Гуманитарный издательский центр

Владос

2004

УДК 811.111(075.8) ББК 81.2Англ-923 С59

Рецензенты: кафедра фонетики английского языка Государственного университета (зав. кафедрой канд. филол. наук, доц. Г.М. Вишневская); д-р филол. наук, проф. Ю. А. Дубовский (Пятигорский государственный институт иностранных языков)

С59 Соколова М.А., Гинтовт К.П., Тихонова И.С., Тихонова P . M . Теоретическая фонетика английского языка: Учеб. для студ. высш. учеб. заведений. — 3-е изд., стереотип. — М.: Гуманит. изд. центр ВЛАДОС, 2003. — 288 с. ISBN 5-691-01227-4.

В учебнике описана английская фонетическая система. Он состоит из шести глав, включает раздел фоностилистики, схемы и таблицы. В учебнике учитываются достижения современных теоретических исследований.

Учебник предназначен для студентов, изучающих английский язык в высших учебных заведениях; будет полезен преподавателям английского языка.

УДК 811.111(075.8) ББК 81.2Англ-923

Тихонова И.С, Тихонова P.M., 2003

ISBN 5-691-01227-4

CONTENTS

Foreword.....................,..........................................................................5

Introduction............................................................................................ 6

Chapter I. Problems of Phonostylistics........................................18

Chapter II. The Functional Aspect of Speech Sounds.................39

The Phoneme...............................................................................39

Notation.......................................................................................47

Main Trends in Phoneme Theory...............................................49

Methods of Phonological Analysis.............................................51

The System of English Phonemes...............................................59

1. Consonants.........................................................................60

2. Modifications of Consonants in Connected Speech..........71

3. Vowels.................................................................................78

4. Modifications of Vowels in Connected Speech.................88

Sound Alternations......................................................................90

Stylistic Modifications of Sounds..............................................100

Chapter III. Syllabic Structure of English Words......................112

Chapter IV. Accentual Structure of English Words..................121

Chapter V. Intonation...............................................................135

Structure and Function..............................................................135

Notation.....................................................................................145

Rhythm......................................................................................163

Stylistic Use of Intonation.........................................................184

1. Informational Style............................................................186

2. Academic Style..................................................................215

3. Publicistic Style.................................................................221

4. Declamatory Style.............................................................226

5. Conversational Style........................................................232

Chapter VI. Territorial Varieties of English Pronunciation......247

Functional Stylistics and Dialectology......................................247

Spread of English.......................................................................252

English-Based Pronunciation Standards of English..................253

British English........................................................................253

I. English English...................................................................254

A. RP (Received Pronunciation).......................................254

Changes in the Standard............................................. 255

B. Regional Non-RP Accents of England.........................262

II. Welsh English....................................................................270

III. Scottish English................................................................271

IV. Northern Ireland English.................................................274

American-Based Pronunciation Standards of English..............276

American English..................................................................276

List of Works Consulted...................................................................284

FOREWORD

Phonetic structure of English is rather a vast area of study for teachers of this language. The purpose of our book is to describe the system of phonetic functional units and their use in the process of social communication.

The plan of this book is organized accordingly. Introduction makes some pleas for the value of phonetics for foreign language teaching and study, views phonetics as a branch of linguistics, establishes its connection with other fields of science, etc. Chapter I introduces the functional approach to the pronunciation of English in use. Chapter II is concerned with segmental phonemes. Chapters III, IV, V discuss suprasegmental aspects including accentual structure, syllabic structure and intonation. Chapter VI is devoted to territorial varieties of English and its teaching norm.

The authors hope that during this course the students will be encouraged to enter into a dialogue with our book and savour the endless fascination of this aspect of linguistic organization.

INTRODUCTION

This book is aimed at future teachers of English. The teachers of a foreign language are definitely aware of the existence of phonetics. They are always being told, that it is essential that they should be skilful phoneticians. The reaction may be different. Some teachers meet it with understanding. Some protest that it is not in their power, for various reasons, to become phoneticians, others deny that it is really necessary.

'Is it in fact necessary for a language teacher to be a phonetician? I would reply that all language teachers willy-nilly are phoneticians. It is not possible, for practical purposes, to teach a foreign language to any type of learner, for any purpose, by any method, without giving some attention to pronunciation. And any attention to pronunciation is phonetics" (42, p. 28).

What do we mean by phonetics as a science? Phonetics is concerned with the human noises by which the thought is actualised or given audible shape: the nature of these noises, their combinations, and their functions in relation to the meaning. Phonetics studies the sound system of the language, that is segmental phonemes, word stress, syllabic structure and intonation. It is primarily concerned with expression level. However, phonetics is obliged to take the content level into consideration too, because at any stage of the analysis, a considerable part of the phonetician's concern is with the effect which the expression unit he is examining and its different characteristics have on meaning. Only meaningful sound sequences are regarded as speech, and the science of phonetics, in principle at least, is concerned only with such sounds produced by a human vocal apparatus as are, or may be, carriers of organized information of language. Consequently, phonetics is important in the study of language. An understanding of it is a prerequisite to any adequate understanding of the structure or working of language. No kind of linguistic study can be made without constant consideration of the material on the expression level.

It follows from this, that phonetics is a basic branch — many would say the most fundamental branch — of linguistics; neither linguistic theory nor linguistic practice can do without phonetics, and no language description is complete without phonetics, the science concerned with the spoken medium of language. That is why phonetics claims to be of equal importance with grammar and lexicology.

Phonetics has two main divisions; on the one hand, phonology, the study of the sound patterns of languages, of how a spoken language functions as a "code", and on the other, the study of substance, that carries the code.

Before analysing the linguistic function of phonetic units we need to know how the vocal mechanism acts in producing oral speech and what methods are applied in investigating the material form of the language, that is its substance.

Human speech is the result of a highly complicated series of events. The formation of the concept takes place at a linguistic level, that is in the brain of the speaker; this stage may be called psychological. The message formed within the brain is transmitted along the nervous system to the speech organs. Therefore we may say that the human brain controls the behaviour of the articulating organs which effects in producing a particular pattern of speech sounds. This second stage may be called physiological. The movements of the speech apparatus disturb the air stream thus producing sound waves. Consequently the third stage may be called physical or acoustic. Further, any communication requires a listener, as well as a speaker. So the last stages are the reception of the sound waves by the listener's hearing physiological apparatus, the transmission of the spoken message through the nervous system to the brain and the linguistic interpretation of the information conveyed.

Although not a single one of the organs involved in the speech mechanism is used only for speaking we can, for practical purposes, use the term "organs of speech" in the sense of the organs which are active, directly or indirectly, in the process of speech sound production.

In accordance with their linguistic function the organs of speech may be grouped as follows:

The respiratory or power mechanism furnishes the flow of air which, is the first requisite for the production of speech sounds. This mechanism is formed by the lungs, the wind-pipe and the

bronchi. The air-stream expelled from the lungs provides the most usual source of energy which is regulated by the power mechanism. Regulating the force of the air-wave the lungs produce variations in the intensity of speech sounds. Syllabic pulses and dynamic stress, both typical of English, e re directly related to the behaviour of the muscles which activate this mechanism.

From the lungs through the wind-pipe the air-stream passes to the upper stages of the vocal tract. First of all it passes to the larynx containing the vocal cords. The function of the vocal cords consists in their role as a vibrator set in motion by the air-stream sent by the lungs. At least two actions of the vocal cords as a vibrator should be mentioned.

