Functional aspect of speech sounds кратко

Обновлено: 02.07.2024

The study of the sounds from the point of view of their linguistic function resulted in distinguishing such phonetic unit as a p h o n e m e. Phoneme is the smallest language unit which exists in the speech of all people belonging to the same community in the form of speech sounds and may bring about the change of meaning.

The phoneme is a functional unit. That means that being opposed to other phonemes in the same phonetic context it is capable of differentiating the meaning, e.g.:

pie – tie Are you fond of cut?

lot – lit Are you fond of cart?

Phoneme has 3 functions 1. constitutive (phonemes exist in their material form speech sounds constitute morphemes, words, sentences all of each are meaningful)2. distinctive (it distinguishes one word from another, even whole sentences) 3. recognitive (it manifests in the process of identification: native speakers can identify combination of phonemes as meaningful units.)

The phoneme is realized in speech in the material form of speech sounds of different type. Various speech realizations of the phoneme are called its allophones. The difference between the allophones of the same phoneme is due to their position in various phonetic contexts. For example, The consonant [ d ] in the isolated position as well as in such a sound sequence as

[d ɒ t ] is a lenis voiced stop articulated with the tip of the tongue against the teeth ridge. In the position before an interdental constrictive [θ ] as in breadth it is formed with the tip of the tongue against the upper teeth, when [ d ] is followed by the post-alveolar [ r ] as in dry the tip of the tongue is placed behind the teeth ridge.

Allophones of the same phoneme never occur in the same phonetic context. They cannot differentiate the meaning since there is no mutual opposition possible in this case. Such speech sounds are grouped into a phoneme and function as a language unit opposed to other language units, i.e. phonemes.

The basic method of establishing the phonemic status of a sound is the method of finding minimal pairs, which consists in finding at least one minimal pair of words which are different in respect of that sound: pit – bit. When two words are identical except for one sound which makes a contrast in the meaning of words, they are said to form a minimal pair, and the two sounds are different phonemes. The two phonemes are distinguished by at least one feature which is called distinctive (phonemic) feature. In English the following set of distinctive features is phonemic for the system of consonants: place of articulation, manner of production, presence or absence of voice, position of the soft palate. Quality is the only phonemic feature in the system of English vowels. Vowel quality depends on the height of the tongue and the front-back position of the tongue.

It is necessary to mention that on the one hand, the phoneme is objective real, because it is realized in speech in the material form of speech sounds, its allophones. On the other hand it is an abstract language unit. That is why we can look upon the phoneme as a dialectical unity of the material and abstract aspects. Thus we may state that it exists in the material form of speech sounds, its allophones. Speech sounds are necessarily allophones of one the phonemes of the language concerned. All the allophones of the same phoneme have some articulatory features in common, but simultaneously each allophone possesses quite particular phonetic features which may not be traced in the articulation of other allophones of the same phoneme. That is why while teaching pronunciation we cannot ask our pupils to pronounce this or that phoneme. We can only ask them to pronounce one of its allophones.

Ph studies sounds as articulatory and acoustic units, phonology investigates sounds as units which serve communicative purposes. The unit of phonetics is a speech sound, the unit of phonology is a phoneme. Phonemes can be discovered by the method of minimal pairs. This method consists in finding pairs of words which differ in 1 phoneme, e.g. if we replace [b] by [t] in the word ban we produce a new word tan, ban-tan is a pair of words distinguished in meaning by a single sound change. 2 words of this kind are termed minimal pairs.

The phonemes of a lang form a system of oppositions, in which any one phoneme is usually opposed to any other phoneme in at least 1 position.

The founder of the phoneme theory was Baudouin de Courteney. His theory of phoneme was developed and perfected by Shcherba, who stated that in actual speech we utter a much greater variety of sounds than we are aware of, and that in every lang these sounds are united in a comparatively small number of sound types, which are capable of distinguishing the meaning and the form of words. It is these sound types that should be included into the classification of phonemes and studied as differentiatory units of the lang. The actually pronounced speech sounds are variants or allophones of phonemes. Allophones are realized in concrete words. They have phonetic similarity, at the same time they differ in some degree and are incapable of differentiating words, e.g. in speech we pronounce not the sound type [t] which is asperated, alveolar, forelingual, apical, occlusive, plosive, voiceless-fortis – according to the classificatory definition, but one of its variants, e.g. labialized in the word twice, dental in the word nineth, post-alveolar in try and so on. The number of sound types, or phonemes, in each lang is much smaller than the number of sounds actually pronounced.

