2015-05-12
8219
The Kazan school of linguistics was founded by the eminent Russian linguist I.A. Baudouin de Courtenay, theoriginator of the phoneme theory, whose work may be roughly subdivided into two periods:
1) the morphological approach;
2) the psychological approach.
During the first stage of the development of his phoneme theory Baudouin de Courtenay was chiefly interested in the entity of the morpheme. He perceived that the same morpheme was not always represented by the same combination of sounds. An example of this in Slavonic languages is the alternation of voiced and voiceless consonants within morphemes.
Baudouin de Courtenay introduced a new term homogenes to define the sounds that make up a morpheme and distinguished two kinds of homogenes:
1) divergent – variants of the same sound arising from the phonetic laws functioning in the language at the present time. They represent phonetic alternations (ex. гриб [п]– грибы [б]);
2) correlates – sounds that are different in character and the different qualities of which can no be explained by the existing phonetic laws of the language, as they represent historical phoneme alternations (ex. скакать [к] – скачу [ч]).
Thus Baudouin de Courtenay was the first linguist who demanded accurate distinction between synchronic and diachronic approach to phonetic investigation. The phoneme in his understanding is something that produces alternation.
But centering his attention mainly on the phenomenon of phonetic and historical alternation, Baudouin de Courtenay made his phoneme conception rather obscure.
However his theory has many followers. N.S. Tribetzkoy was influenced by it and his arch-phoneme is practically based on Baudouin de Courtenay’s morphological approach. Some linguists of the Moscow school of linguistics have developed his morphological phoneme theory.
During the second stage, the morphological conception was abandoned and Baudouin de Courtenay searched for a unit which would not be bound by the limits of a morpheme. But the prevailing of the psychological approach in linguistics at that time prevented Baudouin de Courtenay from creating an adequate phoneme theory.
Now he asserts that a speech sound is a fictious unit, an invention of the scientists. What really does exist and what is being constantly renewed in the individual mind is the perception of a sound. Thus the phoneme is a complex perception of the articulatory movements and of the muscular sensations connected with them together with the resulting acoustic impressions, all of which react on mind simultaneously.
But the second phoneme conception was also rather obscure due its purely psychological nature.
In general Baudouin de Courtenay’s views upon the phoneme lack consistency, for while developing the phoneme theory; he changed his standpoint fundamentally more than once. Besides his ideas have not become widely spread, because most of his works were written either in Russian or in Polish, and few Western European scholars were acquainted with one or the other language. His phoneme theory became known chiefly through the works of his pupil L.V. Shcherba.
The St. Petersburg (Leningrad) school of linguistics was headed by L.V. Shcherba, whose research work may be subdivided into two periods:
1) pre-revolutionary period;
2) post-revolutionary period.
In the first period of his research work L.V. Shcherba was under the influence of J.A. Baudouin de Courtenay and the general trend in linguistics then current. His approach to the phoneme is also psychological in character. The phoneme is defined as the shortest generic phonetical perception in a given language capable of being associated with semantic perceptions, of distinguishing words, and of being easily isolated from a word.
So this conception of phoneme is a step forward, as L.V. Shcherba considers phonemes not only “perceptions”, as Baudouin de Courtenay did, but as “generic perceptions”. Moreover, he was the first, to advance the idea of the distinctive function of phoneme.
The principal points of L.V. Shcherba’s phoneme theory are:
1) the theory of phonemic variants;
2) the theory of phonemic independence.
L.V. Shcherba attaches very great importance to phonemic variants because they represent phonemes in actual speech, and the whole groups of phonemic variants give rise to the same type perception. Besides, on the one hand, phonemic variants may develop into new phonemes; on the other hand, a phoneme may cease to function as such, and may become a phonemic variant. For instance, the three pairs of English consonants [θ]-[ð], [f]-[v], [s]-[z] were variants of one phoneme each in old English, whereas in present day English each of these six consonants is an independent phoneme. Thus L.V. Shcherba claims that it is essential for historical phonetic investigations to trace the development of certain phonemic variants into independent phonemes, as well as the deterioration of some phonemes into phonemic variants.
