A phoneme is a class of sounds united by leading (basic) differential features that do not exist independently, but coexist in a phoneme. However, the set of phonemes of the modern Russian language is not just a collection of the smallest linguistic units. They form a system - a complex whole, all components of which are interconnected, interdependent and opposed to each other.

To describe the phonological system of the Russian language, it is necessary to determine the composition of the phonemes of a given language, and then their syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations, i.e. to establish the combinational possibilities (syntagmatics) of phonemes and their allophones and opposition (paradigmatics) of phonemes and their allophones. The opposition of two or more homogeneous units of the language is called opposition (Latin oppositio - opposition).

The analysis and classification of oppositions in phonology were first undertaken by the famous linguist N.S. Trubetskoy and described in his monograph "Fundamentals of Phonology". For consonant phonemes of the Russian language, two types of oppositions are distinguished:

1) privative, in which one feature is present in one member of the oppositions, but absent in the other (for example, opposition for deafness and sonority);

2) equipotent, in which the phonemes are opposed according to the characteristics of common features (for example, the difference in the place of formation).

For vowel phonemes, gradual oppositions are distinguished, in which the opposition is of a stepped nature (for example, different degrees of elevation).

The privative oppositions form correlative series of phonemes. A chain of identical oppositions is called a correlation. The phonological system of the Russian language has two correlative series of consonants: 1) a series of voiced and voiceless consonants; 2) a number of hard and soft consonants.

There are about 40 phonemes in the modern Russian literary language. When establishing their exact number, representatives of different phonological schools get different results.

In understanding the essence of phonemes, the features of their implementation in speech and functions, as well as the classification of the phonemic composition of individual words and the phonemic composition of the language as a whole, there are disagreements. These disagreements are most clearly revealed when comparing the views of representatives of the two main phonological schools - Moscow (R.I. Avanesov, P.S. Kuznetsov, A.A. Reformatsky, M.V. Panov, V.I. Sidorov, L.L. Kasatkin and others) and St. Petersburg (L.V. Shcherba, M.I. Matusevich, L.R. Zinder, A.N. Gvozdev, L.L. Bulanin, L.A. Verbitskaya and others).

Differences in views on the phoneme are determined, firstly, by differences in the interpretation of the original significant unit in determining the composition of phonemes, and secondly, by differences in the assessment of the quality of positions in describing sound oppositions.

Skripnik Ya.N., Smolenskaya T.M.

Phonetics of the modern Russian language, 2010.

I. Definition of phonology.

Phonology- a branch of linguistics that studies the structure of the sound structure of a language and the functioning of sounds in a language system. The basic unit of phonology is the phoneme, the main object of study is oppositions ( opposition) phonemes, which together form the phonological system of the language.

Unlike phonology, phonetics studies the physical aspect of speech: articulation, acoustic properties of sounds, their perception by the listener (perceptual phonetics).

Ivan (Jan) Alexandrovich Baudouin de Courtenay, a scientist of Polish origin who also worked in Russia, is considered the creator of modern phonology. An outstanding contribution to the development of phonology was also made by Nikolai Sergeevich Trubetskoy, Roman Osipovich Yakobson, Lev Vladimirovich Shcherba, Noam Khomsky, Morris Halle.

II . Basic concepts of phonology

The basic concept of phonology is phoneme, the minimum linguistic unit, which primarily has a semantic-distinctive function. The manifestation of a phoneme in speech is a background, a specific segment of sounding speech that has certain acoustic properties. The number of backgrounds is potentially infinite, but in each language they are distributed among different phonemes depending on the structure of each phonological set. Phonemes belonging to the same phoneme are called allophones.

The key role in phonology is also played by the concept opposition(opposition). Two units are considered opposed if there are so-called minimum pairs, that is, pairs of words that do not differ in anything other than these two units (for example, in Russian: tom - house - com - rum - catfish - nom - scrap). If two given backgrounds enter into such an opposition, they refer to different phonemes. On the contrary, if two backgrounds are in additional distribution, that is, they do not occur in the same context - this is a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for assigning them to the same phoneme. So, in Russian they never occur in the same context [a] (as in the word uterus) and [ä] (as in the word crush): the first sound is pronounced only between hard consonants (and / or vowels), the second - only between two soft consonants. Thus, they can refer to one phoneme and be its allophones (if other necessary conditions are met). On the contrary, in German, similar sounds are opposed in a stressed syllable: Apfel"Apple", Äpfel"apples", and therefore they refer to different phonemes.

