2018-02-14
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Segment is the smallest part of speech continue. In phonetics it is a sound/ phone. Speech is a sequence of sounds, they are separated from one another due to the special analysis. Segmental sound is the smallest part of sp continue that is capable to differentiate words.
Vassilyev: “ Segmental phoneme is the smallest language unit that exists in the sp of all the members of a given language community as such sp sounds which are capable of distinguishing one word of the same lang or one gr form of a word from another gr form of a word.”
Suprasegmental phoneme is larger unit of speech – syllables, words, sentences.
The definitions of the phoneme vary greatly. Shcherba: functional, material and abstract unit. Phoneme- is a minimal abstract linguistic unit in sp in the form of sp sounds opposable to the other phonemes of the same language to distinguish the meaning of morphemes and words.
3 aspects of the phoneme. 1)Material, real, objective. M- phoneme exists in the number of definite articulatory and acoustic sp sounds. R- what is material is real. O- phoneme exists independently of the will of individual persons. 2)Abstract and objective. Phoneme is a language unit and all units are abstract from actual utterances, but each unit is a generalization of utterance. Language itself is abstract from sp – is a generalization of sp. 3) Functional. In phonetics function is usually understood to mean discriminatory function – phoneme distinguishes words from one another.
Basic functions of the phoneme are:
1. Constitutive – phoneme constitutes words, word combinations etc.
2. Distinctive – phoneme helps to distinguish the meanings of words, morphemes
3. Recognitive – phoneme makes up grammatical forms of words, sentences, so the right use of allophones
Phonemes and Allophones: The principal allophone; The subsidiary allophones (types); Distinctive and non-distinctive features of phonemes; The invariant of the phoneme.
In phonetics, an allophone is one of several similar speech sounds (phones) that belong to the same phoneme. A phoneme is an abstract unit of speech sound that can distinguish words: That is, changing a phoneme in a word can produce another word. An allophone is not distinctive, but rather a variant of a phoneme; changing the allophone won't change the meaning of a word, but the result may sound non-native, or be unintelligible.
Types of allophones. 1)Principal allophones – they don’t undergo any distinguishable changes in the chain of sp. They are free from the influence of the neighboring sounds. They are most representative of a phoneme as a whole. They have the greatest number of articulatory features among all variants of the phoneme (door, darn, down). 2) free variants of the phoneme- when the phoneme is realized in 2 different allophones and both are correct (калоши-галоши). 3) Subsidiary variant of the phoneme- allophones that undergo changes under the influence of the neighboring sounds. They are used in actual speech. 1. Combinatory allophones- are changed due to the influence of the neighboring sounds to the specific way in which adjacent sounds are produced. They appear in the process of speech and result from 1 phoneme upon another. 2. Positional allophones are used in definite positions traditionally acc to the orthoepic norms of the language [l]-[l] before vowels (land), [l/]- in the word final position/before cons (beautiful)
Native speakers do not observe the difference between the allophones of the same phoneme, because the difference doesn’t distinguish meaning. At the same time they realize that allophones of each phoneme possess a bundle of distinctive features that makes this phoneme functionally different from all other phonemes of the language. This functionally relevant bundle is called the invariant of the phoneme. They can’t be changed without affecting the meaning. To extract the distinctive feature of the phoneme we have to oppose it to some other phoneme in the same phonetic context. If the opposed sounds differ in one feature and this difference brings change in meaning the contrasting features are called distinctive (port-kort [p] [k]- occlusive, fortis,[p]-labial, [k]-backling. Non-distinctive (irrelevant) features- articulatory features that don’t serve to distinguish meaning.