According to L.V. Shcherba phonemes have a certain amount of independence which can be proved in two ways:
The first proof is the fact that a phoneme is capable of expressing a meaning by itself. For instance, [∫] in many languages commands silence. Exclamations like [əu] [α:] with appropriate intonation serve to express different emotions. Formal words sometimes consist of one phonemes (ex. conjunctions and prepositions in Russian “и” [и], “к” [к], the indefinite article in English “a” [æ] the personal pronoun of the first person singular in English “I” [ai].
The second proof is the fact that elements of semantic perceptions are often associated with elements of sound perceptions. For example, the non-palatalized [л] in many Russian verbs such as “хотел”, “смотрел”, etc. is associated with the idea of the Past Tense.
In the second period of his work L.V. Shcherba revised his phoneme conception and worked out a materialistic theory of phoneme. He stated that in actual speech we utter a much greater variety of sounds than we are aware of; in every language these sounds are united in a comparatively small number of sound types. Thus phonemes can be defined as sound types, limited in number which are capable of distinguishing the meaning and the form of words, thus serving the purpose of social intercourse. The various sounds that we actually utter and which are the individual representing the universal are phonemic variants. He was the first who regarded the phoneme as a real independent distinctive unit which manifests itself in the form of its variants.
L.R. Zinder, the follower of L.V. Shcherba, developed his theory of phonemic independence. He advanced the following considerations to prove that a phoneme has an independent existence:
1. A phoneme is a phonetic unit, as being expressed in actual speech in the form of a number of variants, it is very complex from the acoustic and the physiological points of view.
2. Everyone is able to recognize phonemes in his mother tongue.
3. We recognize sounds of our mother tongue in unfamiliar or invented words.
4. We are able to construct borrowed words by means of the phonemes of our mother tongue.
5. We can create in our mother tongue the new words which are not connected morphologically with already existing words (ex. Russian abbreviations “загс”, “ГУМ” etc.). Even if we do not know the meaning of such words, we repeat them and recognize the phonemes.
6. Everyone can analyze into phonemes any words of his mother tongue, taken separately, without any context, which is done everyday when we repeat new words, names of unfamiliar objects or of people.
7. A word is analyzed phonemically without comparing it with other words or with other forms of the same word that is to say without finding oppositions for it.
The Moscow school of linguistics is presented by two basic approaches to the phoneme.
The first is morphological approach. Its adherent is R.J. Avanessov, who developed Baudouin de Courtenay’s phoneme theory of the early period. He made a thorough analysis of this conception and criticized it for lacking precision, and introduced two notions:
1) phonemic variations;
2) phonemic variants.
Variations are the concrete representations of phonemes in “weak” positions, which are distinguished from phonemes, in “strong” positions (ex. vowels in stressed/unstressed positions, consonants followed/not followed by vowels).
Variants include all the alternation series that can be found within the same morpheme.
But such a complicated conception didn’t add precision to the morphological phoneme theory and on the contrary made it very obscure.
The second is cybernetic approach. Its originator is S.K. Showmyan, who was formerly an adherent of the morphological phoneme theory, but has revised his views under the influence of L. Hjelmslev. According to Showman’s opinion, the phoneme can not be perceived by means of direct observation, as it is in the so called “Black Box” (the term borrowed from the science of cybernetics, which is why this approach to the phoneme is called cybernetic) and requires a special conceptual apparatus in order to be cognized.
Showman has created a two-level theory of phonology and distinguished between two branches of phonology:
1) theoretical phonology;
2) general phonology.
Theoretical phonology is a new science which works out a conceptual apparatus for the study of the nature of phonological reality.
General phonology studies the phonological systems of concrete languages.
But theoretical phonology actually is epistemology (from Greek “epistēmē” – “knowledge” – a theory of the method or grounds of knowledge which may be applied to any science.
Besides the assumption that phonemes cannot be observed or perceived by our senses is mistaken, because phonemes can be perceived and are daily perceived by members of the same linguistic communities. So the cybernetic approach to the phoneme is rather abstract and obscure.
