Phonetic systems. The hierarchy of discrete and non-discrete phonological units

If we want to speak about the phonetic system, it may be helpful to think of this as similar to the set of cards used in a card game or the set of pieces used in a game of chess. In chess, for example, the exact shape and colour of the pieces are not important to the game as long as they can be reliably distinguished. But the number of pieces, the moves they can make and their relationship to all the other pieces are very important; we would say that if any of these were to be changed, the game would no longer be what we call chess. Similarly, playing-cards can be printed in many different styles and sizes; but while changing these things does not affect the game played with them, if we were to remove one card from the pack or add one card to it before the start of a game, nobody would accept that we were playing the game correctly. In a similar way, we have a more or less fixed set of "pieces" (phonemes) with which to play the game of speaking English. There may be many slightly different realizations of the various phonemes, but the most important thing for communication is that we should be able to make use of the full set of phonemes (Roach 1988: 36).

The phonetic system or structure of English, like that of any language, is a systemic combination of all the five components of the sound matter of language, which constitute the material (phonic) forms of all the morphemes, words, phrases and sentences in the language and serve a speaker of the language to express adequately in his ut­terances his own and other people's thoughts, volition, feelings, emotions, and attitudes towards the contents of his utterances and towards reality.

The components of the sound matter of language mani­fest themselves in the components of its phonetic system, without, however, fully coinciding with the latter, i.e. sev­eral components of the sound matter of language may par­ticipate in the formation of one component of its phonetic system. Each component of the phonetic system of a lan­guage is, in its turn, systemic in character, and all the components have developed historically in close connection and interdependence with the historical development of the vocabulary and the grammatical structure of the language in the process of its use as a means of intercommunication by all the members of the language community.

The first and basic component of the phonetic structure of English is the system of its segmental pho­nemes existing in the material form of their allophones constituted by the spectral, fundamental frequency, force and temporal components of the sound matter of language in various combinations.

The systemic character of the phonemic component of the phonetic structure of any language is reflected in various classifications of its phonemes in which the latter are invar­iably divided first into two fundamental sound types – vowels and consonants – with further subdivisions of each sound type according to the principles of vowel and conso­nant classifications.

The phonemic structure of any language, as it is reflect­ed in these classifications, is more or less symmetric, i.e. its phonemes are grouped in them in series which turn out to be more or less symmetrically arranged.

The phonemic component of the phonetic structure of the English language manifests itself not only in the system of its phonemes as discrete isolated units, but also in combinations of their allophones occurring in words and the junction of words in phrases and sentences. The combinations of allophones in words are also systemic in character, in the sense that the allophones of a phoneme occur only in definite positions and, therefore, in combina­tion with definite allophones of other phonemes, and not just in any position and in combination with any other sound.

For instance, the English sounds [V] and [N] never occur at the beginning of a word, whereas the sounds [] and [h] never occur at the end of English words. There is not a single Russian word which begins with the vowel [ы] (when pronounced in isolation, as an item of vocabulary, or a citation form), and no voiced noise-consonant is pronounced in Russian immediately before a voiceless consonant or at the end of a word before silence (pause).

Thus the phonemic component of the phonetic system of English has three aspects, or manifestations: (1) the system of its phonemes as discrete isolated units which may occur in speech as isolated sounds constituting monophonemic words and, sometimes, even sentences; (2) the distribution of the allophones of the phonemes; and (3) the methods of joining speech sounds together in words and at their junction, or the methods of effecting VC, CV, CC, and VV transitions.

The second component of the phonetic system of English is the syllabic structure of its words both in cita­tion forms and in phrases and sentences. The syllabic struc­ture of words has two aspects which are inseparable from each other: syllable formation, and syllable division, or syllable separation. Both aspects are sometimes designated by the cover term syllabification.

Languages may differ from one another both in syllable formation and syllable division.

Differences in syllable formation involve differences in the capacity of speech sounds to form syllables (to be syl­labic) in different positions.

The third component of the phonetic system of English is the accentual structure of its words as items of its vocabulary (i.e. as pronounced in isolation, but not in phrases or sentences).

