Literature

1. Dickushina O.J. English Phonetics. – М. – Л.: Просвещение, 1965.

2. Leontyeva S.F. A Theoretical Course of English Phonetics. – М.: Менеджер, 2002.

3. Shakhbagova D.A. The Variants of English. – М.: Высшая школа, 1982.

4. Sokolova M.A., Gintovt K.P., Tikhonova I.S., Tikhonova R.M. English Phonetics. A Theoretical Course. – М.: Высшая школа, 2000.

5. Vassilyev V.A. English Phonetics. A Theoretical Course. – М.: Высшая школа, 1970.

6. Ахманова О.С. Словарь лингвистических терминов. – М.: Советская энциклопедия, 1966.

7. Баранов А.Н., Добровольский Д.О., Михайлов М.Н., Паршин П.Б., Романова О.И. Англо-русский словарь по лингвистике и семиотике. – 2-е изд., испр. и доп. – М.: Азбуковник, 2001.

8. Трахтеров А.Л. Английская фонетическая терминология. – М.: Изд-во литературы на иностранных языках, 1962.

9. Языкознание. Большой энциклопедический словарь /Гл. ред. В.Н. Ярцева. – 2-е изд. – М.: Большая Российская энциклопедия, 1998, (Статьи: «Фонетика», с.554; «Фонология», с.555-557; «Органы речи», с.349-350; «Звуки речи», с.165; «Транскрипция», с.517-518; «Чередование», с.580-581, «Диалект», с.132-133; «Диалектология», с.133-135; «Норма», с.337-338; «Орфоэпия», с.351-352; «Казанская лингвистическая школа», с.209-210; «Ленинградская фонологическая школа», с.264; «Московская фонологическая школа», с.316-317; «Пражская лингвистическая школа», с.390-391; «Оппозиции», с.348; «Дескриптивная лингвистика», с.130-131; «Фонема», с.552-554, «Фонология», с.555-557; «Дистрибутивный анализ», с.137-138; «Вариантность», с.80-81; «Гласные», с.105-107; «Согласные», с.477-479; «Аккомодация», с.22; «Ассимиляция», с.48-49; «Редукция», с.408; «Элизия», с.591-592; «Слог», с.470; «Интонация», с.197-198; «Синтагма», с.447; «Ритм», с.416, «Мелодика речи», с.292; «Темп речи», с.508; «Просодия», с.401-402; «Эмфаза», с.592; «Пауза», с.369; «Ударение», с.530-531; «Акцентология», с.24-25).

Name of the school, its representative, facts of biography	Essence of the phoneme theory	Examples	Definition of the phoneme	Criticism
The Prague School of linguistics. (It was founded in 1926 and ceased to exist by the beginning of the fifties. The period of its creativity is between 1929 and 1939. In its thesis “Travaux du Cercle Linguistique de Prague” the phonological views of N.S. Trubetzkoy were first published.)	The main points of Trubetzkoy’s theory are: 1) the separation of phonology from phonetics; 2) the theory of phonological oppositions; 3) the theory of the arch-phoneme. Trubetskoy’s theory of the arch-phoneme was based on Baudouin de Courtenay’s morphological phoneme theory, in particular the synchronical alternation of sounds in a morpheme. Trubetzkoy looked upon this phenomenon from the point of view of his opposition theory, and regarded it as the neutralization of the opposition. Two phonemes can be neutralized because they have common qualities which do not occur in other phonemes.	The opposition [п]-[б] is neutralized in the final position of words (грипп [п] – гриб [п]) because [п], [б] are the only labial plosives in the language, no other sounds share similar set of features.	The phoneme is a unity of phonologically relevant features of a sound. It can only perform its distinctive function if it is opposed to another phoneme in the same position. Such an opposition is called distinctive, or phonological.
The London school of linguistics (It is headed by Daniel Jones who was acquainted with the phoneme theory of L.V. Shcherba and his mentalistic definition of the phoneme)	He distinguished phones (different qualities of the same phoneme), crones (different degrees of length), tones (different pitch variations of the phoneme in tone languages), strones (different degrees of stress).	The family of sounds [t] (or the phoneme [t]) is represented by the following members, used in different phonetic contexts: slightly rounded (tool), post-alveolar (try), labialised (twice), dental (at the), lateral (little) nasal (kitten) etc. The family of sounds [i:] (or the phoneme [i:] is represented by different members in the word-final position, before a voiced consonant and before a voiceless consonant (see, seed, seat).	Daniel Jones offered a couple of his own definitions: “A phoneme is a family of sounds in a given language which are related in character and are used in such a way that no one member ever occurs in a word in the same phonetic context as any other member.” Thus Jones emphasizes the mutual exclusiveness of different members of the same phoneme. “A phoneme may be described roughly as a family of sounds consisting of an important sound of the language (i.e. the most frequently used member of the family) together with other related sounds which take its place in particular sound-sequences or under particular conditions of length or stress.”	The atomistic conception of the phoneme is not very convincing. The separate features of a phoneme should not be treated as independent phenomena. Length or tone have no importance without other sound features, they do not exist by themselves. They exist only in phonemes, as their characteristic features, and all these characteristic features taken together make up a phoneme which is linguistically distinctive. Length by itself is an abstraction, a long phoneme is a linguistic reality and must be distinguished from a short phoneme.
The American school of linguistics Itis called descriptive, as under the influence of de Saussure’s ideas its representatives treated all the phenomena of language in their present condition without any connection with the history of the language in question.	One of the representatives of the American school of linguistics is Leonard Bloomfield who developed the theory of four main levels of the language: 1) phonemic; 2) morphemic; 3) lexical; 4) syntactic. The units of these levels are, correspondingly, phonemes, morphemes, words and sentences. The elements of each level can be combined with the elements of the same level. Thus phonemes can be combined with phonemes, morphemes can be combined with morphemes etc.		Bloomfield defined the phoneme as a minimum unit (bunch or bundle) of distinctive features. William Twaddel defines a phoneme as an abstractional fiction, but at the same time he introduces the term “microphoneme”
The Copenhagen school of linguistics It is represented by L. Hjelmslev who, as well as Trubetzkoy, claimed an utter estrangement between phonetics and phonology.	Hjelmslev excluded both relevant and irrelevant features from phonemes, considering them to be independent of all the acoustic and physiological properties associated with them, that is of speech sounds.		He treated the phoneme as an abstract unit and his ideas were reflected in the works of the Russian scholar Showmyan.	But his phoneme theory is much more obscure and the approach to the phoneme is more absractional.
The Kazan school of linguistics Itwas founded by the eminent Russian linguist I.A. Baudouin de Courtenay, theoriginator of the phoneme theory	His work about the phoneme theory may be roughly subdivided into two periods: 1) the morphological approach; 2) the psychological approach. 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 (ex. гриб [п]– грибы [б]); 2) correlates	1)гриб [п]– грибы [б] 2)скакать [к] – скачу [ч]	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.	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 It was headed by L.V. Shcherba	The principal points of L.V. Shcherba’s phoneme theory are: 1) the theory of phonemic variants; 2) the theory of phonemic independence. 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. 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 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 Russian abbreviations “загс”, “ГУМ”	L.V. Shcherba was the first who regarded the phoneme as a real independent distinctive unit which manifests itself in the form of its variants.
The Moscow school of linguistics It is presented by two basic approaches to the phoneme.	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. Showman has created a two-level theory of phonology and distinguished between two branches of phonology: 1) theoretical phonology; 2) general phonology.	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		His complicated conception didn’t add precision to the morphological phoneme theory and on the contrary made it very obscure.