Phonological system of the language- an internally organized set of its phonemes connected by certain relationships.

Oppositions phonemes form oppositions (according to the deafness / sonority of phonemes<п> – <б>or hardness/softness of phonemes<с> – <с’>).

Comparison phonemes in oppositions is based on a comparison of their features - differential and integral.

Integral signs of phonemes form the basis of the opposition, and differential form opposition, for example, in phonemes<т>and<д>integral features (i.e., common to both phonemes) are explosiveness, anterior lingualism, hardness, and differential (i.e., distinctive) - deafness (for<т>) and sonority (for<д>).

backgrounds- specific instances of the implementation of the phoneme (and its variants), instances of sounds used in millions and billions of statements by thousands or millions of native speakers of the corresponding language.

In articulatory-acoustic terms background, i.e. representative of a phoneme in speech, is not delimited by anything from the adjacent background, a representative of another phoneme. Sometimes they partially overlap, overlap each other, so a person who does not know a given language is not always able to distinguish and understand them.

III. Main phonological schools:

1. Leningradskaya

The founder, Academician Lev Vladimirovich Shcherba, worked in the first half of the 20th century. He and his students focused on the task of teaching foreign languages, setting the correct pronunciation.

The school proceeds from the understanding of the phoneme as a sound unit with a meaningful function. Uses the criterion of phonetic similarity (identity) as a criterion for identifying phonemes.

Most foreign language textbooks in their phonetic part use the concepts and terminology developed by Shcherba. Shcherba's phonological theory itself was best presented in his textbook Phonetics of the French Language. In the future, these same concepts were supported by researchers involved in the instrumental study of sound speech and the design of automatic speech recognition systems.

2. Moscow

A prominent representative of this school is Alexander Alexandrovich Reformatsky. The main works in which the views of this trend are formulated are devoted to the description of the native (Russian) language. Initially, the phonological school considered its constructions as the only true doctrine of the sound structure of the language.

With the passage of time, however, the tendency to comprehensively discuss problems and synthesize phonological theories prevailed.

Ruben Ivanovich Avanesov, one of the IDF founders, made the first attempt at such a synthesis. He put forward the concept of “weak phonemes”, which, along with “strong” ones, are part of linguistic signs.

Weak phoneme of Avanesov is a set of differential features that must be specified to determine the sound in a given position. They are associated with commands to the executive organs of speech, in order to create one or another acoustic effect.

3. American school

She developed in the early XX century as a school descriptive phonology, which solved the problem of describing the languages ​​of the American Indians. Their concept was close to the views of the Leningrad phonological school. In particular, American scientists most clearly formulated the procedure for dividing the speech flow into phonemes of speech perception.

In the post-war years, under the influence of the advances in computer technology, American linguists for the first time directly raised the question of the technical modeling of language ability. The pioneer of these works was also a native of Russia (or rather from Poland) Naum Chomsky.

His work founded the direction called generative linguistics. Its task is to build a formal model (automaton) for the production of correct statements in a particular language.

The phonological part of the generative theory arose thanks to the work of another Russian, Roman Osipovich Yakobson, who, in connection with the Second World War, emigrated from Prague (where he was a prominent member of the Prague School) to America. Describing the generation (production) of speech, generative phonology naturally came to a concept close to the Moscow phonological school.

The essence of the theory is that linguistic signs, through successive transformations according to language rules, are transformed from an internal representation in the phonemes of speech production into a surface representation by speech sound types. Taking this terminology, we can call the phonemes of speech production deep phonemes, and the phonemes of speech perception - surface phonemes.

(created on the basis of an essay by Ekaterina Vlasova)

Phonological system of the language. Phonological schools

The sound system of any language can be studied not only from the point of view of the articulatory and acoustic properties of sounds, but also from the functional-linguistic aspect. In this aspect, sounds are considered taking into account their correlations in the language system and their meaningful role in speech. The study of sounds in terms of their functions in the process of communication, in the social aspect is engaged in functional phonetics, or phonology.