The opening between the vocal cords is known as the glottis. When the glottis is tightly closed and the air is sent up below it the so-called glottal stop is produced. It often occurs in English when it reinforces or even replaces [p], [t], or [k] or even when it precedes the energetic articulation of vowel sounds. The most important speech function of the vocal cords is their role in the production of voice. The effect of voice is achieved when the vocal cords are brought together and vibrate when subjected to the pressure of air passing from the lungs. This vibration is caused by compressed air forcing an opening of the glottis and the following reduced air-pressure permitting the vocal cords to come together again.

Glottal positions. Diagrams of some of the possible settings of the vocal cords:

a — tightly closed as for the glottal stop; b — wide-open as for breath; c — loosely together and vibrating as for voice.

The height of the speaking voice depends on the frequency of the vibrations. The more frequently the vocal cords vibrate the higher the pitch is. The typical speaking voice of a man is higher than that of a woman because the vocal cords of a woman vibrate more frequently. We are able to vary the rate of the vibration thus producing modifications of the pitch component

of intonation. More than that. We are able to modify the size of the puff of air which escapes at each vibration of the vocal cords, that is we can alter the amplitude of the vibration which causes changes of the loudness of the sound heard by the listener.

From the larynx the air-stream passes to supraglottal cavities, that is to the pharynx, the mouth and the nasal cavities. The shapes of these cavities modify the note produced in the larynx thus giving rise to particular speech sounds.¹

We shall confine ourselves here to a simple description of the linguistic function of the organs of speech, and refer the reader for further information to any standard handbook of anatomy and physiology, or, rather, to books on general linguistics.

There are three branches of phonetics each corresponding to a different stage in the communication process mentioned above. Each of these branches uses quite special sets of methods.

The branch of phonetics that studies the way in which the air is set in motion, the movements of the speech organs and the coordination of these movements in the production of single sounds and trains of sounds is called articulatory phonetics.

Acoustic phonetics studies the way in which the air vibrates between the speaker's mouth and the listener's ear. Until recently, articulatory phonetics has been the dominating branch, and most descriptive work has been done in articulatory terms. Furthermore, there has appeared no need to alter the balance in any substantial way, especially for the purpose of teaching, acoustic phonetics presenting special interest for research work and applied linguistics. Nevertheless, in the nearest future it may start to play a constantly growing part in teaching pronunciation. We may hope that the development of computing technique will give rise to all sort of teaching machines.

The branch of phonetics investigating the hearing process is known as auditory phonetics. Its interests lie more in the sensation of hearing, which is brain activity, than in the physiological working of the ear or the nervous activity between the ear and the brain. The means by which we discriminate sounds — quality, sensations of pitch, loudness, length, are relevant here. This branch of phonetics is of great interest to anyone who teaches or studies pronunciation.

¹ For a detailed description see: Практическая фонетика английского языка: Учеб. для фак. англ. яз. пед. ин-тов / Соколов М. А., Гинтовт К. П., Кантер Л. А. и др. — М.: Высшая школа, 1984.

It is interesting now to consider the methods applied in investigating the sound matter of the language.

It is useful to distinguish between phonetic studies carried out without other instruments of analysis than the human senses and such as are based upon the witness of registering or computing machines and technical analysing or synthesizing devices. The use of such a device as the tape-recorder does not of course imply in itself any instrumental analysis of the speech recorded, but simply serves the purpose of facilitating the speech analysis and conserving a replica of the speech the informants use.

From the beginning of phonetics the phonetician has relied mainly on what he could feel of his own speech and on what he could hear both of his own and the informant's speech. By training and practice he gains a high degree of conscious control over the muscular functioning of his vocal apparatus, and by experience he may acquire considerable skill in associating the qualities of the heard sound with the nature of the articulations producing it. These skills are obligatory for phoneticians and make phonetics an art rather than a science, an art which must be specially learned.

Instrumental methods deriving from physiology and physics were introduced into phonetics in the second half of the last century in order to supplement and indeed to rectify the impressions deriving from the human senses, especially the auditory impressions, since these are affected by the limitations of the perceptual mechanism, and in general are rather subjective.

The use of instruments is valuable in ascertaining the nature of the limitations and characteristics of the human sensory apparatus by providing finer and more detailed analysis against which sensory analysis can be assessed. In a general way, the introduction of machines for measurements and for instrumental analysis into phonetics has resulted in their use for detailed study of many of the phenomena which are present in the sound wave or in the articulatory process at any given moment, and in the changes of these phenomena from moment to moment. This is strictly an instrumental method of study. This type of investigation together with sensory analysis is widely used in experimental phonetics.

The results available from instrumental analysis supplement those available from sensory analysis. Practically today there are no areas of phonetics in which useful work can and is being done without combining these two ways of phonetic investiga

tion. The "subjective" methods of analysis by sensory impression and the "objective" methods of analysis by instruments are complementary and not oppositive to one another. Both "objective" and "subjective" methods are widely and justifiably used in modern phonetics. Articulatory phonetics borders with anatomy and physiology and the tools for investigating just what the speech organs do are tools which are used in these fields: direct observation, wherever it is possible, e.g. lip movement, some tongue movement; combined with x-ray photography or x-ray cinematography; observation through mirrors as in the laryngoscopy investigation of vocal cord movement, etc.

Acoustic phonetics comes close to studying physics and the tools used in this field enable the investigator to measure and analyse the movement of the air in the terms of acoustics. This generally means introducing a microphone into the speech chain, converting the air movement into corresponding electrical activity and analysing the result in terms of frequency of vibration and amplitude of vibration in relation to time. The use of such technical devices as spectrograph, intonograph and other sound analysing and sound synthesizing machines is generally combined with the method of direct observation.

The pictures on p. 11 may be a good illustration of the use of such a device as the intonograph.

The methods applied in auditory phonetics are those of experimental psychology.

As was stated above, phoneticians cannot act only as describes and classifiers of the material form of phonetic units. They are also interested in the way in which sound phenomena function in a particular language, how they are utilized in that language and what part they play in manifesting the meaningful distinctions of the language. The branch of phonetics that studies the linguistic function of consonant and vowel sounds, syllabic structure, word accent and prosodic features, such as pitch, stress and tempo is called phonology.

In linguistics, function is usually understood to mean discriminatory function, that is, the role of the various elements of the language in the distinguishing of one sequence of sounds, such as a word or a sequence of words, from another of different meaning. Though we consider the discriminatory function to be the main linguistic function of any phonetic unit we cannot ignore the other function of phonetic units, that is, their role in the

formation of syllables, words, phrases and even texts. This functional or social aspect of phonetic phenomena was first introduced in the works by I. A. Baudouin-de-Courtenay. Later on N.S.Trubetskoy declared phonology to be a linguistic science limiting articulatory and acoustic phonetics to anatomy, physiology and acoustics only. This conception is shared by many foreign linguists who investigate the material form and the function of oral speech units separately. Soviet linguists proceed from the truly materialistic view that language being the man’s medium of thought can exist only in the material form of speech sounds. That is why they consider phonology a branch of phonetics that investigates its most important social aspect¹. Phonology possesses its own methods of investigation which will be described later in the course.

The intonogramme of the English phrases "Yes." "Yes?"