Phonemic variants or allophones are very important for lang teaching, their mispronunciation doesn’t influence the meaning of the words, their misuse makes a person’s speech sound as foreign.

The variants used in actual speech are called subsidiary. Susidiary allophones can be positional and combinatory. Posit alloph are used in certain positions traditionally, e.g. the Eng [l] is realized in actual speech as a positional alloph: it is clear in the initial position and dark (твердый) in terminal position, e.g. let and mill. Rus positional alloph can be obserdved in such words as рубль. Combinatory allophones appear in the process of speech and result from the influence of the phoneme upon another.

Each phoneme manifests itself in a certain pattern of distribution. The simplest of them is free variation, that is the variation of one and the same phoneme pronounced differently, e.g. the pronunciation of the initial [k] with different degree of aspiration. Complementary distribution is another pattern of phoneme environment, when one and the same phoneme occurs in a definite set of context in which no other phoneme ever occurs. Contrastive distribution is one more pattern of phoneme environment, e.g. bad – bed, pit – peat – these are minimal pairs.

Minimal distinctive features are discovered through oppositions. This method helps to prove whether the phonemic difference is relevant or not, whether the opposition is single, double or multiple, [d], [t] have only one distinctively relevant feature – single opposition. If there are two distinctively relevant features, the opposition is double , e.g. [p] and [d] differ after following lines: [p] – voiceless, fortis, labial, bilabial; [d] – voiced, lenis, lingual, forelingual, apical, alveolar. The opposition [b], [h] is multiple, because these phonemes differ along the following lines: [b] - voiced, lenis, labial, bilabial, occlusive; [h] - voiceless, fortis, pharingal, constrictive.

Бодуэн-де-Куртене defined the phoneme as a physical image of a sound, he originated the so called “mentalist” view of the phoneme.

The rules of word stress in English

1. in words of 2-3 syll, the primary str mostly falls on the 1 syl.

2. in prefixal words the primary str falls on the syl following the prefix, recall.

3. in prefixal words with prefixes having their own meaning the place of str is on the prefix, exminister

4. in prefixal verbs which are distinguished from similarly spelled nouns and adjs have their str on the initial syl (‘increase-to in’crease)

5. in compound words the 1 st element is stressed when: 1 they are written as 1 word,2 nouns are compounded of a verb and an adv(make up),3 nouns in the possessive case are followed by another noun (a doll’s house).

In compound words the 2 nd element is stressed when: 1food items have the 1 st elem which is of a material used in manufacturing the whole (appletree), 2names of roads, parks,squares, 3 parts of the house – kitchenwindow, 4 adj-s with past participles, characterizing person, 5 comp nouns ending in –er or –ing are followed by an adv (passer’by)

2 equal str-s are observed in compositive verbs: give up,in numerals 13-19

Почему в случае выполнения потока легких проектов может быть обеспечена равномерная полная занятость при следующем соотношении численности групп: Аналитики : Программисты : Тестеры = 2 : 2 : 1 ? Почему это не выполняется для (сверх)тяжелых проектов?

Phonetics studies the speech system of the language, equal of importance with grammar and lexicology. Whatever the branch of phonetics might be: practical (normative), theoretical, suprasegmental they are all concerned with segmental phonemes, word stress, syllabic structure and intonation. Speech sounds can be analysed from the viewpoint of three aspects: (1) acoustic, (2) physiological / articulatory, (3) auditory / functional. That comes from the three branches of phonetics each corresponding to a different stage in the communication process. The aritculatory phonetics 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. The acoustic phonetics studies the way in which the air vibrates between the speaker's mouth and the listener's ear. The auditory phonetics studies the hearing process.

Acoustically, speech sound is a physical phenomenon produced by the vibration of the vocal cords and perceived due to the vibrations of the layers of air which occur at the rate of 16 to 20 thousand times per second. This is the limit of human hearing.

Sounds may be periodical and non-periodical. The auditory impression of periodic waves is a musical tone or a speech tone. If the vibrations are not rhythmical, we hear noises.