The accentual structure of words has three aspects: (1) the physical (acoustic) nature of word accent; (2) the position of the accent in disyllabic and polysyllabic words; (3) the degrees of word accent.

Languages may differ in all these aspects of word accent.

The fourth component of the phonetic system of English is the intonational structure of sentences in it.

The four components of the phonetic system of English (phonemic, syllabic, accentual, and intonational) all constitute its pronunciation (in the broadest sense of the term).

Therefore, the knowledge of the phonetic system of the English language by a student of phonetics and the mastery of its pronunciation by a language-learner involve the study and mastery of each component of its phonetic structure.

Each of these components should be studied from the following viewpoints: physiological (articulatory and audi­tory), acoustic and functional (after Vassilyev 1970: 30-34).

There are other treatments of phonetic systems. Phonetic system is the system of phones used in particular language. In human spoken languages, the sound of a word is not defined directly (in terms of mouth gestures and noises). Instead, it is mediated by encoding in terms of a phonological system:

A word's pronunciation is defined as a structured combination of a small set of elements:

1. The available phonologicalelements and structures are the same for all words (though each word uses only some of them)

2. The phonological system is defined in terms of patterns of mouth gestures and noises.

This "grounding" of the system is called phonetic interpretation. Phonetic interpretation is the same for all words. Within the performance of a given word on a particular occasion, the (small) amount of information relevant to the identity of the word is clearly defined. Phonetic interpretation is general, i.e. independent of word identity. Every performance of every word by every member of the speech community helps teach phonetic interpretation, because it applies to the phonological system as a whole, rather than to any particular word.

The phoneme is an abstract linguistic unit; it is an abstraction from actual speech sounds, that is allophonic modifications. Native speakers do not observe the difference between the allophones of the phoneme. At the same time they realize, quite subconsciously of course, that allophone of each phoneme possesses a bundle of distinctive features, that makes this phoneme functionally different from all other phonemes of the language concerned 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.

The articulatory features which form the invariant of the pho­neme are called distinctive or relevant. To extract relevant 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 articulatory feature and this difference brings about changes in the meaning of the words the contrasting features are called relevant. For example, the words port and court differ in one consonant only, that is the word port has the initial conso­nant [p], and the word court begins with [k]. Both sounds are oc­clusive and fortis, the only difference being that [p] is labial and [k] is backlingual. Therefore it is possible to say that labial and backlingual articulations are relevant in the system of English consonants.

The articulatory features which do not serve to distinguish meaning are called non-distinctive, irrelevant or redundant; for instance, it is impossible in English to oppose an aspirated [p] to a non-aspirated one in the same phonetic context to distinguish meanings. That is why aspiration is a non-distinctive feature of English consonants.

As it has been mentioned above any change in the invariant of the phoneme affects the meaning. Naturally, anyone who studies a foreign language makes mistakes in the articulation of particular sounds. L.V. Shcherba classifies the pronunciation er­rors as phonological and phonetic.

If an allophone of some phoneme is replaced by an allophone of a different phoneme the mistake is called phonological, be­cause the meaning of the word is inevitably affected. It happens when one or more relevant features of the phoneme are not real­ized.

When the vowel [i:] in the word beat becomes slightly more open, more advanced or is no longer diphthongized the word beat may be perceived as quite a different word bit. It is perfectly clear that this type of mistakes is not admitted in teaching pro­nunciation to any type of language learner.

If an allophone of the phoneme is replaced by another allo­phone of the same phoneme the mistake is called phonetic. It happens when the invariant of the phoneme is not modified and consequently the meaning of the word is not affected, e.g.: w‚d - w‚t, hv - h†v, f‚v - f‚f.

When the vowel [i:] is fully long in such a word as sheep, for instance, the quality of it remaining the same, the meaning of the word does not change. Nevertheless language learners are advised not to let phonetic mistakes into their pronunciation. If they do make them the degree of their foreign accent will certainly be an obstacle to the listener's perception (after Sokolova 1996: 45-47).