5. Retell the text. Phonetics as a branch of linguistics. Phonemes

The course of theoretical phonetics is aimed at presenting the theoretical background for a number of basic ideas which need to be introduced and will be regarded from a point of view of the achievement of home and foreign linguistics in this field as the course progresses.

The term ‘phonetics’ has derived from the Greek language, meaning sound and voice and it is used in different meanings.

The definition of phonetics given by the non-phoneticians as a part of grammar which deals with speech sounds is loose and formal.

Phoneticians treat phonetics as an independent branch of linguistics which is concerned with the phonetic structure of a language and is described as a discipline.

A number of other important concepts has been developed due to which it is possible to state that phonetics shouldn’t be considered as a part of grammar, but as an independent branch of linguistics which occupies a peculiar position. On the one hand it is quite independent according to its own laws. On the other hand phonetics is closely connected with a number of other non-linguistic sciences: physics (acoustics), biology, physiology, psychology, cybernetics, etc.

The more phonetic develops the more branches of science become involved in the field of phonetic conversation. The development of the theory of phoneme caused a revolution in the treatment of many phonetic phenomena.

Phonetics isn’t a new science. It was known to ancient Greeks and Hindus. But they studied it from the point of view of their physical properties, i.e. how speech sounds are articulated.

The most important dates connected with phonetics are:

1829 – the invention of laryngoscope.

1852 – the first observation of vocal cords.

1877 – the invention of gramophone.

1886 – International Phonetic Association.

Phonetics as an independent science began in Western Europe and in Russia at the end of the 19^th century. And the next century brought about considerable progress and growth in the study of phonetics.

The ever increasing recognition of the importance of phonetics within the last few decades led to great achievements in this field. And it resulted at the appearance of new concepts, theories and new schools in the development of the new method of investigation.

The correct definition of the objects of phonetic investigation and its aims should be given on the basis of the well-known theory of language. As it’s known, language is the most important means of human intercommunication and at the same time it is directly and inseparably connected with thought.

Phonemes. Phonological analysis relies on the principle that certain sounds cause changes in the meaning of a word or phrase, whereas other sounds do not. An early approach to the subject used a simple methodology to demonstrate this. It would take a word, replace one sound by another, and see whether a different meaning resulted. For example, we hear ‘pig’ in English as consisting of three separate sounds, each of which can be given a symbol in a phonetic transcription, [pig]. If we replace [p] by, say, [b], a different word results: ‘big’ [p] and [b] are thus important sounds in English, because they enable us to distinguish between pig and ‘big’, ‘pan’ and ‘ban’, and many more word pairs.

In a similar way, [i] and [e] can be shown to be important units, because they distinguish between ‘pig’ and ‘peg’, ‘pin’ and ‘pen’, and many other pairs. And so we could continue, using this technique – the ‘minimal pairs’ test – to find out which sound substitutions cause differences of meaning. The technique has its limitations (it is not always possible to find pairs of words illustrating a particular distinction in a language), but it works quite well for English, where it leads to identification of over 40 important units. In the earliest approach to phonological analysis, these ‘important units’ are called phonemes.

Phonemes are transcribed using the normal set of phonetic symbols, but within slant lines, not square brackets – /p/, /b/, /i/, etc. This shows that the units are being seen as part of a language, and not just as physical sounds.