Home Random Page


CATEGORIES:

BiologyChemistryConstructionCultureEcologyEconomyElectronicsFinanceGeographyHistoryInformaticsLawMathematicsMechanicsMedicineOtherPedagogyPhilosophyPhysicsPolicyPsychologySociologySportTourism






Formation of Eng. as analytical language. Transition from synthetical to analytical structure.

Main peculiarity of English is the presence of analytical forms in it. Analytical form such a form in which lexical sense, content is rendered by means of sense verb, and grammatical meaning is rendered be means of auxiliary verb and a certain form of a lexical verb.

The whole history of the language is the transition from a language with synthetical structures to mainly analytical. Changes in grammar are the longest in comparison with the changes in vocabulary and phonology. Vocabulary can change within decades, vowels within centuries, transition from synthetical to analytical took about 15-16 centuries.

3 groups of analytical structure origin: 1) Representatives of early grammarian school – beginning of the 19 century. 2) The theory of substratum – Antoine Meyer.3)The theory of functional abundancy – 50s still popular.

 

1. The main reason of analytical character of the language development can be found in phonology, phonetical changes shifted the stress in Germanic languages onto the 1st root syllable, the stress became dynamic and as a result – misbalanced scheme of a word. The main attention was paid to the root – the unstressed elements gradually were leveled, then reduced and finally dropped.

2. The 30s movement forward to new reasons. A. Meye invented the theory of substratum (the English language on the British isles of the 5 century AD met with a substratum m- language of native tribes – Celtic, English influenced suffered from such a substratum. The close contact of English with French. French substratum language for English from 1066 to the 15 century. The influence of the Danish language – the phenomenon of substratum.

The theory of language economy – Otto Jesperson supposed that English is the best linguistic material which possesses logical in strict economy of the ways expressing thoughts. English can easily render grammatical meaning but Jespersen forgot that grammatical homonymy is much spread in English which doesn’t only simplify the process of expressing thoughts but makes it even more difficult.

“Should” can have several grammatical homonyms. If English developed economy in several aspects, on the semantic level, there’s clearly seen abundancy of grammatical phenomenon and being rather a theory of evaluation it neglects that in every language, language economy may be normal in volume and balanced in form otherwise language acquires a new structure.

3. The criticism of these theories influenced on the creation of new hypothesis, which still evades its investigation. German linguists: In English, endings disappeared only when they were finally abundant. The answer can be found in OE when the majority of grammatical cases can be combined with prepositions within the category of a noun. Only there were doublet endings. Only in genitive case one can’t come across such parallel usage of prepositional and inflectional forms. That’s why it wasn’t finally abundant – it survived and turned into possessive case.

Old English was a period of purely synthetical character: OE nouns – 4 cases, 3 genders, 2 types of declension (weak and strong); the same is true to adjectives and pronouns that preserved supplative character and every representation of nominal paradigm in general. If we look on OE verb its paradigm was clearly formally expressed; archaic preserving 2 tenses forms: present and past.



One can find examples of future tense formations, constructions resembling passive voice but these are singular examples and very often word order in expressing future contradicts the modern one: auxiliary verb follows the notional.

Complex changes and influences in phonology functioning vocabulary and grammar conditioned by various influences of related or non-related languages resulted in a fact that already by the end of the OE period the common Germanic tendency: stress on the 1st root syllable led to the weakening of the vowel in the unstressed syllable followed by its reduction and gradual loss. Plus in English the influence of Scandinavian languages marked the root of the word and the endings began to play the secondary role. That’s why the middle and modern English periods of stable progressive simplification of both nominal and verbal paradigm. (OE nouns limit the number cases to 2; adjectives form the paradigm according to the model of weak adjectives; verbs paradigm is simplified to the model of northern dialects)

Thus in Middle English tense, number, mood system still remain, plus in Middle English there appeared some more complex analytical forms. Perfect forms were borrowed by Anglo-Saxons from Scandinavian dialects where such forms developed earlier.