Phonology- a branch of linguistics that studies the structure of the sound structure of a language and the functioning of sounds in a language system. The basic unit of phonology is the phoneme, the main object of study is oppositions ( opposition) phonemes, which together form the phonological system of the language.

Most experts consider phonology (the study of the functional side of speech sounds) as a section (part) of phonetics (the study of speech sounds); some (among them, in particular, such prominent phonologists as N. S. Trubetskoy and S. K. Shaumyan) consider these two disciplines as non-overlapping sections of linguistics.

The difference between phonology and phonetics is that the subject of phonetics is not limited to the functional aspect of speech sounds, but also covers its substantial aspect, namely: physical and biological (physiological) aspects: articulation, acoustic properties of sounds, their perception by the listener ( perceptual phonetics).

Ivan (Jan) Alexandrovich Baudouin de Courtenay, a scientist of Polish origin who also worked in Russia, is considered the creator of modern phonology. An outstanding contribution to the development of phonology was also made by Nikolay Sergeevich Trubetskoy, Roman Osipovich Yakobson, Lev Vladimirovich Shcherba, Avram Noam Khomsky, Morris Halle.

The essence of the teachings of I.A. Baudouin de Courtenay can be summed up in three main propositions:

• 1) sound as a physical phenomenon and as a sign of some linguistic entity (reflected in the human mind) are not the same thing;
• 2) each specific sound represents only one of the possible realizations of this essence;
• 3) sounds should be considered not in themselves, but in their relationship with these entities.

Phoneme - the minimum unit of a language capable of distinguishing the sound shells of different words and morphemes.

For example: in words they say, small, mule phonemes /о/, /а/, /у/ act as distinguishers of sound shells; house/com/scrap/rum/som/vol/d/,/k/, /l/, /r/, /s/, /t/; do?m, do?ma, do?mu - phonemes /а/, /у/ are involved in the expression and distinction of case meanings R and D.

By itself, the phoneme itself does not express any meaning at all, it has no meaning. But indirectly, it is connected with meaning, because distinguishes sound shells.

The concept of a phoneme should not be identified with the concept of sound, because every phoneme is a sound, but not every sound of speech can act as a phoneme.

The sound value of a phoneme depends on the position it occupies in a word. There are strong and weak positions of phonemes. The position in which the largest number of phonemes differ is called strong, the phoneme in this position is also strong; the position in which fewer phonemes are distinguished is called weak, the phoneme in this position is weak.

The strong position is the position of maximum distinctiveness and minimum conditionality. phoneme phonology phonetics

The strong position for vowels is the stressed position; for consonants, an absolutely strong position is the position before the vowels [a], [o], [y] / sa?

In a weak position, phonemes lose some of their features, change their appearance, and it happens that two or even three phonemes coincide in one sound: [l "e? s / l" and? sy] - [l "isa?] / e /, /i/ [and]; [pl?t] /d/ and /t/ - [t].

The indistinguishability of phonemes in a weak position is called neutralization.

A phoneme includes an invariant, variants, and variations.

Invariant - this is the ideal (basic) kind of sound.

Options- these are the sounds of the language that occur in weak positions of minimal distinctiveness and are part of two or more phonemes: fruit - [pl?t], fruits - [ploshdy?] / o / [o], [Sch]; /d/- [d], [t].

Variations- these are the sounds of the language that occur in positions of maximum conditionality and are part of one phoneme: [lu?k / l "u?k / lu?k" and / l "u?k" and] - [y], ["y ], [y"], ["y"] ; [ra? ds "t" / t "iea? tr / ru? b" it]; [p] - at the end of the word after the deaf consonants acts as a "stunned R »; [p] before [y] acts as “deepened p”, [p] before [a] - as “not deepened p”.

Those speech sounds in which this or that phoneme is realized are called its allophones:

[huh?] - invariant

[Sch], [b], [ie], [b] - variants of allophones of the phoneme / a /

["a], [a"], ["a"] - variations.

The phonological system continues to evolve as development is a way of existence of language.

In the understanding of phonemes, the classification of the phonemic composition of individual words and the phonemic composition of the language as a whole, there are disagreements. These disagreements are most clearly revealed when comparing the views of representatives of the main phonological schools.

