantic description of the sound structure of the language.
Structure: 1. speech sounds (production, perception, acoustic characteristics)
2. combinations of sounds (syllables, words, tone groups)
3. groups are characterized by: stress, rhythm, intonation
4. correlation b/n spoken and written language.
Branches of Ph:
1. articulatory/physiological – branch of Phonetics, which studies the way in which the air set emotion, the movement of speech organs, and coordination of these movements and the production of trains of speech.
2. acoustic – studies the way in which the air vibrates between the speaker’s mouth and listener’s ear.
3. functional/linguistic – studies linguistic properties of phonemes, syllable, accent and intonation.
4. auditory/perceptive (perception only) – which investigate hearing process.
22) Branches of phonetics. A phonetician may be interested in studying the speech sounds of the languages of the world in general (general phonetics) or homey apply himself to the study of the phonetic system of one given language. Hence a threefold division of this science into:
articulatory, acoustic and auditory phonetics.
- Articulatoty phonetics - studies (investigates) sound producing mechanism. Its method consists of observing the way in which the air is set in motion, the movements of the speech organs and the coordination of these movements in the production of single sounds and trains of sounds. It borders with anatomy and physiology and the tools for investigating just what the speech organs do are tools which are used in these fields: direct observation, wherever it is possible, e.g. lip movement, some tongue movement; combined with x-ray photography or x-ray cinematography; observation through mirrors as in the laryngoscopic jivestigation of vocal cord movement, etc.
- Acoustic phonetics - studies the way in which the air vibrates between the speaker''s mouth and the listener''s ear. Has its basic method – instrumental. Speech sounds are investigated by means of operator called spectrograph. Intonation is investigated by intonograph. Acoustic phonetics comes close to studying physics and the tools used in this field enable the investigator to measure and analyse the movement of the air in the terms of acoustics. This generally means introducing a microphone into the speech chain, converting the air movement into corresponding electrical activity and analysing the result in terms of frequency of vibration and amplitude of vibration in relation to time. The use of such technical devices as spectrograph, intonograph and other sound analysing and sound synthesizing machines is generally combined with the method of direct observation.
- Auditory phonetics- the branch of phonetics investigating the hearing process. Its interests lie more in the sensation of hearing, which is brain activity, than in the physiological working of the ear or the nervous activity between the ear and the brain. The means by which we discriminate sounds — quality, sensations of pitch, loudness, length, are relevant here. The methods applied in auditory phonetics are those of experimental psychology: experimenting, usually based on different types of auditory tests,
- Functional phonetics – is also termed phonology. Studies the way in which sound phenomena function in a particular language, how they are utilized in that language and what part they play in manifesting the meaningful distinctions of the language. So this is the branch of phonetics that studies the linguistic function of consonant and vowel sounds, syllabic structure, word accent and prosodic features, such as pitch, stress and tempo. In linguistics, function is usually understood to mean discriminatory function, that is, the role of the various elements of the language in the distinguishing of one sequence of sounds, such as a word or a sequence of words, from another of different meaning. The basic method is commutation or substitution (замены), substituting sounds in different environments.
23) Connection of phonetics with other sciences. 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 is also connected with grammar through its intonation component. Sometimes intonation alone can serve to single out the logical predicate of the sentence.
*He came home. Not Mary or John. He 'came home. So you can see him now. He came 'home. He is at home, and you said he was going to the club.
In affirmative sentences the rising nuclear tone may serve to show that it is a question. Cf.:
Phonetics is also connected with lexicology. It is only due to the-presence of stress, or accent, in the right place, that we can diti guish certain nouns from verbs (formed by conversion), e.g.
I abstract реферат—to abstract извлекать'object предмет—to ob'ject неодобрять'transfer перенос—to transfer переносить.
Phonetics is also connected with stylistics; first of all through intonation and its components: speech melody, utterance stress, rhythm, pausation and voice tamber which serve to express emotions, to distinguish between different attitudes on the part of the author and speaker. Very often the writer helps the reader to interpret his ideas through special words and remarks such as: a pause, a short pause, angrily, hopefully, gently, incredulously, etc. For example:
"Now let me ask you girls and boys, would you paper a room with representations of horses?"
After a pause, one half of the children cried in chorus, "Yes, sirl" Upon which the other half, seeing in the gentleman's face that "Yes" was wrong, cried out in chorus, "No, sirl"—as the custom is in these examinations.
"Of course, no. Why wouldn't you?"
A pause. (Ch. Dickens. Hard Times)