Sound has a number of physical properties; the first of them is frequency, i.e. the number of vibrations per second. It is measured in cycles per second (cps). The greater the frequency, the higher the pitch, and vice versa. The frequency of sound depends on certain physical properties of the mechanism that causes vibration, such as mass, length and tension. A man's voice is lower than a woman's partly because his vocal cords are longer and thicker. With the increase of the vocal cords' tension the frequency increases and the pitch rises. The pitch of a sound is the perception of the frequency of repeated pressures on the ear-drum. A man's voice is lower in pitch than that of a woman's.

The second physical property of sound is intensity. Changes in intensity are perceived as variation in the loudness of a sound. The greater the amplitude of vibration, the greater the intensity of a sound; the greater the pressure on the ear-drums, the louder the sound. Intensity is measured in decibels (dbs).

Any sound has duration, it is its length or quantity of time during which the same vibratory motion, the same pattern, of vibration, are maintained. The duration of speech sounds is usually measured in milliseconds (msecs). The sound waves produced by the vibration of the whole body are called fundamental waves, they are perceived as fundamental tones. Waves, produced by parts of the body are called partial waves, they are perceived as partial tones, or overtones, or harmonics (обертони).

The analysis of a sound frequency and intensity at a definite period of time can be presented graphically with the help of a sound spectrograph. Acoustic characteristics of speech sounds are represented by spectrograms: linear or dynamic and intensity or instant. In instant spectrograms intensity is represented by vertical dimensions, frequency – by horizontal dimension. In linear representations of intensity spectrograms, the strength of harmonics is adequate to the blackness of spots: the stronger the harmonic, the blacker is the spot. Spectrographic analysis gives basis for acoustic definitions and classification of speech sounds [vowels]. One of such classifications was suggested by R. Jacobson, C. Fant and M. Halle. This classification is not only phonoacoustic but also phonemic.

Although acoustic descriptions, definitions and classifications of speech sounds are more precise than articulatory ones, they are practically inapplicable and useless in language teaching, because the acoustic features of speech sounds cannot be seen directly or felt by the language learner. Acoustic descriptions, however, can be applied in the fields of technical acoustics. They are of great theoretical value.

Both types of spectrograms have certain limitations: in linear spectrograms a succession of sounds can be measured but it is difficult to compare their exact quality. They reveal a lot of information about the sound changes in time.

The intensity representations of instant spectrograms can't be read off with any exactness, but their great merit is the possibility to record not only the exact quality, but also the changes of sounds of speech at a particular moment of time.

Spectrogram of vowels [i, u, ɑ]. [ɑ] is a low vowel, so its F1 value is higher than that of [i] and [u], which are high vowels. [i] is a front vowel, so its F2 is substantially higher than that of [u] and [ɑ], which are back vowels. The acoustics of vowels are fairly well understood. The different vowel qualities are realized in acoustic analyses of vowels by the relative values of the formants, acoustic resonances of the vocal tract which show up as dark bands on a spectrogram. The vocal tract acts as a resonant cavity, and the position of the jaw, lips, and tongue affect the parameters of the resonant cavity, resulting in different formant values. The acoustics of vowels can be visualized using spectrograms, which display the acoustic energy at each frequency, and how this changes with time. The first formant, abbreviated "F1", corresponds to vowel openness (vowel height). Open vowels have high F1 frequencies while close vowels have low F1 frequencies, as can be seen at right: The [i] and [u] have similar low first formants, whereas [ɑ] has a higher formant. The second formant, F2, corresponds to vowel frontness. Back vowels have low F2 frequencies while front vowels have high F2 frequencies. This is very clear at right, where the front vowel [i] has a much higher F2 frequency than the other two vowels. However, in open vowels the high F1 frequency forces a rise in the F2 frequency as well, so an alternative measure of frontness is the difference between the first and second formants. For this reason, some people prefer to plot as F1 vs. F2 – F1. (This dimension is usually called 'backness' rather than 'frontness', but the term 'backness' can be counterintuitive when discussing formants.)

R-colored vowels are characterized by lowered F3 values. Rounding is generally realized by a complex relationship between F2 and F3 that tends to reinforce vowel backness. One effect of this is that back vowels are most commonly rounded while front vowels are most commonly unrounded; another is that rounded vowels tend to plot to the right of unrounded vowels in vowel charts. That is, there is a reason for plotting vowel pairs the way they are.