Scientific schools in the phonology of the XX century, fundamentally different

phoneme understanding:

• 1) Leningrad phonological school or Petersburg phonological school ( L.AT. Shcherba, L.R. Zinder, M.I. Matusevich, L.V. Bondarko) - a school that develops the ideas of I.A. Baudouin de Courtenay (" phoneme- the mental equivalent of sound") and L.V. Shcherby (" phoneme- sound type"), which puts forward the acoustic-articulatory side of the phoneme and considers the phoneme as a relatively independent (self-sufficient) unit of language;
• 2) Moscow Phonological School ( R.AND. Avanesov, P.S. Kuznetsov, V.N. Sidorov, A.A. Reformatsky, M.V. Panov) - a school that develops the idea of ​​I.A. Baudouin de Courtenay on the phoneme as

"mobile component of the morpheme" and considering the phoneme as a structural unit in the composition

3) Prague Phonological School ( H.WITH. Trubetskoy, R. Yakobson) - a school that considers the phoneme as a "bundle of differential features", putting forward

intrasystem relations between phonemes.

A phoneme is understood as a "sound type" capable of distinguishing words and their forms. Sound type refers to a group of acoustically different sounds that replace each other in different phonetic conditions and are united by a common function that they perform in the language.

References:

• 1. Modern Russian language. In 3 parts. Part 1., N. M. Shansky, V. V. Ivanov. M., "Enlightenment" 1987;
• 2. Development of the phonetics of the modern Russian language, V. N. Sidorov, M., 1971;
• 3. From the history of Russian phonology, Reformatsky A. A., M., 1970;
• 4. Bondarenko L. V. The sound structure of the modern Russian language. M., 1977.

rental block

There are as many phonemes in a language as there are sounds in the same significatively strong positions. In most cases, 5 vowel phonemes are distinguished in Russian: a, o, i, e, u. Representatives of LFSH also distinguish the phoneme /ы/, arguing this by the presence of the terms “ykanie, ykat”, geographical names “Yison”, etc. However, these examples refer to the subsystem of rare words (terms, toponyms, etc.) Therefore, it is generally accepted that in the phonetic subsystem of common words there are five vowel phonemes.

The composition of consonant phonemes of the Russian language.

Isolating most of the consonant phonemes is not difficult: /p/-/p’/-/b/-/b’/-/v/-/v’/-/f/-/f’/-/m/-/ m’/-/t/-/t’/-/d/-/d’/-/s/-/s’/-/s/-/s/-/c/-/n/-/n’ /-/l/-/l’/-/r/-/r’/-/sh/-/w/-/h’/-/j/-/k/-/g/-/x/ - 32 phonemes. So many different sounds appear in a strong position, for example, before the shock [a] in the words steam, bass, fact, fifth, shaft, sluggish, poppy, mint, glad, row, poison, stone, etc.

There are also controversial issues in determining the composition of consonant phonemes.

1. Sounds [k], [g], [x] alternate with [k '], [g '], [x']

Them. Ru [k] but [g] aso [x] a

R.ru [k '] and but [g '] and co [x '] and

D.ru [k '] e but [g '] e co [x '] e

V.ru [to] y but [g] y co [x] y

Tv.ru [to] oh but [g] oh so [x] oh

Pr.ru [k '] e but [g '] e co [x '] e

Sounds [k '], [ g '], [ x '] come before [e, and], and [k], [ g], [ x] - before [ y, o, a] (in Kasatkin's textbook - in other positions).

The founders of the IPF considered this alternation as phonetic positional and believed that [k], [k’] embody one phoneme /k/, ],[g],[g’] - /g/,[x],[x’] - /X/.

From another point of view (including Kalenchuk) this is wrong (what is above). [k'],[ g'], [x'] embody the phonemes /k'/, /g'/,/x'/, opposed to /k/, /g/, /x/. The grounds are as follows: the sound [k '] before [o], [a] appears in the forms of the word weave: t [k'o] sh, t [k'o] t, t [k'o] m, t [k' o] those, t[k‘a]. True, this is only one old native Russian word, but it is among the commonly used ones. Already this one word is enough to consider that in the phonological system of the Russian language /k/ - /k’/ are opposed in the same position - before the phonemes /o/, /a/: [ko]t - t[ k'o] t, t [ka] t - t [k'a].