Name of the syllable formation (division) theory, its originator	Essence of the theory	Examples	Criticism
The most ancient theory.	It states that there are as many syllables in a word as there are vowels.		This theory is primitive and insufficient since it does not take into consideration consonants which also can form syllables in some languages, neither does it explain the boundary of syllables.
The so-called “breath-puff” (expiratory, chest-pulse, or pressure) theory	It is based on the fact that expiration in speech is not a continuous and uninterrupted process as it is in ordinary breathing, but a pulsating one. According to this theory there are as many syllables in a word as there are expiration pulses made during its utterance, because each syllable corresponds to a single expiration. Each vowel sound is pronounced with a fresh expiration, so vowel sounds are always syllabic. The borderline between the syllables is, according to this theory, at the point where a fresh expiratory pulse begins that is the moment of the weakest expiration.		N.I. Zhinkin questions the correctness of the instrumental techniques used by Stetson and doubts the validity of his conclusions which run counter to easily observable facts, because more than ten syllables are easily uttered with a single expiration. G.P. Torsuyev writes that in a phrase a number of words and consequently syllables can be pronounced with a single expiration without breaking it up into pulses.
Relative sonority theory	By the term “sonority” is meant here the prevalence in a speech sound of musical tone over noise (hence the word “sonorant”). In this theory the term “sonority” is used in the meaning which is conveyed by the precise acoustic term “carrying power”. The latter means the acoustic property of speech sounds which determines the degree of their perceptibility. Thus, sonority theory is based upon the fact that each sound has a different carrying power	In the word “sudden” the most sonorous is the vowel [Λ], then goes the nasal sonorant [n], which forms the second peak of prominence, [s] and [d] are sounds of low sonority, they cannot be considered as syllable forming: [s Λ d n]	The sonority theory helps to establish the number of syllables in a word, but fails to explain the actual mechanism of syllable formation and syllable division, because it does not state to which syllable the weak sound at the boundary of two syllables belongs.
Muscular tension theory (articulatory tension, or energy theory)	It was put forward by L.V. Shcherba. He explained the phenomenon of syllable formation by muscular tension impulses. The fact that syllables cannot be further subdivided in connected speech proves that in speaking muscular tension impulses follow one another. Each impulse has its strongest point – the peak of prominence and its weakest point – the valley of prominence. This theory has been modified by V.A. Vassiliev who stated that the syllable like any other pronounceable unit can be characterized by three physical parameters: pitch, intensity and length. So the acoustic properties increase and decrease the tension of articulation and thus form an arc.		Unfortunately Shcherba has not left any further explanations of his theory of the syllable, with the result that some of its points remain unclear.
The three types of consonants theory	It was also put forward by Shcherba To explain the mechanism of syllable division he distinguished between the three types of consonants, such as initially strong, finally strong and geminate, or double. The difference between these types is in the way they are pronounced. In the initially strong consonants the beginning is more energetic, while the end is weaker. In the finally strong consonants the beginning is weak and the end is more energetic.	initially strong consonants: it, us, oath, add; finally strong consonants: may, tea, new; geminate (double) consonants: penknife, what time, midday.
The so-called “loudness theory”	It was put forward by N.I. Zhinkin. On the basis of his analysis of the x-ray moving pictures, together with the sound spectrograms and kymograms he has found the organ which is immediately responsible for syllable formation. So according to this theory the syllable can be thought of as the arc (or curve) of loudness which correlates with the arc of articulatory effort since variations in loudness are due to the work of all the speech mechanisms. This arc is weak in the beginning and in the end and strong in the middle.		Zhinkin has not investigated the mechanism of the formation of syllables by sonorants and as far as English is concerned, it is not clear, how the pharyngeal contraction theory can account for the formation of syllables by sonorants.