Apart from its key position in any kind of scientific analysis of language phonetics plays an important part in various applications of linguistics. A few may be mentioned here.

A study of phonetics has, we believe, educational value for almost everyone, realizing the importance of language in human communication. It is fair to mention here that though language is the most important method we have of communicating, it is manifestly not the only method. We can communicate by gestures, facial expressions, or touch, for instance, and these are not language. The study of the complex of various communication techniques is definitely relevant to teaching a foreign language.

¹ In the following chapters we shall sometimes traditionally use the term "phonetic" meaning non-phonological distinctions.

Through study of the nature of language, especially of spoken language, valuable insights are gained into human psychology and into the functioning of man in society. That is why we dare say that phonetics has considerable social value.

As regards the learning of specific foreign languages, there has never been a time in the world when the ability of growing numbers of people to speak one another's language really well has been of such significance as now. Some training in linguistics and phonetics in general, and in the pronunciation of particular language is coming more and more to be considered equipment for a teacher of foreign languages in school or special faculties making him more efficient in his routine work on the spoken language, as well as in the variety of other things, such as coping with audio-visual aids like tape-recorders and language laboratories or in knowing what to do about any of his pupils who have defective speech.

A knowledge of the structure of sound systems, and of the articulatory and acoustic properties of the production of speech is indispensable in the teaching of foreign languages. The teacher has to know the starting point, which is the sound system of the pupil's mother tongue, as well as the aim of his teaching, which is a mastery of the pronunciation of the language to be learnt. He must be able to point out the differences between these two, and to arrange adequate training exercises. Ear training and articulatory training are both equally important in modern language teaching. The introduction of technical equipment — disks, tape-recorders, language laboratories, etc. — has brought about a revolution in the teaching of the pronunciation of foreign languages.

In our technological age phonetics has become important in a number of technological fields connected with communication. On the research side much present-day work in phonetics entails the use of apparatus, and is concerned with the basic characteristics of human speech. Much basic research is to be done with the phonetician working alongside the psychologist on auditory perception as such and on the perception of speech in particular. The phonetician is further needed to work in conjunction with the mathematician and the communications engineer in devising and perfecting machines that will understand, that is respond to human speech, for the simpler programming of computers, machines that will produce with a high degree of intelligibility recog-

nizable human speech synthetically, machines that will reliably distinguish and identify individual speakers, machines for reproducing human speech in audible or visible forms. For instance, in the experimental stage are devices for "reading" the printed page, that is for converting the printed symbols or letters into synthetic speech. A little further away as yet, but apparently well within the bounds of possibility is the automatic or phonetic typewriter, which will convert speech directly into printed words on paper. Because of the obvious practical importance of advances in these fields it is certain that further collaboration will develop between phonetics and sound engineering, to the mutual benefit of each.

For those who work in speech therapy, which handles pathological conditions of speech, phonetics forms an essential part of the professional training syllabus. Phonetics also enters into the training of teachers of the deaf and dumb people and can be of relevance to a number of medical and dental problems.

An understanding of phonetics has proved extremely useful in such varied spheres as the following: investigations in the historical aspects of languages, and in the field of dialectology; designing or improving systems of writing or spelling (orthographies for unwritten languages, shorthand, spelling reform), in questions involving the spelling or pronunciation of personal or place names or of words borrowed from other languages.

Our further point should be made in connection with the relationship between phonetics and social sciences. A cardinal principle underlying the whole linguistic approach is that language is not an isolated phenomenon; it is a part of society, and a part of ourselves. It is a prerequisite for the development of any society. From the above you may see that phonetics enters into a number of specialized fields and that it is not possible to restrict the investigation of any phonetic phenomenon by the methods of linguistics only. No branch of linguistics can be studied without presupposing at least the study of other aspects of society. The way in which phonetics overlaps in its subject matter with other academic studies has become well appreciated over the last few years, and in the past two decades we have seen the development of quite distinct interdisciplinary subjects, such as sociolinguistics (and sociophonetics correspondingly), psycholinguistics, mathematical linguistics and others. These, as their titles suggest, refer to aspects of language which are relevant and susceptible to study from two points of view (sociology

and linguistics, psychology and linguistics and so on), and which thus requires awareness and development of concepts and the techniques derived from both.

Sociophonetics studies the ways in which pronunciation interacts with society. It is the study of the way in which phonetic structures change in response to different social functions and the deviations of what these functions are. Society here is used in its broadest sense, to cover a spectrum of phenomena to do with nationality, more restricted regional and social groups, and the specific interactions of individuals within them. Here there are innumerable facts to be discovered, even about a language as well investigated as English, concerning, for instance, the nature, of the different kinds of English pronunciation we use in different situations — when we are talking to equals, superiors or subordinates; when we are "on the job", when we are old or young; male or female; when we are trying to persuade, inform, agree or disagree and so on. We may hope that very soon sociophonetics may supply elementary information about: "who can say, what, how, using what phonetic means, to whom, when, and why?" In teaching phonetics we would consider the study of sociolinguistics to be an essential part of the explanation in the functional area of phonetic units.

Finally, we would like to mention one more example of interdisciplinary overlap, that is the relation of linguistics to psychology. Psycholinguistics as a distinct area of interest developed in the early sixties, and in its early form covered the psychological implications of an extremely broad area, from acoustic phonetics to language pathology. Nowadays no one would want to deny the existence of strong mutual bonds of interest operating between linguistics, phonetics in our case and psychology. The acquisition of language by children, the extent to which language mediates or structures thinking; the extent to which language is influenced and itself influences such things as memory, attention, recall and constraints on perception; and the extent to which language has a certain role to play in the understanding of human development; the problems of speech production are broad illustrations of such bounds.

The field of phonetics is thus becoming wider and tending to extend over the limits originally set by its purely linguistic applications. On the other hand, the growing interest in phonetics is doubtless partly due to increasing recognition of the central position of language in every line of social activity. It is important,

however, that the phonetician should remain a linguist and look upon his science as a study of the spoken form of language. It is its application to linguistic phenomena that makes phonetics a social science in the proper sense of the word, notwithstanding its increasing need of technical methods, and in spite of its practical applications.

At the faculties of foreign languages in this country two courses of phonetics are introduced:

Practical or normative phonetics that studies the substance, the material form of phonetic phenomena in relation to meaning.

Theoretical phonetics which is mainly concerned with the functioning of phonetic units in the language. Theoretical phonetics, as we introduce it here, regards phonetic phenomena synchronically without any special attention paid to the historical development of English.

This course is intended to discuss those problems of modern phonetic science which are strongly concerned with English language teaching. The teacher must be sure that what he teaches is linguistically correct. We hope that this book will enable him to work out a truly scientific approach to the material he introduces to his pupils.

In phonetics as in any other subject, there are various schools of thought whose views sometimes coincide and sometimes conflict. Occasional reference is made to them but there is no attempt to set out all possible current approaches to the phonetic theory because this book does not seem to be the place for that.

We shall try here to get away from complex sounding problems of theoretical phonetics by producing thumb-nail definitions, which will provide an easier starting point in this subject. The authors will try to explain exactly why it is important to emphasize that phonetics should be studied scientifically, and follow this up by analysing the object of study, pronunciation, in some detail. All of this assumes, we hope, a considerable amount of interest to the future teacher of English. However, it would be naive of an author to expect anyone to work systematically through so many pages of the text without there being some advance interest or special reason for doing so. This introductory course will be accompanied by further reading, on the one hand, and with a system of special linguistic tasks, on the other, which will enable the students to approach professional problems; to satisfy their applied interest in the scientific study of their subject.