AS ACOUSTIC, ARTICULATORY AND AUDITORY UNITS

SOUNDS OF SPEECH

Вопрос

Sounds may be periodical and non-periodical. The auditory impression of periodic waves is a musical tone or a speech tone. If the vibrations are not rhythmical, we hear noises.

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THE THEORY OF PHONETICS
Lectures 1+2
By Elena A.Filimonova

COURSE REQUIREMENTS
Attendance
Participation
Home assignment
Project
Reports for seminars
Continuous assessment + final exam

What is GOOD PRONUNCIATION?
Ways to acquire good pronunciation:
Ear training
Imitation
Overcoming of the native tongue interference
Memory work
Theoretical knowledge

Is it possible to acquire native-speaker-like pronunciation?

What science is PHONETICS?
What does it study?
Phonetics as a science is concerned with the human noises by which the thought is actualized in audible shape: the nature of these noises, their combinations, and their functions in relation to the meaning

METHODS OF INVESTIGATION
1. The direct observation method :
by ear
by sight
by muscular sensation

2. The linguistic method (to determine in what way all phonetic features are used in a language to convey a certain meaning)

3. The experimental method (use of special apparatus or instruments)
the laryngoscope, the artificial palate, the kymograph, the magnetic tape recorder, the oscillograph, the spectrograph, X-ray photography, slow motion films, speech synthesizers

Branches of Phonetics
Phonetics:
Sociophonetics
Psychophonetics
- Russian phonetics
- Theoretical phonetics
- Practical/ applied phonetics

suprasegmental/
segmental
Phonetics
Experimental/comparative
Special /general
Articulatory/
Acoustic/
Auditory
Descriptive/ historical
phonology

PHONETICS VS. PHONOLOGY
Nikolay Sergeevich Trybetskoy
Phonetics is a biological science, and is concerned with the physical and physiological characteristics of speech sounds.
Phonology is a linguistic science, and is concerned with the social functions of different phonetic phenomena. Phonology is a convenient term to indicate that section of phonetics in which the social functions of speech sounds are discussed.

PHONETICS and other sciences
PHONETICS
PHONOLOGY
STATISTICS
MATHEMATICS
COMMUNICATION
THEORY
ACOUSTIC
PHONETICS
PHYSICS
CYBERNETICS
LOGICS
GRAMMAR
LEXICOLOGY
MATHEMATICS
PHYSIOLOGICAL
PHONETICS
PHYSIOLOGY
ANATOMY
ANTHROPOLOGY
HISTORICAL
PHONETICS
HISTORY
ARCHEOLOGY

Practical application of
phonetics
teaching correct pronunciation and eliminating dialect features from the pronunciation;
logopedics and curing speech defects;
teaching normal oral speech to deaf & dumb people;
devise alphabets for unwritten languages & spelling reforms;
technical acoustic & sound technology;
information & communication, cybernetics.

SPEECH SOUNDS and their aspects
Speech sounds are of a complex nature and have three different aspects:
1.ACOUSTIC

SPEECH SOUNDS = sound waves.
They are characterized by musical tone/ pitch, intonation, voice timber, intensity, stress/ accent, duration/ length.

SPEECH SOUNDS = phenomena resulting from the activities of the speech organs (anthropophonics).

SPEECH SOUNDS = articulatory, acoustic, auditory and functional phenomena

[m, n, ŋ];
nasal (articulatory aspect)
resonants (acoustic aspect)
sonorant (auditory aspect)
all these sounds are realizations of different phonemes in
English, while [ŋ] is an allophone of the phoneme
[n] in Italian (functional or linguistic aspect)

Functions of speech sounds:
1. constitutive
– they constitute the material forms of mophemes, words & sentences;
2. distinctive
– they differentiate mophemes, words & sentences (e.g. zero-oppositions; miminal pair ).
3. recognitive
– the use of the right allophones in the right places facilitates normal recognition, and, consequently, understanding, of speech.

THE PROBLEM OF THE PHONEME
L.V.Shcherba: the phoneme may be viewed as a functional, material and abstract unit.
V.A.Vassilyev: the phoneme is the smallest (i.e. further indivisible into smaller consecutive segments) language unit (sound type) that exists in the speech of all the members of a given language community as such speech sounds which are capable of distinguishing one word of the same language or one grammatical form of a word from another grammatical form of the same word".

Concise working definition
(by V.A.Vassilyev)
“The phoneme is a minimal abstract linguistic unit realized in speech in the form of speech sounds opposable to other phonemes of the same language to distinguish the meaning of morphemes and words.”

