English Linguistics

[Mozo]

Topic 1

Vowels and consonants

Vowels and cons.are the 2 major types of sounds. There are 2 views on them-a phonetic and phonological view. According to the phonetic view vowels are sounds in which there is no obstrucuion to the flow of air from the lungs to the mouth; consonants are sounds in the production of which it is difficult or impossible for the air to pass b/c there is an obstacle on its way through the vocal tract. The phonological view is based not on the way they are produced but on the position they occur.Vowels typically function as central elements in syllables while consonants are marginal.
For every vowel it’s important to determine lip position –spead lips, neutral, rounded lips. Vowels in Engl. Differ in length( bid-bead/I/-/i:/). The length difference is accompanied by diff. In quality which is of primary importance and is indicated by the different shape of I and i: . Another possible way is by /i/and/ i:/ different vowel quantity. Both the qualitative and quantitative difference in words like bid and bead are important and should be shown in the transcription. In BG we do not have long or short vowels . Long or short vowel classification is more important in BBC English , in GA-tense /lax vowel classification with the tense v. the muscles of the tongue and lips are more tightened for lax v.- relaxed v. In BBC we can separate 20 diff. Vowel phonemes which can be divided into 12 monophtongs and diphtongs. The monophtongs can be further subdivided into 7 short and 5 long v. In BG we have 6 distinctive vowels in stressed position. BG vowels are a little longer tham the EG short ones but shorter than the long. We have no diphtongs but something like them./vowel+ й –мaйка/ пейка but these are not phonemes. In phonetic terms th BG vowels on the horizontal axis- front and back; on the vertical –close, mid-open, for example : bulgarskoto ‘a’ is much frontier than the EG back vowel ‘a’, so we better transcribe it like bulgarskoto ‘a’. Low and mid-vowlel in BG are often reduced in an unstressd position which is called reduction.
The frontest and closest of EG vowels is the long i: ( the front of the tongue is raised , tense and the lips are spread; /I:/ can appear everywhere. It’s often very noticeable as a glide from a more central and mid position (esp. in a final position- see /Ii/ diphtongization; i : in front of fortis voiceless consonants ( bead- beat/ i:/).With /I/ the lips are spread , the tongue is relaxed . It’s found very often in unstressed syllables. It can alternate with // which is a tendency to become a norm. positive /pാzാtΙv/. With ‘e’ the tongue is involved , the lpis are loosely spread, a short vowel. BG ‘e’ is very close to the EG in terms of quality. With ‘’ the front of the tongue is raised just above the bottom position. In EG no word can have a syllable ending in short vowel –e, ,כ,∂,I, - when stressed must be followed by a consonant. EG has 4 distinct front vowels in BG 2 and that’s why we have problems pronouncing some of the EG vowels. The dots are the centre of a space in which quality can vary. With u: (food, good) the tongue is tense, the lips are moderately rounded. The relalation b/n /u:/ and / Ʊ/ is similar to the one b/n : /i:/ and /I/; (Ʊu)is typical for a final position (shoe); Ʊ can be in both stressed and unstressed position but not in syllable initial position or in front the velar of the nasal /ŋ/; /כ:/ (short, sport) isn’t fully back but with medium lip rounding . Compared with //it has much more rounding of lips. The most open vowel of EG is /a:/ (part) . It’s the least susceptible to duration changes in front of fortis voiceless consonant. When / ∂/is final it’s either half open or fully open. In non final position it’s between half close and half open. In EG the whole of the vowel space has to be divided into two regions while in BG only six-very much articulatory precision is needed. See handout 1, p.3