In the Middle English perfest already required category meaning but it didn’t acquire the status of the norm. (Usage of perfect tenses with simple past words – yesterday)

Appearance and after that opposition of perfect and non-perfect creates tenses correlation.

In the Middle English future forms appear gradually. In OE future was expressed by present tenses forms + adverbs denoting future (mostly lexically). Only sometimes future was expressed by the words “scholar” and “willa” but as a role both words preserving their own lexical meaning.

In Middle English “shullen” and “willen” often loose lexical meaning and become formal indexes of future tense. Middle English expression “I shall go (è øàë ãî)” had the meaning “I must go” and “I shall go”

Even in Modern English there remains some difficulty in distinguishing analytical forms of future tense and free phrases with model meaning. In Middle English forms with sholder (should) and molder + infinitive partially loose lexical meaning and help to form oblique moods denoting unreal.

In Middle English passive constructions although frequently used are not uniform.

In Middle English due to the loss of the unstressed syllables appeared some changes in verbal forms. The distinction of past sing. and past plur. disappear and participle 2 gradually chooses this or that dialect.

Southern dialect – participle 2 was indicated by –ge and-nd, which was never stressed.

Northern dialect: no prefix and participle 2 but exist the ending –n.

Central dialect: something in between.

Northern dialects: final nasal sound remained –n- (flown – driven). Prticiple1 – indicator –nd, -ing – result of dialectal development. Southern variant –ing ousted other variants. Gradually new part of speech gerund appeared from a verbal noun (hilai on duin – he was doing)

Continuous form appeared under the influence of verbal noun when in construction with participle1 but finally they formed in Modern English.

In Middle English – the analytical forms appear. In moder English – the analytical forms are set partially due to the appearance of printing but the forms are flexible till the 18 century.

The auxiliary verbs: do, did, does before the18 century in the negative constructions could be used in the inversed word order. In the negative constructions the auxiliary word could sometimes not be found (I knew not where)

13 CONSONANTS is a combination of voice and noise. characterized by close articulation that is complete, partial or intermittent (irregular) blockade of the air passage by an organ or organs of speech. Classified from 2 aspects:1)what sort of articulatory posture is it formed by, 2)whereabout in the mouth (or pharynx) it is produced.

Vassilyev’s A. type of obstruction (barrier) and the manner of production of noise: occlusive – complete obstruction is formed, constrictive – incomplete obstruction

 

CONSONANTS

 

OCCLUSIVE CONSTRICTIVE

B. according to the

degree of noise

 

noise consonants sonorants noise consonants sonorants

(nasal) (fricatives)

plosives affricates N M Y F V th th H S

medial later

(stop) TS DZ R J W L

P B T

D K G

 

Some phoneticians refer some of these consonants to the class of semivowels (the air passage between the two organs of speech is fairly wide and the auditory effect is tone not noise): R J W.

According to Soviet phoneticians sonorants are consonants. Sokolova’sclassification acc. To noise production:

CONSONANTS

 

NOISE SONORANTS

               
       
 
 


Occlusive occlusive constrictive occlusive constrictive

Constrictive M N G

TS DZ F V th th S P B K G T D Medial later

Z H R J W L

CONSONANTS C.place of articulation, which is determined by the active organs of speech.

LABIAL LINGUAL GLOTTAL - H

 

Bilabial labiodentals fore lingual medioligual backlingual

P B M W F V D. Acc to the place of obstruct &acc. to pos of tong tip.

 

PALATAL VELAR

J K G N (íîñîâîé)

Epical cacuminal

           
 
     
 

 


Palatoalveolar dental alveolar alveolar post alveolar

TS DZ S Z th th T D K R

S Z

E. Acc to the Work of the vocal cords: voiceless, voiced. It’s characterized by:

· Absence or presence of vibration

· Absence or presence of tone component

· Energy difference: fortis (voiceless), lessis (voiced)

F. According to the position of the soft palate:

· Oral

· Nasal – the soft palate is lowered, allowing the escape of air into the nasal cavity (M N N íîñîâîé)

There is a problem of affricates. Are English ts dz – monophonemic units or biphonemic clusters. Can such clusters as tr dr ts dz tth dth be considered affricates. Articulatory and acoustically we can distinguish 2 elements. Two main types obstruction: complete and incomplete. Thus it seems justified to single out a group of affricates or occlusive constrictive consonants.

