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

The functional aspect of speech sounds. The phoneme.

So, we know that phonetics studies sounds as articulatory and acoustic units. Phonology investigates isounds as units, which serve communicative purposes. Thus, the unit of phonetics is a speech sound anf the unit of phonology is a phoneme. Phonemes can be discovered by the method of minimal pairs. This mothod consists in finding pairs of words which differ in one phoneme (tie-die). In this way it’s illustrated how by contrasting with each other the phonemes are functionaly significant, in other words change the meaning of the words.

Tye phonemes of a language from a system of oppositions, in which and one phoneme is opposed to any other in at least one position in at least one lexical or grammatical minimal pair. If the substitution of one sound for another results in the change of meaning, the commuted sounds are different phonemes (or: sounds of speech which are phonologically significant).
The definitions of the phoneme vary greatly. The founder of the phoneme theory was I.A. Baudouin de Courteney, the Russian scintist of Polinsh origin. His theory of phoneme was developed and perfected by L.V. Shcherba – the head of the Leningrad linguistic school. The basic statement of this theory holds that in actual speech we utter a much freater variety of sounds that we are aware of; and that in every language these sounds are united in a comparatively small number of sound types, which are capable of distinguishing the meaning and the form of words. It’s these sound types that sould be studied as differentiatory units of the language. And the actually pronounced apeech sounds are variants, or ALLOPHONES of phonemes.
The number of sounds types, or phonemes, in each language is much smaller than the number of sounds actually pronounced.
Accrding to L.V. Shcherba, the phoneme is defined as a functional, material and abstract unit. V.A. Vasiliev defined the phoneme like this: “ It’s a minimal abstract linguistic unit (meaning that it’s further indivisible into smaller consecutive segments) realized in speech in the form of speech sounds opposable to other phonemes of the same language to distinguish of morphemes and words.”
“Functional” means that phonemes perform a discriminatory, or DISTINCTIVE function, distinguishing one morpheme, word or utterance from another. The opposition of phonemes in the phonetic environment differentiates the meaning: sleeper – sleepy, bath – path, He was heard badly. – He was hurt badly.
“Material” means that a phoneme is real, objective. It’s realized in speech of all English-speaking people in the form of apeech sounds ( its allophones).
Allophones are realized in concrete words and they are not identical in their articulatory content though thay have phonetic similarity between them and are incapable of differentiating words.
Example: there is an ideal sound type [t], which is alveolar, forelingual, apical, occlusive, plosive, voiceless fortis. But in actual speech we seldom pronounce it exactly like this – only in some positions, when it retans its typical articulatory characteristics; we more often pronounce one of its variants: labialized in the word twice, dental in the word eight, post-alveolar in try, exploded nasally in written, exploded laterally in little… So, the first case (when the typical characteristics are retained) the consonant [t] is called the PRINCIPAL ALLOPHONE. It’s described as the most representative and free from the influence of the neighbouring phonemes. SUBSIDARY ALLOPHONES are those which undergo some distinguishable changes in the chain of speech, these changes occur under the influence of the neighbouring sounds in different phonetic situations. Subsidary allophones can be positional and combinatory. Positional allophones are used in certain positions traditionally: the English /l/ is realised in actual speech as a positional allophone, it’s clear in the initial position and dark in the terminal position light –hill /l – ł/. Combinatory allophones appear in the process of speech and result from the influence of one phoneme upon another.
To distinguish allophones from sound types (phonemes) we use slant-like brackets for the phonemes proper, and square – for their allophones.
The question is furthermore complicated by the fact that the phones (or sounds) of speech do not correspond exactly to the allophones predicted by this or that phonetic environment. The phones are modified by phonostylistic, dialectical and individual factors (social, emotional). To be precise, no speech sounds are absolutely alike. We agree that phonemes make grammatical and lexical distinctions, and actual sounds of speech and their subtle differences convey much more information about the speaker.
The relations between the phoneme and the phone (speech sound):

Thirdly, we said that phonemes are “abstract” – it means that the native speakers abstract themselves from the differenc between the allophones of one and the same phoneme, because the allophones have no functional value.
All the allophones of one phoneme possess a bundle of distinctive features, that makes this phoneme functionally different from all other phonemes of the language concerned. This functionally relevant bundle of articulatory features is called the INVARIANT of the phoneme. Neither of the articulatory features forming the invariant can be changed without affecting the meaning. For instnace, all the allophones of the phoneme [d] are occlusive, forelingual, lenis. If occlusive articulation is changed into constrictive, [d] will be replaced by [z]: breed – breeze, deal – zeal. If forelingual articulation is replaced by back lingual, it’s going to be [g]: day – gay. If lenis articulation is substituted by fortis one, it’s going to be [t]: try – dry, bid – bit.
The articulatory features that form the invariant of the phoneme are called DISTINCTIVE or RELEVANT. The articulatory features which do not serve to distinguish meaning are called NON-DISTINCTIVE, IRRELEVANT or REDUNDANT. For example, it’s impossible in English to oppose an aspirated [p] to a non-aspirated one in the same phonetic context to distinguish meaning (there are no pairs of words in English which differ in meaning only because one has aspirated [p] and the other – non-aspirated). That is why aspiration is a non-distinctive feature of English consonants. The theory of distinctive features was originated by N.S. Trubetskoy and developed by such foreign scientists as R. Jackobson, C.G. Fant, M. Halle, N. Chomsky, and Russian phonologists L.R. Zinder, G.S. Klychkov…
This leads us to the necessity of defining one of the basic methods of phonological analysis: the method of MINIMAL PAIRS.
The basis of this method is that each phoneme manifests itself in a certain pattern of distribution. The fact is that the sounds of a language combine according to e certain pattern characteristic of this language. That means that in any language certain sounds do not occur in certain positions ([h] in English never occurs word finally, [ŋ] never occurs word initially). This permits identification of phomenes on the grounds of their distribution.
The simplest pattern of distribution is FREE VARIATION, when the variation of one and the same phoneme is pronounced differently (pronounciation of the initial [k] with different degrees of aspiration). Another pattern of phoneme environment is COMPLEMENTARY DISTRIBUTION, when more or less similar speech sounds occur in different positions and never occur in the same phonetic context – this is how we distinguish allophones of one and the same phoneme (the allophones of one and the same phoneme never occur in the same context, because their articulation depends on the environment, this is why tey lack distinctive power and the word let mispronounced like [l’et] palatelized fully will be recognized and the sounds will be perceived as identical ones). One more pattern of phoneme environment is called CONTRASTIVE DISTRIBUTION, when more or less different sounds occur in the same phonetic context, and this is how we distinguish between the allophones of different phonemes ( pit – bit sounds [p] and [b] have the same environment). Contrastive distribution is exactly realized in minimal pairs and this is how we use the method of minimal pair to extract relevant features of the phonemes by opposing one phoneme to some other in the same phonetic context.
It’s through OPPOSITIONS that distinctive features are discovered. The opposition can be single: [t] voiceless fortis, and [d] voiceless lenis, have only one distinctively relevant feature, their other features are irrelevant. The opposition is double if there are two distinctively relevant features: [p] voiceless fortis – labial, bilabial, [d] voiced lenis – lingual, forelingual, apical, alveolar. This opposition is really phonemec and it’s proved by minimal pairs: pie – die, pail – dale, pry –dry. The opposition can be MULTIPLE when there are three and more dictinctively relevant features: [b] vioced lenis – labial, bilabial – occlusive, [h] voiceless fortis – pharyngal – constrictive, and it’s proved by minimal pairs: be – he, bit – hit, bait – hate.