The way in which the air flow is obstructed is a type of classification of consonant-manner of articulation. The first basic manner of articulation is closure. There are 2 possibilities –the soft palate raises and shuts the nasal cavity for example /p/ and /b/ at the beginning of a word or the soft palate does not shut up the nasal cavity. But the lips are closed. The BG /r/ the tip of the tongue touches the alveolar ridge; very short vibrations (a sound called thrill). Tap/ flap closure isn not a series of brief closures but only one. Another way to obstruct the air flow is the narrowing . Two organs of speech approximate each other to such an extent that the air flow passing through the narrowing becomes turbulent- friction. Fricatives are nine distinctive consonants: /f/-/v/ are labio-dentals; thing-this ( /θ/-/đ/), the tongue makes a narrowing with the teeth (dental); /s/ and /z/ -alveolar; /j/ and /ʒ/ are post –alveolar: the tip and the blade are involved (ship and rouge); /h/ is a a glottal fricative (hot). In BG we have the labio-dental , not dentals; /s/ and/z/ are alveo-dental, pronounced b/n dental and alveolar. Our /h/ is quite different, not articulated with the vocal folds out with the back of the tongue plus soft palate. BG /h/ is velar fricative. In BG there are 7 fricatives. Another difference is the force of articulation. In EG the fricatives are divided into strong ( fortis) and weak (lenis). Fortis are always voiceless /∫ , f, θ, s/. With the lenis /Ʊ, đ, z, ʒ/ a smaller amount of muscular energy is involved. They tend to be voiced but in some positions they may become partially or fully devoiced. In BG there is not such devision b/n fortis and lenis. The EG /h/ can’t be compared with another consonant b/c it does not pair with any other sound but it is voiceless.
/V/ is partially devoiced b/c it takes some time for the folds to start vibrating; /z/ is partially devoiced b/c of the expectation of the pause after it; only /ʒ/ is fully voiced. In BG in final position only voiceless consonants occur. The EG fortis consonants influence the duration of the preceding sound (live, life) . The fortis voiceless fricatives tend to shorten a preceding sound (rise/raiz/- rice/rais/).
EG has two affricates, both of which are post-alveolars. They are produced with the same organs of speech –homorganic sounds: /t∫/ tends to shorten the preceding vowel; /dʒ/ tend to be devoiced in final position. In plosives , fricatives, affricates, we need a certain destruction for the sound to be articulated. The 3rd form for a group called obstruents.In terms of place of artucaltion plosives can be divided into bilabial /p,b / alveolar /t, d/, velar /h,g/; p, t, and k are always voiceless, no vocal fold vibration; b,d, and g are fully voiced when they occur b/n vowels in initial and final position before a pause a part of b,d,g tend to be devoiced.
Resonants/ sonorants comprise the nasals , the laterals, the approximants. In BG we have 2 more fricatives- ц, дз. In some older books tr.and dr are included in the group of EG fricatives.
In the articulation of nasals, there’s not obstruction acoustically, perceptually there are very much like vowels but functionally they belong to the consonants. Nasals resemble plosives in terms of the full obstruction. They’re produced with vocal fold-vibration. The nasals comprise distinctive sounds in RP-m,n, ŋ (ŋ only occurs after a vowel). In some parts of England ( midlands ) –always a gork sound after ŋ /siŋg/. In these accents /ŋ/ isn’t considered a separate nasal. In BG phonemically we distinguish only /m/ and /n/(Anka, Angel)- virtually the same as /ŋ/. So in BG /ŋ/ is an allophone of /n/, not a separate phoneme;- ing /In/ playin’- it is thought that people at the bottom of society would avoid using /ŋ/ while those at the top would use it regularly.
In certain positions /m/,/n/ can be syllabic without an accompanying vowel-e.g. rhythm /’rIθm/, button /bλt’n/. In BG we don’t have syllabic consonants. In EG there’re words such as bank /bŋk/-/k/ is always pronounced but if /n/ is followed by a /g/ it’s not always pronounced. Sing /siŋ/, singer /siŋכ/ route + suffix; singing /siŋiŋ/ route +suffix; finger /fiŋgǝ/ route.If the ‘-ng’ is a final morpheme then the /g/ is not pronounced but if ‘ng’ is in the middle of a morpheme, /g/ is pronounced. But long /lכŋ/, longer /lכŋgכ/. When you add –er/-est they are morpheme final but the /g/ is pronounced. The lateral /l/ has 2 major allophones-clear /l/ and dark/l/. The clear /l/ always occurs in front of vowels. The dark /l/ -in final postion or before a consonant (self). Clear l -/l/,dark l- ł. The devoiced /l / occurs after voiceless consonants, for ex. ‘play’/plei/. Approximants resemble vowels to a large extent, no obstruction is needed for articulating them. In the past they were called semi-vowels –yet /jet/, wet /wet/. They function like other consonants-occur marginally and they are not capable of making syllables. With /w/ the lips are rounded- it’s bilabial and velar; /j/ is palatal approximant-the tip moves towards the hard palate. In BG there is only one such sound- /й/. In GA we have retroflex /r/ -rhotic accent. In BG /r/ is not different. It is not an approximant but a trill.