As you see from the above, this book is intended to consider

the role of phonetic means in the act of communication, to serve as a general introduction to the subject of theoretical phonetics of English which will encourage the teacher of English to consult more specialized works on particular aspects.

The authors of the book hope that the readers have sufficient knowledge of the practical course of English phonetics as well as of the course of general linguistics, which will serve as the basis for this course.

Phonetics is itself divided into two major components: segmental phonetics, which is concerned with individual sounds (i.e. "segments" of speech) and suprasegmental phonetics whose domain is the larger units of connected speech: syllables, words, phrases and texts. The way these elements of the phonetic structure of English function in the process of communication will be the main concern of all the following chapters.

The description of the phonetic structure of English will be based on the so-called Received Pronunciation which will be specified in Chapter VI.

The present volume attempts to survey the system of phonetic phenomena of English giving priority to those which present special interest to teaching activity. To start with it is necessary to realize what kind of English is used in the process of teaching. We all agree that we are to teach the "norm" of English, as a whole, and the "norm" of English pronunciation in particular. There is no much agreement, however, as far as the term "norm" is concerned. This term is interpreted in different ways. Some scholars, for instance, associate "norm" with the so-called "neutral" style. According to this conception stylistically marked parameters do not belong to the norm. More suitable, however, seems to be the conception put forward by Y. Screbnev, who looks upon the norm as a complex of all functional styles (27). We have given priority to the second point of view as it is clearly not possible to look upon the pronunciation norm as something ideal which does not, in fact, exist in objective speech. We look upon the norm as a complex unity of phonetic styles realized in the process of communication in accordance with varying extralinguistic and social factors.

In the following chapter we are going to dwell on the problems concerned with stylistic variation of oral speech including the analysis of the conditions under which the utterance is produced, the relationship between the utterance and the extralinguistic and social situation, etc.

Chapter I PROBLEMS OF PHONOSTYLISTICS

As was mentioned in the introduction, pronunciation is by no means homogeneous. It varies under the influence of numerous factors. These factors lie quite outside any possibility of signalling linguistic meaning so it is appropriate to refer to these factors as extralinguistic. The chapter that follows is based on the idea that information about stylistic variations in learning, understanding and producing language is directly useful for the design, execution and evaluation of teaching phonetics. The branch of phonetics most usually applied for such information is phonostylistics. It is the purpose of this chapter to offer brief, readable and scholarly introduction to the main themes and topics covered by current phonostylistic studies.

We should point out right at the beginning that phonostylistics is a rapidly developing and controversial field of study though a great deal of research work has been done in it. It would not be accurate to say that phonostylistics is a new branch of phonetics. It is rather a new way of looking at phonetic phenomena. Linguists were until recently not aware of this way of analysis and awareness came only as a result of detailed analysis of spoken speech.

Before we go on to describe in detail what the problems and tasks of phonostylistics are we should want to give you some understanding of what gave a mighty impulse to this new way of looking at phonetic phenomena. The point is that during the first half of our century linguists have shown interest in written form of the language and so the emphasis in language study was laid on analysing written speech. It is only during the last thirty-five years that the situation has changed. It may be said that it was the invention of the tape-recorder and other technical aids that was the real turning point in phonetics and linguistics in general. Linguists got a good opportunity of studying the other form of language realization — spoken speech — the variety which had hitherto been largely or completely ignored. It is not

only the absence of mechanical aids which accounts for the lack of linguistic research that has been carried out into this variety of language and the procedure difficulty of obtaining reliable data to investigate. There is, however, a further reason. Until quite recently theory and research on language was based on the assumption that it is only the written form of language realization that can serve a reliable object of investigation, while the spoken form is not worthy of scientific analysis because it produces deviations from the literary norm.

Nobody would want to deny the fact that spoken speech is the primary medium of language expression. So when linguists became involved in investigating language in use they realized that language is not an isolated phenomenon, it is a part of society. In real life people find themselves in various and numerous situations. In these situations language is used appropriately, i.e. people select from their total linguistic repertoires those elements which match the needs of particular situations.

This fact changed the whole approach to the language. Rather than viewing language as an object with independent existence, a thing to be described for its own sake, it became evident that it must be seen as a tool, a means to an end outside itself. That end is, of course, communication and it is only in the context of communicative situation that the essential properties of a linguistic system can be discovered and analysed.

So it is taken to be reasonably obvious that much of what people say depends directly or indirectly on the situation they are in. The nature of this dependency is fairly complicated and it would be quite unrealistic to attempt to analyse all aspects of it. We would like to point out two things that matter for the description that follows and stand out clearly. On the one hand, variations of language in different situations it is used in are various and numerous but, on the other hand, all these varieties have much in common as they are realizations of the same system. That means that there are regular patterns of variation in language, or, in other words, language means which constitute any utterance are characterized by a certain pattern of selection and arrangement.

The principles of this selection and arrangement, the ways of combining the elements form what is called "the style". Style integrates language means constructing the utterance, and at the same time differs one utterance from another.

It must be noted that the category of style is not new in linguistics. The branch of linguistics that is primarily concerned with the problems of functional styles is called functional stylistics. Stylistics is usually regarded as a specific division of linguistics, as a sister science, concerned not with the elements of the language as such but with their expressive potential.

We should point out here that we are not going into details as to the problems of stylistics. We shall only try to show how phonostylistics overlaps with functional stylistics and to explain why there is no simple correspondence between functional and phonetic styles.

It has been suggested that a functional style can be defined as a functional set of formal patterns into which language means are arranged in order to transmit information. A considerable number of attempts have been made in recent years to work out a classification of functional styles. But in spite of this fact it is still an open question in linguistics. In other words, there is no universal classification that is admitted by all analysts.

This fact can be accounted for by the following reasons. As was pointed out earlier, language events take place in situations. The factors that determine the usage of certain language means are quite numerous and various. Their interdependence and interconnection are of complex nature. Consequently it is difficult to decide which of the factors are of primary importance and should be considered the most reliable criterion.

In addition, language as a means of communication is known to have several functions. In the well-known conception suggested by academician V. V. Vinogradov (10), three functions are distinguished, that is the function of communication (colloquial style), the function of informing (business, official and scientific styles) and the emotive function (publicistic style and the belles-lettres style). Classification of this kind actually reflects some of the aspects of stylistic phenomena. However, the criterion of distinguishing styles does not seem accurate enough. It is obvious that what is called the emotive function is the general task of literature but not of style. Besides, the language of fiction should not be treated on the same footing with the functional style of a language.

The other two above-mentioned functions cannot serve as a basis for distinguishing functional styles because there is no simple correspondence between the function and the style. For ex

ample, scientific style is used not only for informing people but also for communication of scientists in discussions, talks, speeches and so on. Colloquial speech, in its turn, always combines those two functions. What is to be taken into account here is the difficulty of distinguishing those two functions, which is one of the basic problems. In fact communication is the process of exchanging information. The actual difference between communicating and informing can be marked primarily in a dialogue — monologue opposition.

As was mentioned above, there exist various classifications of. functional-styles.- The terms that are most-commonly dealt with are: scientific style, publicistic style, business style, belles-lettres style and colloquial style. The latter functions predominantly in everyday oral speech, though most scholars share the opinion that there is no simple correspondence between the styles and the forms of language realization.

