Фонетики со смежными науками: акустикой, анатомией, физиологией, психологией

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The subject-matter of phonetics. Its’s connection with linguistic and non-linguistic sciences. Significance and subdivision of phonetics.

Phonetics is an independent branch of linguistics and it deals with speech sounds, or the sound system of the language. In Greek phōnētikόs means “pertaining to voice and sound”. Phonetics is concerned with the human noices by which the thought is actualised or given audible shape. Thus, it’s mainly concerned with the expression level. However, phonetics is obliged to take into consideration the content level as well, because only meaningful sound sequences are regarded as speech. The phonetic system of language consists of the following four components: speech sounds, the syllabic structure of words, word stress and intonation (prosody).

Phonetics, as one of the foundamental branches of linguistics, claims to be of equal importance with grammar and lexicology, because neither linguistic theory nor linguistic practice can do without phonetics, and no language description is complete without phonetics.

Phonetics is connected with non-linguistic sciences: acoustics (consequently, with physics and mathematics): physiology, anatomy and anthropology; psycology and logic (the acquisition of language by children, the extent to which language mediates or structures out thinking, influences and is influenced by such things as memory), social scinces (a cardinal principle underlying the whole linguistic approach is that language is not an isolated phenomenon, but is a part of society and ourselves). Sociophonetics is an example of interdisciplinary overlap. Then it’s connected withcommunication theory and statistics. Plus, historical phonetics is connected with general history of the people whose language is studied, and with archaeology.

Phonetics is connected with linguistic sciences: grammar, lexicology, stylistics. The connection of phonetics with grammar, lexicology and stylistics is exercised first of sll via orthography, which in its turn is closely connected with phonetics (phonetics formulates the rules of pronounciation for separate sounds and sound combinations, and the rules of reading are based on the relation of sounds to orthography). The Russian and English orthography differ in the number of letters for one single sound. In the Russian writing system one letter corresponds to one sound (there are special letters in the alphabet, which represent й plus vowels А,У,Е,О; letter combinations for one sound are exceptions – сч, зч, жж – счастье, извозчик, дрожжи). English prthography widely uses letter combinations to represent vowels and consonants.

With grammar phonetics is connected through the system of rules of reading: it helps to pronounce correctly the singular and plural forms of nouns, the past tense forms and past participles of English regular verbs. E.g.
/s/ is pronounced after voiceless consonants (books);
/z/ - after voiced cocsonants (bags);
/z/ - after sibilants (boxes);
/d/ is pronounced after voiced consonants ( beg – begged), /t/ - after voiceless consonants (wish – wished);
/ıd/ - following /t/ or /d/ (waited, folded).
Some adgectives are pronounced with /ıd/ (crooked, naked, ragged).
One of the most important phonetic phenomenon – sound interchange – is anther manifestation of the connection of phonetics with grammar. E.g.
in the category of number the interchange of /f-v/, /s-z/, /ө-ð/ helps to differentiate singular and plural forms of such nouns as calf-calves, leaf-leaves, house-houses;
vowel interchange helps to distinguish the singular and the plural of such words as basis-bases, crisis-crises, analysis-analyses /ıs-i:z/ and also man-men, foot-feet, goose-geese, mouse-mice;
vowel interchange is connected with the tense forms of irregular verbs sing-sang, write-wrote-written;
vowel interchange can help to distinguish between nouns and verbs (bath-bathe), adjectives and nouns (hot-heet), verbs and adjectives (moderate /eı/ - moderate /ı/), nouns and adjectives (type-typical);
vowel interchange can be observed in onomatopoeic compounds (jiggle-joggle толчок, покачивание; flip-flop легкий удар, шлепок; chip-chop рубить топором, штыковать; flap-flop шлепать, шлепнуть; hip-hop подпрыгивать приходьбе);
consonants can interchange in different parts of speech, for example in nouns and verbs (extent-extend /t-d/, mouth-mouth /ө-ð/, relief-relieve /f-v/).
Phonetics is also connected with grammar through its intonation component. E.g.
sometimes intonation compensates for the fixed word-order of English sentences and singles out predication (`He came home. – Not Mary or John. He `came home. – So you can see him now. He came `home. – He is at home, and you said he was going to the club.);
in affirmative sentences the rising nuclear tone may serve to show that it’s a question (He 'came ֻhome. He 'came ¸home?);
pausation may perform a differentiatory function in a sentence;
Phonetics is also connected with lexicology:
it’s due to presence of stress in the right place that we can distinguish certain nouns from verbs (formed by conversion):
'object (предмет) - ob'ject (не одобрять);
homographs can be differenciated only due to pronounciation, because they are identical in spelling:
lead /li:d/ руководство – lead /led/ свинец
wind /wınd/ ветер – wind /waınd/ виток.
Phonetics is connected with stylistics. First of all hrough intonation and its components: speech melody, utterance stress, rhythm, pausation and voice tamber which serve to distinguish between different attitudes on the part of the speaker and to express emotion. It’s also connected with stylistics through repetition of words, phrases or sounds (alliteration). Onomatopoeia, a combination of sounds which imitate sounds produced in nature, is one more stylistic device serving as an example of connection between phonetics and stylistics: tinkle, clink, chatter, babble, chirp, crash, twitter.

Practical significance of phonetics is connected with teaching foreign languages. It’s applied in methods of speech therapy and correction, teaching deaf-mutes, film dubbing, transliteration, radio and television.

Phonetics callaborates with a number of technologycal fields connected with communication. Basic charasteristics of human speech are studied by phoneticians, mathematicians and sound engineers, and machines recognizing, processing, producing sound of speech or converting printed symbols into synthetic speech are devised.
An understanding of phonetics is useful in the field of dialectology and designing and improving of systems of writing and spelling.
Theoretical significance of phonetics is connected with the further development of the synchronic study and description of the phonetic system of a national language, the comparative analysis and description of differen languages and correspondences between them, the diachronic description of successive chanches in the phonetic system of a language or different languages.

Phonetics has the following subdivisions:

Practical, or normative phonetics studies the substance, the material form of phonetic phenomena in relation to meaning.

Theoretical phonetics is mainly concerned with the functioning of phonetic units in the language. It regards ponetic phenomena synchronycally without any attention to the historical development of English.

General phonetics is distinguished from special (or applied) phonetics, or the phonetics of individual languages. General phonetics studies all the sound-producing possibilities of the human speech apparatus and the ways thei are used for the purpose of communication. The phonetics of a particular language studies the phonetic system of this one given language and it’s based on general phonetics.

Special phonetics may be descriptive (synchronic) or historical (diachronic). Descriptive phonetics studies the contemporary phonetic system of a particular languge. Historical phonetics studies the evolution of a sound system of a language; its aim is to trace and establish the succesive changes in the phonetic system of a given language (or a language family) at different stages of its development. Historical phonetics is a part of the history of language.

Closely connected with historical phonetics is comparative phoneticswhose aims are to study the correlation between the speech sounds of kindred languages.

Segmental phonetics, which is concerned with individual sounds (i.e. “segments” of the speech). Segmental units are sounds of apeech – vowels and consonants – which form the vocalic and cocsonantal systems.

Suprasegmental phonetics whose domain is the larger units of connected speech: syllables, words, phrases and texts. Suprasegmental, or prosodic, units are syllables, accentual (rhythmic) units, intonation groups, utterances – they from the subsystem of pitch, stress, rhythm, tempo, pauses.