The problem of pronunciation norm, regional standards.

4) THE THEORY OF PHONEME

The theory of phoneme was first expounded by Baudouin de Courtenay, professor of the Kazan University in the 1880s. In his treatise “On the Comparative Study of the Grammar of Slavonic Languages” he clearly defined the difference between a phoneme and a speech sound. He treated a phoneme as a semantically differentiating unit, and a speech sound as an anthropophonic unit of speech, not connected with any meaning. This differentiation proved to be highly fruitful and made it possible to establish mutual relations between the sound and the phoneme. Baudouin de Courtenay went on developing the theory of phoneme in his “Versuch einer Theorie der Phonetischen Alternationen” (1917) and other works.

One should not underestimate the importance of Baudouin de Courtenay’s theory. He was the first in the history of the development of linguistics to elaborate the theory of the phoneme, to consider human speech sounds from the viewpoint of their functions and thus, created the teaching of the grammatical part of phonetics.

The theory of the phoneme was further developed by L.V. Shcherba. He studied the theory in his «PyccKHe raacHtie b KanecTBeHHOM u mmHecTBeHHOM 0TH0meHHH» published in 1912. In this book he defined the phoneme as the smallest general phonetic unit of a given language which can be associated with sense notions and can differentiate words.

In 1955 in his book devoted to phonetics of the French language, L.V. Shcherba wrote that in the spoken language a much greater number of various sounds are pronounced than we usually think and these sounds in every given language unite to form a system of a comparatively small number of sound types capable of differentiating words and their forms, that is, capable of serving the purposes of human intercourse. Such sounds he called phonemes.

Developing the theory of the phoneme L.V. Shcherba comes to the conclusion of the social nature of the phoneme as a speech sound used by people in their intercourse.

The teaching about the sense differentiating function of the phoneme is one of the most important parts of the theory of the phoneme.

The main importance of this definition lies in the fact that L.V. Shcherba speaks of the sense-differentiating function of the phoneme, which proved to be a turning point in the understanding of the phoneme.

For a number of years there were two main trends in linguistics concerning the concept of the phoneme. One of them was headed by Leningrad linguists, the followers of L.V. Shcherba (MaTyceBHH M.C., 1951; 3nHgep .H.P., 1960). The second trend comprised the representatives of the so-called Moscow phonological school (^KOB^eB P.O., Ky3He^B n.C., Pe^opMa^HH A.A., CugopoB B.H., ABaHecoB P.H. and others).

The main difference between the schools was in their conception of the phoneme. The followers of L.V. Shcherba proceeded from the word, while Moscow linguists proceeded from the morpheme. These different points of view determined their treatment of the phoneme, their understanding of the phonetic system as a whole.

R.I. Avanesov (1956) pointed out that the two theories were correct and compatible, as they reflect different language facts. Accordingly, he suggested distinguishing two notions - “phoneme” and “phonematic family”.

L.R. Zinder in his General Phonetics (1960) further developed the teaching of the variants of the phoneme, the problem of phonematic structure and other problems, and supported R.I. Avanesov’s notion of the “phonematic family”.

In the 1950s a new theory of the phoneme was suggested by S.K. Shaumyan «^ByxcTyneHnaTaa Teopna $OHeM», 1952.

All these theories developed many complicated questions of the phoneme but the problem has not been solved yet. Many points need strict proof and completion.

The theory of the phoneme was also being treated by many linguists abroad. It was investigated by the scientists of “The Prague Linguistic Circle” (Trubetskoy N.S., 1929; ^koScoh P., Xarae M., 1962). Some foreign linguists (Sapier E., Twaddell W.F.) treated the phoneme apart from its real sound value. As a result the real human speech sounds were replaced by abstract properties of sounds. The phoneme figured as a symbol of a certain quality of the sound.

The English linguist D. Jones fell in another extreme, treating the phoneme as a sound fully disconnected from its sense-differentiating function. D. Jones treated the phoneme as a group of sounds united by similar articulation features. “A phoneme is a group of sounds consisting of an important sound together with other related sounds” wrote D. Jones in his “Phoneme, its Nature and Use” (Jones D. Outline of English Phonetics, 8^th ed.).

Лексикологія:

1. The English wordstock as a system.

The modem English vocabulary falls into two main sets: native words and borrowings.

Native words belong to the original English worcf-stock and are known from the earliest Old English manuscripts. It is customary to subdivide native words into those of the ^do-^ropean^tock and those of the common Ger­manic origin. The formernaw cogmttfesmthe vocabularies of all or most Indo- European languages, whereas the latter have cognates only in Germanic lan­guages, but not in Romance* ^laronic or other languages of the Indo-European family. Several linguists areiticttnialo the opinion that there exist specifically English words which have no cognates in other languages and constitute the English proper element of the vocabulary.

Up to 70 per cent of the English vocabulary are borrowings from various foreign languages, mainly Latin, French, and Scandinavian.

-- English vocabulary as a system, the main peculiarities of English word-stock, the origin of English words, neologisms and archaisms

1.1 English vocabulary as a system

Modern English Lexicologyaims at giving a systematic description of the word-stock of Modern English. It treats the following basic problems:

-- Basic problems

-- Semasiology;

-- Word-Structure;

-- Word-Formation;

-- Etymology of the English Word-Stock;

-- Word-Groups and Phraseological Units;

-- Variants, dialects of the E. Language;

-- English Lexicography.

System is a set of competing possibilities in language, together with the rules for choosing them.

Structuralism recognized that a language is best viewed as a system of elements, with each element being chiefly defined by its place within the system, by the way it is related to other elements.

Language systems:

-- speech

-- syntactic

-- lexical

-- morphological

-- phonetical

Modern approaches to the problem of study of a language system are characterised by two different levels of study: syntagmatic and paradigmatic.

Paradigmatic relations are the relation between set of linguistic items, which in some sense, constitute choices, so that only one of them may be present at a time in a given position. On the paradigmatic level, the word is studied in its relationships with other words in the vocabulary system.

So, a word may be studied in comparison with other words of similar meaning (e. g. work, n. -- labour, n.; to refuse, v. -- to reject v. -- to decline, v.), of opposite meaning (e. g. busy, adj. -- idle, adj.; to accept, v, -- to reject, v.), of different stylistic characteristics (e. g. man, n. -- chap, n. -- bloke, n. -- guy, n.).

Consequently, the main problems of paradigmatic studies of vocabulary are:

-- synonymy

-- hyponymy

-- antonymy

-- functional styles