We should note here that in the process of studying the characteristics of functional styles phonetic level of analysis has been completely ignored.

However, nobody would want to deny now that oral speech has its own specific characteristics and the quality of various forms and kinds of oral speech is by far larger than in written speech. So it is quite clear that description and comparison of all these variations is a matter of severe complexity as, on the one hand, each form is specific and, on the other hand, there are regular patterns of partial likeness between them. Now one thing is evident, that the sets of phonetic style-forming features do not correspond to functional styles in pure linguistic approach. They are characterized by different qualities.

We have mentioned above that certain nonlinguistic features can be correlated with variations in language use. The latter can be studied on three levels: phonetic, lexical and grammatical. The first level is the area of phonostylistics.

Summarizing, we may say that phonostylistics studies the way phonetic means are used in this or that particular situation which exercises the conditioning influence of a set of factors which are referred to as extralinguistic. The aim of phonostylistics is to analyse all possible kinds of spoken utterances with the main purpose of identifying the phonetic features, both segmental and suprasegmental, which are restricted to certain kinds of contexts, to explain why such features have been used and to

classify them into categories based upon a view of their function.

Before describing phonetic style-forming factors it is obviously necessary to try to explain what is meant by extralinguistic situation. We should note here that if a systematic exhaustive and ultimately realistic view of phonostylistic differentiation of oral speech is to be attained an orderly analysis of the communicative extralinguistic situation appears to be mandatory. The analysis shows that it can be defined by three components, that is purpose, participants, setting. These components distinguish situation as the context within which interaction (communication) occurs. Thus a speech situation can be defined by the cooccurrence of two or more interlocutors related to each other in a particular way, having a particular aim of communicating, communicating about a particular topic in a particular setting.

Firstly, a situation is connected with the purpose and the topic of the communication. For us purpose can be defined as the motor which sets the chassis of setting and participants going, it is interlinked with the other two components in a very intricate way. The purpose which is of interest to us here directs the activities of the participants throughout a situation to complete a task. Such purposes can be viewed in terms of general activity types and in terms of the activity type plus specific subject matter.

There appear to be a considerable number of quite general types of activities, for example: working, teaching, learning, conducting a meeting, chatting, playing a game, etc. Such activity types are socially recognized as units of interaction that are identifiable.

It is reasonable to assume that activity types available to members of a society are not simply random lists of all possibilities but are organized into clusters of activities that seem to be of the same order. So we might suggest that academic activities such as university lecturing, high-levelled school teaching, scientific reports, discussions, etc. as related to activity types are opposed to other groups of activity types, such as, for example, casual chat, whether of dentist and patient to schoolmates or neighbours. (One of the bases of such an opposition might be the degree of spontaneity or degree of preparedness of speech that would reveal clusters of pronunciation markers.)

It should be noted that activity type alone does not give an adequate account of the purpose in a situation. It only specifies

the range of possible purposes that participants will orient toward in the activity but not which specific one will be involved. People do not set out to lecture or to chat on something, they intend to lecture on physics, or literature, or art, to chat on weather or a book they have read. The notion of purpose requires the specification of contents at a more detailed level than that of activity type. This we shall call "subject matter" or "topic" and we shall assume isomorphy between subject matter of the speech activity and topic of speech ignoring such situations when, for example, participants might be cooking while chatting about their work. But we should like to point out here that subject matter, in large part, will determine the lexical items encountered, the pronunciation being very slightly affected. That is why when the study of functional variants of pronunciation is concerned it is activity types that form the notion of the purpose of communication.

Now let's consider another component of situation that is participants. Speech varies with participants in numerous ways. It is a marker of various characteristics of the individual speakers as well as of relationships between participants. Characteristics of individuals may be divided into those which appear to characterize the individual as an individual and those which characterize the individual as a member of a significant social grouping. The individualistic characteristics are not a primary focus of this volume. So let us turn our attention to social relationships. The taking on of roles and role relations is commonly confounded with settings and purposes. When Dr. Smith, for instance, talks like a doctor and not like a father or someone's friend it is likely to be when he is in a surgery or a hospital and is inquiring about the health of a patient or discussing new drugs with a colleague. Such confounding may well be more true of occupational roles than of non-occupational roles such as strangers or friends, adults or older and younger children, etc.

Usually age of participants is also an important category for social interaction. Among other things age is- associated with the role structure in the family and in social groups, with the assignment of authority and status, and with the attribution of different levels of competence. The speech behaviour of a person not only conveys information about his or her own age but also about the listener or the receiver of the verbal message. Thus, old people speak and are spoken to in a different way from young people.

For instance, an elderly person usually speaks in a high-pitched voice, people generally use higher pitch-levels speaking to younger children.

There is another factor, which is included into the "participants" component of a speech situation. That is the sex of the speaker. Sex differences in pronunciation are much more numerous than differences in grammatical form. For instance, there is a consistent tendency for women to produce more standard or rhetorically correct pronunciation which is'generally opposed to the omission of certain speech sounds. Girls and women pronounce the standard realization of the verb ending in -ing (reading, visiting, interesting) more frequently than boys and men who realize -in (readin, visitin, interestin) more often; female speakers use a more "polite" pattern of assertive intonation ('Yes. Yes, I ˎ know.) while male speakers use a more deliberate pattern ( ˎ Yes. ˎYes. I ˎ know.); women tend to use certain intonation patterns that men usually do not (notably "surprise" pattern of high fall-rises and others).

It should be noted here that the capacity of phonetic means to realize sex differences is undoubtedly of immense importance and interest. But further clarification of rather intricate questions can only come from more observations of living speech and would naturally require a detailed examination of a much larger corpus.

Talking about "participants" component we should add one more characteristic that needs consideration. That is the emotional state of the speaker at the moment of speech production which is likely to reveal pronunciation markers which would be a fascinating problem of research.

The last component we have to consider is called setting, or scene. It is defined by several features. The first of them is a physical orientation of participants. This is to some extent determined by the activity they are engaged in; thus in a lecture the speaker stands at some distance from and facing the addressees whereas in a private chat they are situated vis-a-vis each other. It is quite obvious now that speech over an intercom and speech in face-to-face communication is obviously phonologically distinguishable in a number of ways.

Scenes may be arranged along dimensions: public — private, impersonal — personal, polite — casual, high-cultured — low-cultured, and many other value scales. In large part these diverse

scales seem to be subsumed — for participants as well as analysts — under one bipolar dimension of formal — informal. The kind of language appropriate to scenes on the formal or "high" end of the scale is then differentiated from that appropriate to those on the informal or "low" end. From the acquaintance with English and Russian we can speculate that such differentiation follows universal principles, so that high forms of language share certain properties, such as elaboration of syntax and lexicon, phonological precision and rhythmicality, whereas "low" forms share properties including elipsis, repetition, speed and slurring. If this is so we may expect pronunciation features to be markers of the scene or at least of its position in the formal — informal dimension.

