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

I.2. B THE MOSCOW PHONOLOGICAL SCHOOL

Another scientific approach to the phoneme concept in Rus­sia is known as the Moscow phonological school. This school is represented by R.I. Avanesov, V.N. Sidorov, A.A. Reformatsky (1901-1978), P.S. Kuznetzov (1899-1968), A.M. Sukhotin, M.V. Panov, N.F. Jakovlev. One of the first linguists to give a defini­tion of phoneme void of psychologic elements was N.F. Jakovlev:

“Phonemes are understood those phonic properties that can be analyzed from the speech flow as the shortest elements serving to differentiate units of meaning.”³

The representatives of the Moscow phonological school based their definition of a phoneme on the concept of the mor­pheme. A.A. Reformatsky gave the following definition of the phoneme: “Phonemes are minimal units of the sound structure of a language, serving to form and differentiate meaningful units: morphemes and words”. Phonemes are meaningless units of a language but they are capable of distinguishing meaningful units as their sequences may form morphemes and words. For example, /pit – lit/, /but – bet/ etc.

Analyzing the sound changes in the morphemic structure of a language, it is possible to establish two different positions: stressed and unstressed. In a stressed position, phonemes can preserve their phonetic characteristics, while in an unstressed po­sition they change their articulatory and acoustic features.

Phonemes and their distinctive features differ. A phoneme is a sum of distinctive features. Distinctive sounds, i.e. phonemes and distinctive features are considered as the two levels of the phono­logical structure of a language. The level of distinctive features is called “merismatic level”. One of the fundamental notions of pho­nology is that of position, which creates conditions for the realiza­tion of phonemes in speech. Positions may depend not only on the phonetic context but also on the morphological conditions. For ex­ample, in joining basic and affixal morphemes some sound combi­nations become an affricate: штатский, шведский where /тс/ and /дс/ form the affricate /ц/.

Some Moscow phonologists, especially, A. A. Reformatsky gave a classification of phonological oppositions and presented a new approach to the problem of neutralization. It should be stated that their theory is commonly applied to the description of Rus­sian phonemes; it was also fruitful in the analysis of the phono­logical systems of other languages. The Moscow phonologists described the super-segmental features of syllables, stress and in­tonation. Besides, they improved the morphonological theory ad­vanced by N.S. Trubetzkoy. According to A.A. Reformatsky morphonology is a “bridge” level between phonology and mor­phology. N.S. Trubetzkoy included almost all the phonemic alter­nations into morphonology and used the term “morphoneme”. However, morphonology must not only study the alternations of segmental phonemes but also, can analyze the alternations of suprasegmental elements, i.e. stress alternations in morphemes. In the Russian words: /рука – ручной/, /нога – ножной/, /слух – послушный/, we can observe alternations both of a segmental and suprasegmental character. Such alternations in English as /foot – feet/, /tooth – teeth/, /ox – oxen/, /child – children/, which are inter­preted as morphonological by the American linguists, belong to the grammatical meanings formed by the internal inflexion. The alternations, which do not depend on their positions in morphem­es, would be studied in morphonology.