Foreign schools of linguistics and their contribution to the phoneme theory.

The first exponent of the phoneme theory in Western Europe was the Swiss scholar Ferdinand de Saussure who actually was the first to use the term “phoneme” and defined it as the sum of acoustic impressions and articulatory movements. Besides, he was the originator of many ideas of general linguistics such as:

1) separation of speech from language;

2) view upon language as a system of signs expressing ideas and compared to any other system of signs used by man;

3) overestimation of the synchronic analysis of language.

These ideas were adapted by the representatives of foreign schools and served as theoretical basis for the phoneme theories, generated by them.

The Prague school of linguistics 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 became acquainted with the phoneme theory through the works of Baudouin de Courtenay and Shcherba, while he was studying at the University of Moscow. But his views deviate greatly from those of Russian scholars. Thus, L.V. Shcherba considered phonology to be the branch of phonetics, but Trubetzkoy developed de Saussure’s principle of the separation of speech from language and proclaimed a new science – phonology as distinct from phonetics.

According to Trubetzkoy, phonetics is a biological science which investigates all physiological and physical features of speech sounds (their material side), that is to say, it should concern itself with the sounds of a language as they are pronounced and as they are heard, without paying any attention to their function in the language. Phonology is a linguistic science, which should concern itself with the distinctive features of speech sounds, that is to say, with those features which are connected with meaning and serve communicative purposes.

Trubetzkoy draws a strict borderline between a phonetician and a phonologist as well. A phonetician should study sounds without taking into consideration the meaning of what is said; a phonologist should take into account only those sound features which have a definite function in a language.

But it is impossible to oppose phonetics and phonology as independent sciences, as phonology is a branch of phonetics which is reflected in the subject-matter of the latter. Phonology is a convenient term to indicate that section of phonetics in which the linguistic functions of speech sounds are discussed. But since the sound matter of language is a complex unity of four aspects (articulatory, acoustic, auditory and linguistic), it is necessary to emphasize the inseparable interconnection of all the branches of phonetics, which have common object of investigation, though viewed from different points.

Trubetzkoy gives the following definitions to the speech sound and the phoneme: The speech sound is a unity of both relevant and irrelevant 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. Trubetskoy emphasized the fact that the inventory of the phonemes of a language is practically a correlation of its system of phonological oppositions and created a very interesting but rather complicated classification of phonological oppositions. His theory of oppositions found its application in grammar where the majority of morphological categories can be presented as oppositions (ex. opposition of singular and plural in the grammatical category of number, opposition of present, past and future in the grammatical category of tense etc.).

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. Thus in Russian 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 in the position of neutralization is the arch-phoneme, which is defined as a unity of relevant features common to two phonemes. But arch-phoneme excludes the feature which distinguishes them. So arch-phoneme of [п - б] consists of the features: bilabial and plosive, but excludes voicing which separates them. For transcription purposes the symbol of capital [П] is used to represent the arch-phoneme of [п - б].

The London school of linguistics is headed by Daniel Jones who was acquainted with the phoneme theory of L.V. Shcherba and his mentalistic definition of the phoneme, but he found it inconvenient for practical purposes and 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.” (Ex. 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).

Later Jones expounded his new theory which may be called atomistic. He broke up the phoneme into atoms and considered different features of phoneme as independent phenomena. 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). Phones are combined into phonemes that are distinctive in a language (for instance, voiced and voiceless phonemes in English). Chrones are combined into chronemes (long and short chronemes in English). In the same way tones are combined into tonemes in tone languages (even and rising tonemes in oriental languages), strones are combined into stronemes (primary and weak stronemes).

But 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.

According to Jones the problem of phonemes is connected with philosophy, so that a linguist can not cope with it; it is also impossible to give an adequate definition of the phoneme, since the term “language” is vague. So there are elements of agnosticism in this theory. This fact contradicts the practical application of the phoneme at which Jones aims; that is to use it in teaching languages, in creating phonetic transcription.

The American school of linguistics is 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. American descriptivism is based on behaviourism (from English “behaviour”). The essence of behaviorism is the acknowledgement of the fact that the linguistic processes of the mind as such are quite simply unobservable and our only information about the mind is derived from the behaviour of the individual. According to the ideas of behaviourism, speech is a special form of behaviour, and the process of communication is a chain of stimuli and reactions, so language may be compared to any system of codes, such as the Morse code or traffic signs, which coordinates the human behaviour and serves as a connector between the interlocutors’ nervous systems (a heard word is a stimulus, a spoken word is a reaction to it).

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. But such combinations produce the units of the next level. Bloomfield believed that the description of a language should begin with the simplest phonemic level. In the course of this analysis all the phonemes of a given language should be determined and all possible combinations of phonemes should be stated.

Bloomfield defined the phoneme as a minimum unit (bunch or bundle) of distinctive features.

Another representative of the American school of linguistics is William Twaddel who is rather contradictory in his views, as on one hand, he defines a phoneme as an abstractional fiction, but at the same time he introduces the term “microphoneme”, which is equivalent to Bloomfield’s distinctive feature, and the term “macrophoneme” which is defined as the sum total of microphonemes and this is equivalent to Bloomfield’s phoneme.

The Copenhagen school of linguistics is represented by L. Hjelmslev who, as well as Trubetzkoy, claimed an utter estrangement between phonetics and phonology. But his phoneme theory is much more obscure and the approach to the phoneme is more absractional. If the representatives of the Prague and the American schools of linguistics separated phonologically irrelevant, or non-distinctive, features from phonemes, 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. In other words, he treated the phoneme as an abstract unit and his ideas were reflected in the works of the Russian scholar Showmyan. At the same time. after de Saussure he regarded a language as a system of signs, a code like any other code that is used by a human community.

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