We have attempted to show what is generally understood by an extralinguistic situation and what components may be considered as its constituents. It is, perhaps, easy to see how numerous the main factors determining variation in language usage are. What we are interested in here is variations of phonetic means. A framework for understanding and describing them has to deal with the constant and decisive features of the situational circumstances of language event that are relevant for phonetic level of analysis. It would be true to say that this problem was given a good deal of attention and there is a lot of data obtained with the help of special investigation. It allows us now to single out, a number of factors which result in phonostylistic varieties. They are:

1) the purpose, or the aim of the utterance;

2) the speaker's attitude;

3) the form of communication;

4) the degree of formality;

5) the degree of spontaneity (or the degree of preparedness or the reference of the oral text to a written one).

It should be mentioned right here that the purpose or the aim of the utterance may be called a phonetic style-forming factor. All other factors cause modifications within this or that style and that is why may be referred to as style-modifying factors.

There is one more thing that should be pointed out here. All these factors are interdependent and interconnected. They are singled out with the purpose of describing phonetic phenomena so that to give a good idea of how the system works.

Now we shall try to consider each of the above-mentioned factors and to explain what sort of phonetic variations may correlate with each of them.

The first factor we should consider is the purpose of the utterance and the subject matter. As was mentioned earlier, we should assume isomorphy between these two constituents. As the subject matter in large part determines the lexical items, it is the aim of the utterance that affects pronunciation. So in this respect the aim could be spoken of as the strategy of the language user and so it may be called a style-forming factor. On the phonetic level there are variations related to describe what language is being used for in the situation: is the speaker trying to persuade? to exhort? to discipline? Is he teaching, advertising, amusing, controlling, etc.? Each of the above-mentioned variants makes the speaker select a number of functional phonetic means with the purpose of making the realization of the aim more effective. In terms of phonostylistics we may analyse various phonetic ways of reflecting the speaker's purposive role in the situation in which the text occurred.

Another extralinguistic factor most often referred to is the speaker's attitude to the situation or to what he is saying or hearing. It is common knowledge that a communicative situation is part of a human being's everyday life situation So it is natural for a language user to consider the situation from his point of view, revealing his personal interest and participation in what he is saying. The thing he is talking about may satisfy him or not, may please him or not, may elicit his positive or negative response, his emotions. This factor forms a complex bundle with another characteristic feature of oral speech. It is no new notion that any oral text is addressee-oriented. This means that the listener is always concrete, no matter whether communication takes place in public or private atmosphere. This factor can well be said to greatly differ oral form of language realization from its written form. In sum, this factor can be considered a relevant feature of oral speech. Its most common linguistic realization is intonation varieties which can be numerous like varieties of attitudes and emotions an individual can express in various life situations. Concluding we might say that subjective colouring of oral speech is one of its most integral characteristics.

Considering the form of communication we should say that nature of participation in the language event results in two pos

sible varieties: a monologue and a dialogue. It should be mentioned here that a distinction between a monologue and a dialogue is a fairly conditioned one but we note this distinction for a number of reasons.

Monologuing is the speaking by one individual in such a way as to exclude the possibility of interruption by others. Dialoguing (conversing) is speaking in such a way as to invite the participation of others. It is quite possible for one person to communicate with another and to be the only speaker. Similarly two people can monologue at each other. Monologuing is taken to be the user's medium relationship in those speech situations in which the other people present do not join in or at least are not meant to, except, perhaps, to show approval or disapproval. From the linguistic point of view only one feature is considered to be relevant, i.e. the length of the utterance. Monologues are usually more extended. They are also characterized by more phonetic, lexical and grammatical cohesion. This means that monologues usually have more apparent continuity and self-containedness than conversation. Phonetic organization of either of the two varieties cannot he analogical since each kind is characterized by specific usage of language means of all the three levels.

If we look upon a dialogue and a monologue from psycholinguistic point of view it turns out that the latter are more complex units. It can be proved by the fact that people who find themselves abroad learn dialoguing quite easily, while monologuing requires special training even in the native language. There are a lot of people who use their native language while dialoguing quite adequately but who fail to produce an extended utterance in case they are supposed to.

Among the social factors determining the usage of stylistic means it is the formality of situation which is very often referred to.

It is obvious that the process of speaking is very often a recognition of social roles and relationship. The interaction of individuals depends upon their learning and accepting the roles of social behaviour. A certain individual may possess a certain rank in an organization which entitles him to be addressed in a certain fashion by his subordinates, in another way by his equals and in a third way by his superiors. So to come to terms with how roles and relations are realized in language we speak of formality of discourse. Formality reflects how the addresser (the speaker) in-

teracts with the addressee (the listener). The relationship is the situational category, the extralinguistic reality.

Formality results from mutual relations among participants in language events. When the relationship is considered on the personal axis, variations ranging from extreme degrees of formality to extreme degrees of informality are relevant. So we might say that spoken language shapes relationships, it defines and identifies them, and it is the category of formality which marks speaking "the right" kind of language.

Considering a communicative situation from the point of view of sociolinguistics we would have to admit that it makes the language user realize the importance and necessity of stylistic demands for his language consciousness. So the dichotomy formal — informal (official — unofficial) can be understood here as the absence or presence of socially realized necessity to follow certain rules while generating an utterance. Informal communication does not make the speaker use obligatory forms, it allows to use them. In discussing this factor we have to admit that the category of formality is generally included into the set of style-differentiating factors applied. It suggests that a language user possesses the ability to speak in different styles. It is the case with people whose professions are highly verbal ones. Such people usually have a very cultural background. In the opposite case the linguistic behaviour of a speaker in a formal situation does not differ from his behaviour in an informal situation.

The influence of this factor upon the phonetic form of speech is revealed by variations of rate of articulation. So we might say that the variable along which styles of speaking differ is mainly sounds. In a formal situation the language user tends to make his speech distinct, thorough and precise. His conscious attention to the form of production makes him choose the full style of pronunciation. The notion of the appropriateness of speaking slow enough is presumably part of the cultural code which insists that it is rude to talk fast and less explicit in such situation. In an informal situation he would prefer less explicit and more rapid form because this form would be more appropriate and would function efficiently as a mode of communication.

It would be a vast oversimplification to assume that there are only two varieties of pronunciation. There are, certainly, many more of them. Indeed there is an infinite number and they have no definable boundaries, each merges imperceptibly into the next.

The two polar varieties that have been mentioned above illustrate the role of degree of formalily as an extralinguistic category.

We should point out here that there is another factor which is very often referred to as the one related to degree of formality. What we mean is the quantity of addressees. This factor determines the distinction of public and non-public oral texts (14, c. 82). Speech is qualified as public when a speaker is listened to by a group of people. Non-public communication occurs in face-to-face situations. It would be fair to mention that there are no direct correlations between the formality of situation and public — non-public character of presentation.

Linguistic realization of the formality on both segmental and suprasegmental levels is very important for a student of another language. He brings to his learning task all the habits and knowledge of his mother tongue and his culture. Learning a foreign language involves suspending these and acquiring others. The student, however, will often continue to interpret situations as he would in his own culture. In other words his grasp of formality of situation is incomplete. He may often have a formal way and perhaps a relatively informal one but he may not know the gradation in between the extremes. The result may be an un-appropriate usage of intonation structure with the wrong meaning. For example, in Russian the leave-taking До свидания can be pronounced both with low rising and low falling tone, which sounds neutral, while in English Good-bye! pronounced with a low falling tone sounds fairly rude, while rising tone makes it neutral.