According to Soviet linguists there are 2 affricates in English - tsh dzh.

Jones points 6 of them tsh dzh tr dr ts dz; Gimson adds two more tth dth

Trubetskoy’s rules -a sound complexes may be considered monophonemic due to: 1) syllabic indivisibility but it doesn’t work (lightship) 2) articulatory indivisibility. 3) Duration.

The Russian phoneticians - sound complex is considered to be monophonemic.

VOWELS unlike consonants are produced with no obstruction to the stream of air, so their integral characteristic is tone not noise (the tongue and lips). Articulatory characteristics such as the relative stability of the tongue, the position of the lips, physical duration of the segment, the force of articulation, the degree of tenseness of speech organs.

Criteria termed:

1. stability of articulation (specifies the actual position of the articulating organ in the process of the articulation of a vowel. There are two possible varieties: a) the tongue position is stable, B) it changes that is tongue moves from one position to another. Additional - an intermediate case (the change in the tongue position is fairly weak). English vowels are subdivided into 1.monophthongs 2 diphthongs 3 diphthongoids)

2.tongue position (characterized from two aspects that is the horizontal and vertical movement)

According to the horizontal movement Soviet phoneticians distinguish five classes of English vowels. They are: front, front-retracted, central, back, back advanced

Tongue position (vertical). British scholars distinguish three classes of vowels: high (close), mid (half-open), low (open) vowels. Soviet phoneticians made the classification more detailed distinguishing two subclasses I each class: 1) close A) narrow B)broad; 2) mid A) narrow B)broad 3) open A) narrow B) broad

3.lip position (spread, neutral and rounded); character of the vowel end (All short vowels are checked when stressed. All long vowels are free.)

4.length (short vowels/long vowels) (Duration is modified by and depends on the factors: its own length, the accent of the syllable in which it occurs, phonetic context, the position of the sound in a syllable, phonetic context, the position of the sound in a syllable, the position in a rhythmic structure, the position in a tone group, the position in a phrase, the position in an utterance, the tempo of the whole utterance, the type of pronunciation, the style of pronunciation)

5.tenseness (historically long vowels are tenses while historically short vowels are lax.)

Conclusion – there are 2 features: 1) stability of articulation 2)tongue position

 

 

14 Intonation – the variations that take place of voice in connected speech.

Functions:

- Sentence forming (I. along with words and gram struc is an indispensable feature of the sentence)Ex. He has passed his exam – may be a statement, exclamation, question

- Sentence delimiting (the end of a sent. is always recognized by a pause of varying length combined with a moving or nuclear tone on the most import. word of a sent.) Ex. Like most old people he fond of talking about old days (2 sense groups)

- Distinctive –Ex. It’s no use sending for the doctor (low-fall in categoric sent.) – non-categoric statement – low-rise on the nucleus; question – high rise on the nucleus

- Attitudinal – the mood of the speaker, his attitude to the situation expressed only by intonation

Features:

-Sent. Are usualy separated by pauses or can be subdivided into shorter word groups – “sense groups”

-The pitch of the voice doesn’t stay on the same level while the sent. is pronounced – speech melody

-The word acting as a semantic centre is made prominent by stress and special moving tone (the result of a perceptible change in the pitch)

-Other words also essential for the meaning are stressed but the pitch of these words remains unchanged

-Functional parts of speech are usually left unstressed (or in their reduced or weak forms)

-The tamber is the special coloring of the voicing pronouncing sentences - show speakers emotions)

-The tempo is the speed with which sentences are pronounced. Closely connected with tempo is rhythm -recurrence of stressed syllables at more or less equal intervals of time.

-The rate of speech isn’t constant.

All the phonetic features of the sent. innumerated above form a complex unity called intonation.

