AREAS OF PHONETICS.

LEVELS OF LANGUAGE. SEGMENTAL and SUPRASEGMENTAL LEVELS OF PHONETICS. AREAS OF PHONETICS. PHONETICS and PHONOLOGY.

All spoken and written languages are systems. Each language system consists of several interrelated levels. PHONOLOPGY is the description of speech sounds and prosodic phenomena (pitch, stress, rhythm, pauses, tempo). LEXIS is the vocabulary of a language. MORPHOLOGY is the structure of the words. SYNTAX is the system of rules governing the structure of phrases, clauses, and sentences. SEMANTICS is the relation of meaning to the signs and symbols of a language. The phonetic system of any language, in its turn, contains two levels: segmental and suprasegmental, or prosodic, each having a certain number of its units. SEGMENTAL UNITS (or SEGMENTALS) are elementary sounds: vowels and consonants, which form the vocalic and the consonantal subsystems. SUPRASEGMENTAL UNITS (or SUPRASEGMENTALS) are syllables, rhythmic units, intonation groups, utterances. They form the subsystems of pitch, stress, rhythm, etc. Segmental and suprasegmental units are closely interrelated with lexical and grammatical units, because lexical and grammatical forms can only be modified by changing sounds. For example, sound interchange of /f-v/, /s-z/, /θ–ð/ helps differentiate singular and plural forms of such nouns as CALF-CALVES; BATH-BATHS; HOUSE-HOUSES. Vowel interchange helps distinguish tense forms of irregular verbs; SING-SANG-SUNG, READ-READ-READ, or noun-verb forms /ju:s/ - /ju:z/ By changing the intonation of an utterance we change its meaning. For example, we say FINE with a Fall, and it is an exclamation, expressing our evaluation. We say FINE with a Rise, now it is a question showing our desire to get further information. FINE uttered with a Rise-Fall conveys our mocking attitude. Phonology is connected also with lexicology. It is only due to the position of stress that we can distinguish certain nouns from verbs (conversion). E.g. ‘object (n) – ob’ject (v); ‘record (n) – re’cord (v); ‘increase (n) – in’crease (v). Homographs are only differentiated due to pronunciation because they are identical in spelling: bow /bǝʊ / - bow /baʊ /; wind /wind/ - wind /waind/; lead (li:d) – lead (led). The English phonetician H.Gleason wrote that to speak any language a person must know nearly all the 100% of its phonology, while 50-90% of its grammar and only 1% of the vocabulary may be sufficient.

AREAS OF PHONETICS.

Every act of speech is the result of a highly complicated series of events. The speaker produces sounds, the sounds travel through the air to the listener in the form of complex combinations of sound waves, the listener hears and interprets them. Communication is possible only because the speaker and the listener interpret the sounds as units of the same language. Consequently, sound phenomena have different closely interrelated aspects: the articulatory, the acoustic, the auditory, and the linguistic aspects. Depending which of sound phenomena is studied, phonetics is subdivided into four main branches.

Articulatory phonetics. In studying articulation, the phonetician is attempting to document how we produce speech sounds. That is, articulatory phoneticians are interested in how the different structures of the vocal tract, called articulators (tongue, lips, jaw, palate, teeth, etc), interact to create the specific sounds. In order to understand how sounds are made, experimental procedures are often adopted. For example, we can measure how the tongue makes contact with the roof of the mouth in speech production by using a technique called ELECTROPAL ATOGRAPHY (or EPG). In order to collect EPG data, the speaker needs to be fitted with a special palate, which contains a number of electrodes. The way in which the electrodes are ‘contacted by the tongue during speech provides us with important inform information, such as how much of the palate is contacted in different speech sounds, or which regions of the palate are contacted, or what the duration of the contact is. Special instruments measure the pressure of air in the lungs and the vocal tract, the flow of air out of the mouth and nose, the opening and closing of the vocal cords and the movements of articulators such as lips and the lower jaw. X-ray techniques help observe articulatory movements taking place within the vocal tract. The data obtained can assist the learners of languages to correct their pronunciation errors. E.g. recording the air-flow from the speakers’ mouths can show how successfully they are producing the aspiration appropriate for the English sounds /p/, /t/, /k/.

Acoustic phonetics studies the physics of speech sounds. Acoustic phoneticians investigate properties like the amplitude of a sound wave, its duration, its fundamental frequency (related to pitch) with the help of instrumental methods. The study of acoustic phonetics was greatly enhanced in the late 19^th century by the invention of the Edison phonograph. The phonograph allowed the speech signal to be recorded and then later processed and analyzed. By replaying the same speech signal from the phonograph several times, filtering et each time with a different band-pass filter, a spectrogram of the speech utterance could be built up. Further advances in acoustic phonetics were made possible by the development of the telephone industry, Research at the Bell Telephone Laboratories greatly contributed to the systematic study of the properties of speech sounds, voice quality, prosody, etc. Modern achievements make it possible to use the acoustic phonetics data in computer programmes. Due to accurate computer analysis, the results are displayed on a screen for someone doing practice in pronunciation. A computer can produce a simple phonetic transcription of what is said to it, providing additional training at times when a human teacher is not available.

Auditory phonetics: studies how sounds are identified by the brain. Experiments have shown how sensitive we are to the very slight acoustic differences and how flexible we are in being able to adjust to very different speakers. We are also very strongly influenced by our expectations: if we have heard and understood half a sentence, it seems that our brain is already guessing at what the rest of it will be, before it is heard, and is certainly not acting in a passive way like a simple machine. Phoneticians investigate learners’ ability to perceive important segmental and suprasegmental distinctions in the language they learn with the help of various tests and machines called ‘speech synthesizers’.

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