Analysing extralinguistic factors we should add some more to the above-mentioned ones. They are: the speaker's individuality, temporal provenance, social provenance, range of intelligibility, sex and age of the speaker. The first thing to know about them is that they are incidental concomitant features. They are characteristic of a language user and can not vary, with very little exception, like all the above-mentioned ones. So they are not deliberately chosen by the speaker at the time of text production, though they may very well serve as his identifying features, thus from this point of view they may be considered informative.

One of the most important style-modifying factors is the degree of spontaneity. So if we examine the situations in which

people speak rather than write from the point of view of psychology we can distinguish between those in which they are speaking spontaneously as opposed to those in which they are speaking non-spontaneously as the actor and the lecturer are most often doing. The types of speech situations which lead to spontaneous speech include classroom teaching, television and radio interviews, sporting commentaries on radio and television of an event actually taking place, conversation between experts in a particular field of everyday conversations. We should realize, of course, that between two poles of spontaneity there are a number of more delicate distinctions. For example, the sporting commentator has studied notes and has described this sort of thing before; the people whose professions are highly verbal ones such as the journalist, the politician, the teacher, the lawyer and the stage entertainer become accustomed to producing spontaneous texts and are very often called upon to speak spontaneously about the same area of experience. This means that although they have no written text in front of them there are elements of preparation and repetition in their speaking performances which give them some of the characteristics of written modes. These characteristics are most clearly identified at the phonetic level of analysis.

If an utterance is qualified as fully spontaneous from linguistic point of view it means that its verbal realization is taking place at the moment of speaking, though, of course, it could be thought over in advance. There are situations where this kind of speech activity is not possible. The reason that accounts for that results from three things: a) the utterance is too long to be remembered because, as we know, there are memory constraints; these are utterances produced in the form of lectures, reports, etc.; b) the time of the speaker is limited, so the message has to be conveyed without any hesitation; for example, news over the radio and TV; c) the speaker is realizing somebody else's utterance, for example, reading a piece of prose, quoting, etc. In the above-mentioned cases the utterance or rather its verbal realization is prepared in advance, i.e. written on a sheet of paper. This script version is used at the moment of production — it is read. This type of presentation is qualified as fully prepared. The speaker may use the written variant just to help himself remember the logic succession of the uttered contents. In this case the speech is also fully prepared. In either of the above-mentioned

cases a written text was made with the purpose of being produced orally. It serves as a means of optimization of the process of transmitting the message. This kind of written text should be distinguished from literary written texts which are not to be read aloud though such possibility is not completely excluded The latter differs from the former in fairly specific organization of lexical and grammatical means which is one of the most important characteristics.

Now if we look upon the degree of spontaneity as a style-modifying factor we should admit that it has a decisive influence on the phonetic organization of an oral text. In other words, the primary distinction that should be drawn is the distinction between two kinds of speech activity, i.e. speaking and reading (speech without and with reference to the written text). This distinction is included by most phoneticians into the set of influencing factors no matter what aspect of speech is analysed. Actually the two kinds of oral texts differ quite considerably in the way the phonetic means of the language are used. If we want to describe the difference we would have to admit this is where phonetics overlaps with psycholinguistics, a new interdisciplinary subject.

Psycholinguistics as a distinct area of science developed in early sixties though the contact of linguistics and psychology is known to have lasted for more than a hundred years. Language is considered to be an instrument of human psychics and so information from psychology plays an important and practically useful part in the development of linguistics.

It is true that investigation of speech cannot be carried out without considering the structure and organization of activities due to which production and perception of speech take place, the latter being psycholinguistics study area. Language is known to be a human activity. Any human activity can exist in two forms, i.e. in the form of the process and in the form of the product as the result of the process. So it is perfectly clear that it is impossible to interpret phonetic characteristics of living speech without having an idea of the psychic laws of speech perception and speech production.

Before we go on to describing phonetic characteristics of the above-mentioned kinds of speech realizations we would like to

give an idea, a very sketchy one, of what these two processes are like.

The point is that speaking and reading being processes of communication and varieties of speech activity are two different psychic processes, i.e. the sounding utterance is generated in quite different ways. When a written text is being read aloud, a reader has got a verbal realization before his eyes, the script which has been prepared in advance either by himself or by another person. So he need not think of what to say or rather of how to put the ideas into words. The only thing he has to do is to make the graphic symbols sound, i.e. to realize orally the ideas verbally expressed by means of lexics and grammar of the language. Oral realization should be made according to pronunciation rules of a particular language. Besides, if he is to read with comprehension the graphic symbols of the language he must learn to supply those portions of the signals which are not in the graphic representation themselves. He must supply the significant stresses, pauses and tone sequences. In short, the reader should learn to use the phonetic means of a language to be able to express the ideas of the written text adequately. If he has acquired this sort of habit, psychologically he is quite sure of what he is going to produce. As a result the usage of phonetic means is characterized by a very high degree of regularity. Melodic, temporal, rhythmic organization of the text is even; pauses are made at syntactical junctures within and between the sentences. The text sounds loud and distinct (both sounds and intonation are meant).

While spontaneous speech is taking place (when no notes are used) the process of psychic activity consists of two equally important items, i.e. a) the process of searching (remembering) information and the ways of expressing it verbally and b) the process of giving (transmitting) information. The speaker has got an intention to express some ideas and he should choose an adequate linguistic form to express these ideas and in this way to generate the utterance.

Naturally the psychic mechanisms of generating the spoken utterances are quite different. Consequently, phonetic means of the language are also used differently, the difference being the marker of the form of speech activity.

Analysing most important characteristics of a spoken spontaneous text we should first of all mention a phenomenon called

hesitation. The point is that while generating a text a speaker has no time or rather not enough time to make sure of the correct form of the expression he has chosen, because he is simultaneously planning what he is going to say next and also monitoring what he is saying. The wording is taking place simultaneously with pronouncing. Consequently, the speaker hesitates. He hesitates to remember a further piece of information, to choose a correct word, a correct grammar structure and so on. This hesitation phenomenon breaks the regularity and evenness of phonetic form. There appear micropauses, pauses of different length and quality which seldom occur at the syntactic juncture; lengthening of sounds within the words and in the word final position. A spontaneous text is characterized by a number of relevant features both on segmental and suprasegmental levels: various kinds of assimilation, reduction, elision which manifest simplification of sound sequences; uneven rhythm, fragments melody contour, abundance of pauses, varying loudness (from very loud to very low), narrow range of voice, varying tempo (from very fast to very slow).

Among the features distinguishing the two described kinds of speech realization there is one that needs a more detailed description. That is the delimitation. In reading pauses occur at the syntactic junctures, so an intonation group coincides with what is called a "syntagm(a)". In a spontaneous text hesitating often prevents the speaker from realizing a full syntagm(a). There may appear a hesitation pause which breaks it. so an intonation group does not coincide with a syntagm(a). Pauses at the end of the phrase are often optional, because the speaker does not realize the rules of phrasing, i.e. of making pauses at the moment of speaking. For example:

Many slang words are invented to cover new situations ... which people feel that the traditional type of words doesn't cover ... phrases that you often find among the teenagers today ... They want to have new styles of dress, new hair styles ... and ... they want to call it something, their own words so that they can identify it in a group.

Summarizing we may say that all the above-mentioned features may be referred to as the main phonetic markers of a spontaneous text. It should be borne in mind that phonetic peculiari-

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ties are noticeable together with specific grammatical, mainly syntactical, structures of the utterance.