In addition, [k’] before [o], [y] is found in borrowed words that have entered the Russian language, including widely used ones: scraper, liquor, cuvette, manicure, etc.

And also the position before [e]: [ge] C - [g'e] rb, etc.

2. There are different points of view on what phonemes embody the sounds [w ‘:], [w ‘:] in such words as [w ‘:] and, [w ‘:] uka, [w ‘:] astier, ra [w ‘:] et and others, in [w ‘:] and, dro [w ‘:] and, e [w ‘:] y, etc.

It is widely believed that these sounds represent special phonemes, denoted as /sh':/, /zh':/, or /sh'/, /zh'/. Sounds [sh':], [zh':] with such interpretation is phonologically inseparable, each of them cannot be considered as the embodiment of two phonemes, since there are no short [w‘], [zh‘] in positions where long and short are distinguished; the longitude [w':], [w':] is inextricably linked with the softness of these sibilants, so it is phonologically insignificant.

Another point of view - [w‘:], [w‘:] represent combinations of phonemes, the arguments are as follows.

Some linguists who consider [sh ‘:] as the embodiment of one phoneme indicate that [sh ‘:] can in some cases also represent combinations of phonemes: /shch’/ - freckled (with /sh/ and /h’/ at the junction of morphemes , cf. spring / w / ka and pattern / h ’/ aty), / zhch ’/ - defector (cf. run across and pilot), / cf ’/ - grain of sand (cf. sand, sand, sand and bitter, bitterness) . These combinations of phonemes are identified on the basis of alternations with sounds in significatively strong positions. In a significatively weak position, when the last phoneme of the combination is /h’/, they are neutralized into the sound [w‘:].

The phoneme /sh’/ is postulated for cases where there are no such alternations. In other words, /w'/ always finds itself in an unverifiable significatively weak position. Meanwhile, the presence of a special phoneme in a language is determined only by a significatively strong position.

Most researchers include

3. Phonological descriptions of the Russian literary language usually indicate the presence in the subsystem of consonant phonemes of one back-lingual voiced phoneme /g/. However, there are reasons to include the /ɣ/ phonemes in this subsystem.

In the modern Russian literary language, [ɣ] before a vowel, where it embodies the phoneme /ɣ/, is obligatory only in one widely used word accountant [buɣalt'ir], as well as in interjections aha, oh. It is permissible to pronounce g along with ɣ in the words accounting, accounting, interjections Lord, by God.

Thus, in modern Rus. Liter.Language, the phoneme /ɣ/ has an insignificant functional load and is on the verge of extinction. However, until this happens, it is necessary to include /ɣ/ in the composition of consonant phonemes.

Thus, in modern Russian literary language has 37 (36?) consonant phonemes..

in French -35 (20 consonants and 15 vowels (nasal, open, closed)).

In French, there is no concept of soft consonant phonemes, therefore, there are no hard consonant phonemes either.

So, French sounds, in comparison with Russian ones, are characterized by greater clarity and stability of articulation. Hence, consonants lack deafening and softening (in French, only two phonemes are an exception - [k], [g]); vowels have no reduction (change in the quality of a vowel in an unstressed position). For example, the word komod is pronounced in Russian [kamot], where the unstressed o is read as [a], and the final d is also stunned. In French, this word would be pronounced like [chest].

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Linguistics began to develop, work in the field of linguistics. The problem of language sign. The word is the basic unit of language. Phonetic speech, system of sounds. The system of Russian and the studied language.