ASPECTS OF THE PHONEME
Abstract/ generalized/ objective
Material/concrete/subjective
functional

PHONEME,SPEECH SOUND, ALLOPHONE
Allophone
Phoneme
Speech
sound

Classification of allophones
Allophones
Principle
[Ө]
Subsidiary
[Өınk]
Positional
[eıtӨ]
Combinatory
[beł]

FUNCTIONS OF THE PHONEME
Are the functions of the phoneme related to the functions of the speech sounds?

Constitutive (e.g. think)
Distinctive (e.g. think-thing)
Recognitive (e.g. [tınk])

MAIN TRENDS IN THE PHONEME THEORY
1) Mentalistic/ psychological
2) Functional
3) Abstract
4) Physical
5) Cybernetic

MENTALISTIC/ PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW
GENERAL IDEA

- The phoneme = "mental image", or psychical image of a sound.
- Allophones of the phoneme are varying materializations of it.
- There’s a discrepancy between an intended sound and the one actually pronounced.

I.A.Baudauin de Courtenay, E.D.Sapir, Alf. Sommerfelt (phonemes presentation-desc__item">

FUNCTIONAL VIEW
GENERAL IDEA:
The phoneme = the minimal sound unit by which meanings may be differentiated without much regard to actually pronounced speech sounds.
Distinctive features of the sound make up the phoneme corresponding to it (ladder: lenisness distinctive only in the third sound [d], otherwise latter).
Non-distinctive features are extracted from the phonemes thus divorcing the phoneme from actually pronounced speech sounds.

N.Trubetskoy, L.Bloomfield, R.Jakobson, M.Halle.

ABSTRACT VIEW
GENERAL IDEA
A stronger form of the "functional" approach.
Phonemes = essentially independent of the acoustic and physiological properties associated with them, that is of speech sounds.
Phonemes = conceptions existing in the mind but not in human speech, speech sounds being only phonetic manifestations of these conceptions.

REPRESENTATIVES
F. de Saussure, L.Hjelmslev and his associates in the Copenhagen Linguistic Circle, H.J.Uldall and K.Togby.

PHONEME ASPECT?
ABSTRACT AND FUNCTIONAL

PHYSICAL VIEW
GENERAL IDEA

- The phoneme = a "family" of related sounds satisfying certain conditions:
The various members of the "family" must show phonetic similarity to one another;
No member of the "family" may occur in the same phonetic context as any other.
- The phoneme = a group of articulatorily similar sounds without any regard to its functional and abstract aspects.

CRITICISM
it is not easy to see how sounds could be assigned to the same phoneme on any other grounds than differentiating between words?

REPRESENTATIVES
D.Jones, B.Bloch and G.Trager

CYBERNETIC VIEW
GENERAL IDEA

The phoneme cannot be perceived by means of direct observation; therefore it is a construct.
Subject of the "two-level theory of phonology“: theoretical phonology ("the study of the nature of phonological reality“), and general phonology ("typology of concrete phonological systems“),
The "construct" requires a special conceptual apparatus in order to be cognized.

CRITICISM
Phonemes can be perceived and are daily perceived by members of the same linguistic communities (alphabets).
Separate phonemes can be recognized (the Cockney dialect: [aı] instead of [eı], shift the [h]-phoneme in initial positions of words: [iz], [еэ] for his, hair, and [hea] for air).

REPRESENTATIVES
S. K. Showmyan.

1 symbol = 1 phoneme

1 symbol = 1 allophone

Test on the lecture
1) What is a phoneme?
2) Name a phoneme!
3) What approach to the phoneme do you share?
4) How many phonemes are there in English?
5) Spell and transcribe in English the proper name Хрущев. How many phonemes and morphemes did you use?
6) Who is this man?

Thank you for your attention!

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they mean something only in combinations, which are called words.

Phonetics studies sounds as articulatory and acoustic units, phonolo-

gy investigates sounds as units, which serve communicative purposes.