Speech melody and sent. stress are the most important components of intonation. Communicative centre – the most import. piece of information, sometimes new to the listener conveyed in the sent. The last word in the word group that bears the last full stress in a sense group – is the accentual nucleus of the comm. centre. (everytime to stress different word)

Types of stress: syntactical, logical, emphatic

An intonation pattern contains one nucleus and may contain other stressed or unstressed syllables preceding or following the nucleus. Intonation patterns serve to actualize syntagms in oral speech (syntagm – group of words which is semantically and syntactically complete). In phonetics actualized syntagms are called intonation groups. (“I think he is coming” has two potential syntagms “I think” and “he is coming soon”)

Not all the stressed syllables are of equal importance. The nucleus is strongly stressed syllable which is the last strongly accented syllable of an intonation pattern and which marks a significant change of pitch direction. The nuclear tone is most important in the intonation without which the latter cannot exist at all.

According to R. Kingdon the most important nuclear tones in English and the only ones we need to distinguish in teaching are: Low Fall, High Fall, low Rise, High Rise, Fall-Rise.

Falling tone – expresses certainty, completeness, independence (Where’s John? – he –hasn’t come yet.)

Rising tone – uncertainty, incompleteness, dependence (I think I’ll go – Are you ready?); Falling-rising tone may combine the falling tone’s meaning of assertion, certainty with the rising tone’s meaning of dependence incompleteness. Suggests that there is something else to be said. (Do you like pop music? – Sometimes.)

The term “tempo” implies the rate of utterance and pausation. The rate of speech can be normal, slow and fast. Pauses can be short (within a phrase), long (manifest the end of the phrase), very long (to separate phonetic wholes), syntactic pauses (separate intonation groups), emphatic pauses (to make certain parts especially prominent), hesitation pauses (in spontaneous speech)

Summarizing we may say that intonation is a powerful means of communicating process. It follows that it is definitely not possible to divorce any function of intonation from that of communication.

Rhythm. Prosodic components (pitch, loudness, tempo) and speech rhythm work interdependently. Speech rhythm is a recurrence of stressed syllables at equal intervals of time in a speech continuum.

Rhythmical it appears in poetry, prose, colloquial speech, rhythm is also individual. Rhythm serves to unite elements in speech: smaller units are organized into larger ones, larger units include smaller ones. Rhythmically organized speech is easily perceived. Prosodic elements together with the lexical and syntactical means play the role of the constituent of rhythm.

Stylistic use of intonation

There are 5 verbal styles (belles-lettres, publicistic, newspaper, scientific prose, s. of official documents). Intonational peculiarities of: descriptive and scientific prose, newspapers, drama, poetry, tales, public speeches, spontaneous speech and phatic communion. The are:

- Sense-group – in reading descriptive and scientific prose, tales or newspaper material they depend on syntax or the contex

- Tones – mostly falling with a High Narrow Fall in non-final sense groups of descriptive and scientific prose. Complex tones are often used in the dialogical parts.

- Pitch – in reading descriptive and scientific prose and in newspaper material it is mid. Wide in public speeches and narrow in reading poetry.

- Stress – is mostly decentralized in monologues and narrative parts, centralized in dialogues and emphatic parts.

- Rhythmic organization –in reading tales it depends on the syntactical and compositional structure. In public speeches it’s based on the rhythmic organization of rhythmic groups and sense-groups

- Tempo – is constant in reading descriptive and scientific prose and newspapers, changeable – in drama, constant and slow in poetry

- Pauses – they are mostly logical. In poetry – line ends in a pause, in drama – pausation depends on the structure and the rhythmic organization, in public speeches – pauses make certain units prominent. There are hesitation pauses. Lines constitute a stanza. In poetry – 1) wide use of simple tones, the level tone is often combined with the High level Scale 2) the most typical tones are: Fall+Fall, Fall+Level, Rise+Fall

 


Date: 2015-12-11; view: 2758


<== previous page | next page ==>
Sentence, models and classifications | Modification of phonemes in connected speech
doclecture.net - lectures - 2014-2024 year. Copyright infringement or personal data (0.013 sec.)