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TÔRAXANOVA MADINAXON.

Phonological theories of language.

• The formation of the phonological theory may be divided into two periods:1. The «prephoneme» period, i.e. when there was no dis­ tinction between «speech sound» and «phoneme» until 1870;2. The «phonemic» period, which began in 1870 and in­ cludes the twentieth century. In this period the basic phonetic and phonological terms and concepts were proposed, and the distinc­ tion between the actually pronounced speech sounds and the pho­ nemes as functional units of the language was recognized. The first linguist to point out this distinction was I. A. Baudouin de Courtenay (1845-1929), an outstanding Russian and Polish scholar.

I. A. Baudouin de Courtenay defined the phoneme as the «psychological» equivalent of the speech sound». But he was aware of the fact that acoustic and motor images of the speech sound do not correspond to each other. I. A. Baudouin de Cour­ tenay also tried to analyse phonemes on the bases of phonetic al­ ternations in morphemes. Besides psychological and morphological definitions of the phoneme, he could propose the distinctive function of the speech sound in notions1 as he consid­ ered that words may be realized in notions. I.A. Baudouin de Courtenay repeatedly stated that semantically the utterance breaks up into sentences, sentences into significative words, words into morphological components or morphemes and morphemes into phonemes. As a morpheme is only divided into components of the same nature as itself: these components - phonemes must also be significative.

• I. A. Baudouin de Courtenay defined the phoneme as the «psychological» equivalent of the speech sound». But he was aware of the fact that acoustic and motor images of the speech sound do not correspond to each other. I. A. Baudouin de Cour­ tenay also tried to analyse phonemes on the bases of phonetic al­ ternations in morphemes. Besides psychological and morphological definitions of the phoneme, he could propose the distinctive function of the speech sound in notions1 as he consid­ ered that words may be realized in notions. I.A. Baudouin de Courtenay repeatedly stated that semantically the utterance breaks up into sentences, sentences into significative words, words into morphological components or morphemes and morphemes into phonemes. As a morpheme is only divided into components of the same nature as itself: these components - phonemes must also be significative.

He admitted the division of morphemes into physical or physiological elements to be unjustified in linguistic analysis1 . He criticized N. V. Krushevsky's conception of this problem. Inci- dently, N. V. Krushevsky, was one of his students who introduced the term «phoneme» at the same time as F. de Saussure, an emi­ nent Swiss linguist did. I. A. Baudouin de Courtenay's fundamen­ tal ideas had a great influence on the development of later phonological theories both in our country and abroad. In early phonological works many linguists defined the phoneme as «sound image», «conscious sound image», «sound intent» (N. S. Trubetzkoy), and also as the sum of acoustic impressions and of articulatory movements (F. de Saussure) but none of them sug­ gested any other to substitute the term «phoneme».

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