This material includes sections:

Subject of linguistics: linguistics in the system of sciences

The concept of a linguistic sign: signifier and signified, meaning and significance

Units and tiers of the language system: phonological, morphological, syntactic; the word as the basic unit of language

Language and speech; organization of the language system: units and variants; contrast, additional distribution, free variation; syntagmatic-paradigmatic relations

Organs of speech

Formation of speech sounds: resonance, formants

Units of phonetics: sound, syllable, measure (phonetic word), phrase

Vocalism, classification of vowel sounds

Consonantism, classification of consonant sounds

Phonetic processes: assimilation, dissimilation, accommodation, prostheses, metatheses, epentheses

Syllable, syllable structure, types of syllables. Theories of syllable formation

stress and prosody. Types of stress

Phonetics and phonology

Phoneme. Differential sign. Phonologically significant and insignificant oppositions. Classification of oppositions

Neutralization. Strong and weak positions. Variants and variations of phonemes. Hyperphoneme

Phonological system of the Russian and studied language

The subject of grammar as a linguistic discipline. Grammar composition. Grammatical meaning and grammatical category

Parts of speech and members of a sentence

Significant and service parts of speech

Noun as a part of speech: grammatical categories (in the native and studied language)

Verb as a part of speech: grammatical categories (in the native and studied language)

Morphology and word formation

The concept of morphological form. Morpheme and types of morphemes

Motional, derivational, relational grammatical categories

base of the word; types of bases

Word formation and inflection

Grammatical ways of languages: affixation, alternations and internal inflection (types of alternations), stress as a grammatical way, reduplication, suppletivism

Grammatical ways: function words way, word order way, intonation as a grammatical way

Types of alternations: phonetic, morphological, grammatical alternations

Syntax: basic syntactic units

Therefore, the system of phonemes is a system, and not a simple set of these phonemes, because the latter are in certain and quite clearly established connections and oppositions, are included in groups of phonemes that are combined according to one or another feature, and form correlative series.
The interests of the language as a means of communication require the most clearly organized phonological system, in which its constituent units - phonemes - would be maximally opposed to each other, being at the same time connected by certain relations into groups of phonemes.
However, in natural languages ​​there are no ideally constructed phonological systems, and, as you can see, they cannot exist. The explanation for this fact can be found in the two-way nature of speech sounds. On the other hand, the nature of speech sounds is directly related to the work of the speech organs, directly depends on the physical features of the action of these organs, on the articulatory base of native speakers of a given language. On the other hand, speech sounds as a realization of functional units form a system that is characterized primarily by the opposition of these units to each other, which allows them to play a role in distinguishing word forms, that is, to be phonemes. Consequently, the work of the speech organs determines the nature of the speech sounds themselves, their articulatory and acoustic features, their pronunciation and perception, that is, what could be called a proper phonetic, sound system. At the same time, the sounds of speech, as the material embodiment of phonemes, also form a phonological, functional system, a system of phonemes, designed to be a means of distinguishing word forms of a language that ensure the fulfillment of its communicative tasks by the language.
Phonetic and phonological systems, no doubt, are in unity with each other, but at the same time they are in conflict. The phonological system is based on the requirement of maximum differentiation of its units, the utmost clarity of its construction, which is expressed in the desire for simplicity and clarity of phoneme oppositions. The latter means that the phonological system will perform the functions of distinguishing word forms the better, the more clearly the phonemes will differ from each other. As the opposition red - white is simpler, sharper, clearer than the oppositions red - dark pink, dark pink - pink, pink - light pink, light pink white, in the same way oppositions, for example, deaf consonants - voiced, hard - soft, stop-fricative is simpler, sharper, clearer than the opposition deaf - semi-voiced, semi-voiced - voiced; hard - semi-soft, semi-soft - soft; stop -¦ affricate, affricate - fricative. This means that the simpler the phonological opposition, the more reliable it is as a means of distinguishing two word forms, and hence it follows that the phonological system requires clarity and sharpness in the articulation of sound realizations and does not tolerate the "mixing" of these realizations.
Actually, the phonetic system is built on a completely opposite basis: it is determined by the tendency to “economy of pronunciation efforts”, or the “principle of economy”, i.e., the desire to weaken the tension of articulations, to facilitate the work of the organs of speech, to reduce certainty in the articulation of a particular sound , and consequently, to a weakening of the degree of distinguishable ™ sounds, to a decrease in the degree of their opposition. Thus, on the one hand, the desire for maximum differentiation of sound realizations of phonemes as a means of distinguishing word forms, and on the other hand, the tendency to “economy of pronunciation efforts” is a contradiction that causes opposition to the creation of an ideally constructed and symmetrical phonological system.

More on the topic § 79. Phonological system:

1. Phonological schools in Russian linguistics: Moscow phonological school and Leningrad phonological school