Phonetics and phonology are closely connected. ТЬе unit of phonetics is

а speech sound, the unit of phonology is а рhоnеmе. Phonemes сап Ье

discovered Ьу the method of minimal раirs. This method consists in find-

Ing pairs of words which differ in опе рЬопеmе. For example, if we ге-

place IbI bу Ifl in the word Ьаn we produce а new word fan, Ьаn - tan is

а pair of words distinguished in meaning Ьу а single sound change. Two

words of this kind are termed "minimal pair". It is possible to take this

process further, we сап also produce сап, ran, тап, fan - it is а minimal

set. ТЬе change of the final/n/ in

Ьаn will result in а third minimal set: bad, bat, back, badge, bang. То

establish the phonemes ofthe language the phonologist tries to find pairs

that show which sounds occur or do not occur in identical positions -

ТЬе phonemes of а language form а system of oppositions, in which

апу one рЬопеmе is usually opposed to апу other рЬопеmе in at least опе

position in at least опе lexical or grammatical minimal or sub-minimal

pair. If the substitution of опе sound for another results in the change of

meaning, the commuted sounds are different phonemes, speech sounds,

which are phonologically significant.

ТЬе founder of the phoneme theory was I.A. Baudouih de Courteney,

the Russian scientist ofPolish origin. His theory of phoneme was devel-

oped and perfected Ьу L.V. Shcherba - the head of the Leningrad lin-

guistic school, who stated that in actual speech we utter а mисЬ greater

Variety of sounds than we are aware of, and that in every language these

sounds аге united in а comparatively small number of sound types, which

are сараЫе of distinguishing the meaning and the form of words; that is

they serve the purpose of social intercommunication. It is these sound

types that should Ье included into the classification of phonemes and

studied as differentiatory units ofthe language. Тhe actually pronounced

speech sounds are variants, or allophones of phonemes. Allophones are

realized in concrete words. Тhеу have phonetic similarity, that is their

acoustic and articulatory feautures have much in common, at the same

time they differ in some degree and are incapable of differentiating words.

For example, in speech we pronounce not the sound type /t/, which is

alveolar, forelingual, apical, occlusive, plosive, voiceless-fortis - ас-

cording to the classificatory definition, but опе of its variants, e.g. labial-

Ized in the word twice, dental in the word eighth, post-alveolar in try,

exploded nasally in written, exploded laterally in little, pronounced with-

out aspiration in stay, etc. Another example: the sound type, or the vowel

рhопеmе /i:/, which is defined as "unrounded, fully front, high, narrow,

tense, long, free", is more back in key, than in eat under the influence of

the backlingual /k/, it is longer before а voiced lenis, than before а voice-

Jess fortis consonant: seed - seat, greed - greet, etc.

Тhе number of sound types, or phonemes, in еасh language is much

smaller than the number of sounds actually pronounced (see Table 5).

Phonemic variants, or allophones, are very important for language

teaching because they are pronounced in actual speech and though their

mispronunciation does not always influence the meaning of the words,

their misuse makes а person's зреесh sound as "foreign".

That variant ofthe рhопеmе which is described as the most represen-

tative and free from the influence of the neighbouring phonemes is соп-

sidered to Ье typical, or principal. Тhе variants used in actual speech are

called subsidiary. Subsidiary allophones сап Ье positional and соmbinа-

tory. Positional allophones are used in certain positions traditionally. For

example, the English /1/ is realized in actual speech as а positional аllо-

рhопе: it is clear in the initial position, and dark in the terminal position,

compare light, let and hill, mill. Russian positional allophones сап Ье

observed in вопль, рубль where terminal /л/ is devoiced after voiceless

Combinatory allophones appear in the process of speech and result

from the influence of опе рhопете uроn another .

То distinguish the sound types from their allophones in writing, two

types of brackets are used: slant-like for the phonemes ргорег, and squa-

ге - for their allophones, е. g. the рЬопеmе /l/ has two positional аllо-

phones: clear [l] and dark [1]. In practical teaching the most important

allophones should Ье mentioned to teach the pupils correct pronuncia-

SyllabIe as а phonetic and phonological unit

Speech is а continuous flow quantified in certain units, strings of vow-

els and consonants. Syllable is the minimal grouping of vowels and conso-

nants necessary for articulation (phonetic unit) and for storing strings of

phonemes in the mental representation (phonological unit). Тhе syllable is

а uшt розпес at both the phonetic and the phonological levels of analysis.

Тhe notion of а phonetic unit is difficult to define. Most scholars agree

that а chl1d сап usually count оп his/her fingers the number of syllables in

a sequence, but по phonetician has succeeded so far in giving ап exhaust-

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