In teaching English, especially spoken English, one should be well aware of specific phonetic markers of living speech. They are its integral and most natural characteristics. A student of English should be specially taught such peculiarities. Otherwise a spoken text would sound like a read one which would be unnatural and wrong.

Summarizing briefly we may say that we have tried to describe the main extralinguistic situational factors that make the language user choose the appropriate code of phonetic realization of the generated text. The ones that are proposed here are not all that need to be considered. They will, however, form a temporary framework for the description of phonetic styles. We should point out here that their role as style-modifying factors is different. Some of them, spontaneity, for example, play the decisive role, others, for example, the number of listeners, seem to have less marking power. The idea that should be realized is that in everyday life situations all of them are interconnected and interdependent and it is normally the combination of several of them that determines the style.

We have established so far that certain non-linguistic features can be correlated with variations of phonetic means. Now we turn to discuss what patterns of variation are interpreted by the listener as modifying a given utterance. In other words what perceptional characteristics of an oral text should be considered to have a style-differentiating value. Here we should note that while comparing things or phenomena we are first of all attracted by differentiating features while common characteristics are taken for granted.

It may be well to begin with a special voice colouring which is sometimes called speech timber. The speaker's attitude to the communicative situation, to what he is saying, the relationships of the partners are revealed by timber. Timber combined with non-verbal system of communication, kinesic system, is a marker of some specific attitude, or emotion which would be a permanent characteristic of a language user in a given communicative act.

Delimitation is another characteristic which is commonly referred to as a style-differentiating feature on the perceptive level. As was mentioned earlier, it is the extralinguistic factors, mostly

of psycholinguistic character, that determine the laws and phonetic means of delimitation. Among the latter pauses should be considered and described independently.

There are different patterns of phonetic delimitation of an oral text. The terms most often referred to denote fragments of speech continuum into which the whole text is naturally divided are as follows: a phonopassage (in monologues), a semantic block (in dialogues), a phrase, an intonation group.

A third characteristic which is usually referred to the set of style-differentiating ones is the accentuation of semantic centres. By semantic centres we mean parts of the utterance that have a considerable value in realization of functional utterance perspective, i.e. in expressing the main contents of the utterance. It is for the most part intonation that permits to do this. Intonation marks those parts of the utterance contrasting them to the rest of the text. The degree of contrast can vary, the variable being the marker of the style. For example, in spontaneous speech the contrast between accented and non-accented segments of an utterance is greater than in reading, due to the fact that in speech the unaccented elements are pronounced at a lower pitch.

In describing phonetic style-differentiating characteristics (both on segmental and suprasegmental level) we would have to deal with a certain amount of notions such as variations of pitch direction, pitch range, pitch level, loudness, tempo (which includes both pauses and speech rate), rhythm and some others, the meaning of which will become clear as the book proceeds.

Talking about style-differentiating means of phonetic level we should remember that their usage is no aim in itself. Phonetic means of the language in interacting with lexics and grammar optimize the process of realization of ideas by verbal means.

Now that we have described style-forming factors and style-differentiating characteristics it seems logical enough to give a bird's eye view on the problem of classification of phonetic styles.

It would be an oversimplification to say that there is a classification admitted by most analysts. However, there is one thing that stands out clearly: while classifying various speech realizations from phonostylistic point of view an analyst should single out criteria that are different from the ones used as a basis for distinguishing functional styles of language. We make it clear by

means of an example. We might suggest that various speech realizations can be grouped on the basis of some most general common phonetic characteristics. Thus such speech realizations as informative reading over radio and TV, a text produced behind the screen, lectures, reports, etc. can be grouped together since they are monologues with reference to written texts. From the point of view of functional stylistics they are referred to different styles: reading over the radio is qualified as a text belonging to the functional sphere of publicistics, while a lecture is referred to scientific functional style. So we may see that the kinds of oral texts traditionally referred to different functional styles are characterized by common phonetic features.

There could be brought about examples of the opposite kind. Texts that are traditionally referred to different functional styles turn out to have identical phonetic organization. For example, the phonetic experiments carried out recently show that texts belonging to different functional styles (an extract from prose — an extract from a guide for tourists) read with identical pragmatic aim do not reveal any difference in phonostylistic aspect.

Among the well-known classifications of phonetic styles we would like to mention the following two. One of them belongs to S. M. Gaiduchic. He distinguishes five phonetic styles: solemn (торжественный), scientific business (научно-деловой), official business (официально-деловой), everyday (бытовой), and familiar (непринужденный). As we may see the above-mentioned phonetic styles on the whole correlate with functional styles of the language. They are differentiated on the basis of spheres of discourse. The other way of classifying phonetic styles is suggested by J. A. Dubovsky who discriminates the following five styles: informal ordinary, formal neutral, formal official, informal familiar, and declamatory. The division is based on different degrees of formality or rather familiarity between the speaker and the listener. Within each style subdivisions are observed. But as the author himself writes it is rather the principle of presenting the texts for description and analysis because "no theory has yet created a completely symmetrical classification of speech acts" (14, p. 6).

Our approach is slightly different. When we consider the problem of classifying phonetic styles according to the criteria described above we should distinguish so far between segmental and suprasegmental level of analysis because some of them (the

aim of the utterance, for example) result in variations of mainly suprasegmental level, while others (the formality of situation, for example) reveal segmental varieties. So for the sake of describing and explaining phonostylistic varieties it seems preferable to consider each level separately until a more adequate system of correlation is found.

The style-differentiating characteristics mentioned above give good grounds for establishing intonational styles suitable not only for sociolinguistic research but also for the purpose of learning and teaching a foreign language.

It might be generally assumed that there are five intonational styles singled out mainly according to the purpose of communication and to which we could refer all the main varieties of the texts generated in everyday communication of a modern man. They are as follows:

1. Informational style.

2. Academic style (Scientific).

3. Publicistic style (Oratorial).

4. Declamatory style (Artistic).

5. Conversational style (Familiar).

But differentiation of intonation according to the purpose of communication only is definitely not enough. As was mentioned above, there are other factors that affect intonation in various extralinguistic situations.

We could add that any style with, very little exception is seldom realized in its pure form. Each generated text is likely to include phonetic characteristics of different styles. In such cases we talk about overlapping (fusion) of styles.

To summarize we could say that the distinction of phonetic styles is a purely formal one because any particular theory while in use should control and give meaning to the descriptive statement. So in this respect the suggested classification is near to adequate way of reflecting numerous speech realizations, on the one hand, and on the other, it is the way to understand and interpret the system. If we attempted to systematize all our observations and account for all the options the task would prove daunting. What we need to do in teaching is simply to call attention to the most marked features of the style ignoring the relatively stable features.

We might conclude by saying that we hope this will be a

useful piece of knowledge for a learner because both the foreign student and the would-be teacher of English need to develop the awareness of different phonetic styles of the language. He should be taught to analyse and describe the speaking habits of English people. He should learn to discover the patterns which differentiate style varieties to explain as far as possible why people speak in a certain way and to determine what form of phonetic expression they may choose because the style should be as natural as dress and fit the time, the place and the person. Besides he should be able to teach other people the same things because teaching a spoken foreign language means teaching the ability to communicate, the art of communication being part of the individual's culture. It is for this reason that this textbook includes this chapter. The chapters that follow will be based on the idea that stylistic differentiation of oral speech cannot be ignored in teaching both a foreign language and a mother tongue.

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