THE MAIN TERMS OF PHONETICS

PHONETICS is a branch of linguistics which deals with the investigation of the sound means of the language from the point of view of their articulation, acoustic qualities and semantics.

PHONEME is the smallest distinctive language unit which is capable of differentiating the meaning and the grammar forms of words. In British English there are 44 phonemes: 20 vowels and 24 consonants. Phonemes have the power of distinguishing words in the language (e.g. p and b as in pit / p t /and bit / b t /); allophones do not.

ALLOPHONE is a material representation of the phoneme in speech. Allophones appear in connected speech as a result of assimilation or reduction or due to individual speech habits. The number of allophones in language is unlimited. Each language has its own phonemic system and its own rules for determining the allophones appropriate to the phonemes in various phonetic environments. In English, for example, the phoneme p comprises both aspirated and unaspirated allophones. English / ∫ / varies according to its surroundings.

The allophones of a phoneme are phonetically similar to one another. When it is important to distinguish phonemic transcription from allophonic or impressionistic transcription, it is usual to enclose the former in slants / /, the latter in square brackets [ ].

PRONUNCIATION is a complex unity of its components which cannot be separated: word stress, syllabic structure of words, intonation, accent (sentence stress).

Study the rules for the following consonants and practice them in proverbs and tongue twisters.