Topic 2

Principles of EG spelling


Transcription is a useful tool in the description of speech sounds. It’s a method of writing down speech sounds in systematic and consistant way. The name means ‘re-write’/Latin/. It represents sounds visually by symbols. The International Phonetic Alphabet stands for the body of linguists and it was put forward by the International Phonetic Association. There are different of transcription. The most import. division depends on whether the motivation is primarilly phonological or phonetic. Phnologically motivated way of transcription includes the so- called phonemic and allophonic transcription. With the phonemic the attention is focused on the system of phonemic contrast on the accents transcribed. The choice of symbols is limited for one symbol per distinctive sound. A phonemic symbol can consist of one character /^ / and /∫/. A symbol may also consist of a diagraph - /t∫/ ( 2 written characters). The same symbol is used to represent the given phoneme in all environments it occurs. In the case of all allophonic transcription the focus is on the different realization of the phoneme in different environments. Example p,t and k (aspirated). In phonemic transcription the focus is on the distinctice character of the p, i, n. /pIn/, in the allophonic /p/ is realized as aspirated and it’s there where the focus is / pIn/. They both constitute generalizations of given accents and can be regarded as types of systematic transcriptions of speech. The phonetically motivated transcription pays no attention to the phonological value of the sound transcribed- not systematic. They are called impressionistic transcriptions and try to register as much detail as we can detact impressionistically. With the phonemic transcription little attention is being payed to the subtlities of pronunciation. It is important to identify in the broader terms the distinctive sounds (not interested how /p/ or /i/ is pronounced but it is impotrant to identify the number of the sounds)-broad transcription. Allophonic and general phonetic transcription try to show more or less narrowly how sounds are articulated in the flow of speech, for example ‘titles’ –phonemically /tItlz/, phonetic ttƐłz}- /t/dark fully voiced, /Ɛ/ dark devoiced, // aspiration and affixation. Narrow transcription is typically used in pathological speech and in the early stages of phonological investigation (ex. new language). We also have qualitative and quantitative transcription ‘bit’ is different from ‘beat’ (/I/ qualitative /i/; /i/ quantitative /i:/). Sometimes we have diactrics (on the top of the Roman letters-small added marks t).
Another distinction is with the names. There is intralingual transcription. It is used for scientific research in dictionaries. It is common for a particular language. The interlingual transcription is when :ex.-the EG name has to be rendered into another one. There are 3 ways of rendering EG names: translation-ex. Great Britain – Velikobritania; transliteration –graphemes from one languade with the respective graphemes of another one /∫-sh (Engl), ch (France)/. The same sound can be rendered for one or more graphemes /A, a, α-allographs of the same grapheme/.The guiding principle with transcription is that the BG rendition should reflect as closely as possible the pronunciation of the name in EG. The source language is EG and the receptor/target language –BG. The phonetic criteria are not sufficient. The model consists of several components . It comrises morephological, lexical and phonetical subcomponent which make the liguistic component. There is also the sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic component.
As transcription is the guiding principle for BG reandition of EG names we have to carry out contrastive analysis of the 2 languages. We should look for phonetic similarity that is established by working with the phonetic subcomponent. We should try to establish the number of phonological oppositions and try to decide which oppositions in EG can be preserved in BG. The pronunciation and spelling norms should be observed. Sound combinations which sound and look unnatural in BG should be avoided. If there is an alternation it is better to go for it. Whenever there is hesitation b/n 2 or more variants of a name in BG , the variant facilitating back-transcription should be preferred which is called the principle of easy retrieavl (for ex: Cambell- Kembul- this transcription will lead us to the wrong name in EG –Kemble). Therefore we should use the alternative which will lead to the right name in EG. We should never forget tradition or the established public usage. The principle of simplicity and economy when there are several alternatives, choose the most simple and economical one.

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