Content s introduction Chapter I phonological schools in linguistics and their theoretical concepts

1.2. Russian Phonological School

1.2.A The St. Petersburg Phonological School. L.V. Shcherba’s Phonemic concept

The St. Petersburg Phonological School‘s theory is closely connected with the name of academician Lev Vladimirovich Shcherba ( 1880-1944), a talented student of I.A. Bedouin De Courtenay. L.V. Shcherba developed the phonemic concept represented by his research advisor. L.V. Shcherba repeatedly stressed the different function of the phoneme. He gave the following definition of the phoneme: “The shortest general sound image of a given language, which is capable of associating with images of meaning differentiating words, …, is called phoneme”. In this definition besides the term “sound image”, which shows the influence of psychology, everything is clear from the phonological view point.

Although L.V. Shcherba realized that phonemes are not general images in the logical sense, he considered phonemes as concrete sound images which are the result of different perceptions. L.V. Shcherba illustrated his phonemic theory with examples from various languages. The quantitative and qualitative variations in the pronunciations of languages may depend on their phonetic structures and linguistic habits the sum of which L.V. Shcherba called the articulation basis. He emphasized the importance of the variants of phoneme. For example, citing D. Jones‘ idea of the existence of two allophones of the phoneme /1/ in English - dark and clear. L.V. Shcherba wrote that they cannot be associated with meanings consciously. As for the Russian pair of ль - л it is capable to distinguish meanings: бил - был. Thus L.V. Shcherba emphasized the practical value of sound types in the pronunciation of a given language. He explained that in concrete speech we pronounce a number of speech sounds which may be summed up in a comparatively small number of sound types capable of distinguishing words and word forms. Such sound types are called phonemes. Actually pronounced speech sounds, in which phonemes may be realized, would be called the phoneme shades (allophones or variants of the phoneme). But among those shades of the phoneme usually there may be one that is the typical representative of the phoneme which can be pronounced separately, actually, this is what is perceived by us consciously as an element of speech. All other shades cannot be understood consciously and it is difficult to perceive them all by ear normally. These explanations make it clear to understand the distinction between general sound types and concrete speech sounds, which can prove the distinction between a phoneme and allophone (speech sound). L.V. Shcherba also indicated three aspects of speech sounds: biological (physiological), physical and linguistic (social), of which he paid special attention to the last aspect. In speech, communication physiologically and physically different articulations (for example [a]) may be generalized by one meaning. Such a generalized unit is called a phoneme. Thus, L.V. Shcherba underlined the concrete, generalized and functional aspects of the phoneme. He explained that each phoneme may be distinguished from all other phonemes by its features, while all the phonemes of a given languages form a unit system of oppositions in which each phoneme is defined by its oppositions against another separate phoneme or phoneme groups. L.V. Shcherba invented his own system of transcription. He wrote about different pronunciation styles and advanced very interesting ideas on the subjective and objective methods of scientific investigation. L.V. Shcherba‘s phonological theory was developed and improved by many linguists. His followers and pupils L.R. Zinder, M.I. Matusevich, L.V. Bondarko, A.N. Gvozdev, V.I. Litkin, Y.S. Maslov, O.I. Dickushina are representatives of the St. Petersburg phonological school.

L.R. Zinder defines the phoneme as the smallest, i.e. indivisible in time (or linearly) unit, but from the structural view point, it may have different features some of which are considered to be common with other phonemes and some other features which distinguish it from all other phonemes. The phoneme is very complex unit and it may be realized in different allophones (or shades, variants). There are two of allophones: positional and combinatory i.e. depending on their positions and on the neighboring sounds. If the distinctions between the sounds are not capable of distinguishing the meanings of words or word-forms, then such sounds are the allophones of a phoneme. For example, let us examine consonant sounds /t/, /t°/, /t'/, /t'°/ in the words так /tak/, тот /tot/, стяг /st'ak/, тѐтя /t'otya/ etc. The distinction between the first and second sounds, and between the third and fourth sounds cannot serve to distinguish the meanings of the words. Thus, they represent one phoneme. The distinctions between the first and the third sounds and between the second and fourth sounds are capable of differentiating the meanings of the words. Therefore, they may represent different phonemes. Accordingly, we can state that some sound distinctions may be phonematic and some of them may be phonetic².

L.R. Zinder points out the reality of the phoneme i. e, its existence in a given language, being the sound unit of a language phoneme through its different representatives may have very complex phonetic characteristics. Besides, being an independent and autonomous unit of a language expression, the phoneme can be separated from the sound material of words. For example, the word прут /prut/ may be broken up into /p/, /r/, /u/, /t/. This comes from the discrete character of the phoneme. L.R. Zinder also proposes rules to determine phonemes and phoneme combinations. He thoroughly analyses the most valuable phonological ideas of I. A. Badouin de Courtenay, L.V. Shcherba, N.S. Trubetzkoy and other linguists. It must be kept in mind that the St. Petersburg Phonological School‘s definition of a phoneme is based on words and word forms, i.e. the phoneme is the smallest unit capable of differentiating words and word forms. This phonemic concept is applied to the description of English phonemes by G.P. Torsuyev, V.A.Vassilyev, O. I. Dickushina and V.N. Vitomskaya.