Понятие фонемы, её функции

1 Понятие фонемы; её функции

В середине ХIХ века, когда, благодаря успехам точных наук и техники, лингвисты получили возможность использовать для изучения звуковой стороны человеческой речи различные технические приспособления, они оказались в расстерянности перед бесконечным многообразием звуков, не поддающимся точному учёту и систематизации. Ведь ни один звук не произносится абсолютно тождественно не только разными говорящими, но даже одним говорящим при повторении. Снять это противоречие, упорядочить весь этот фонетический хáос, свести бесконечное многообразие реальных звуков речи к ограниченному числу повторяющихся единиц системы языка позволило введение понятие фонемы.
Звуки объединяются в фонемы не по акустической или артикуляционной близости, а по общности функциональной, что понимается следующим образом:если звуки произносятся по-разному в зависимости от условий произношения, но выполняют одну и ту же функцию, т. е. образуют один и тот же корень, суффикс, приставку или окончание, то эти звуки можно объединить в одну фонему.
Рассмотрим это на примерах. Возьмем слова род и родовой. В этих словах присутствует один корень, хотя первое слово мы произносим [рот], поскольку в русском языке звонкие согласные в конце слова оглушаются. Или еще примеры: молоко [мълAкó] – молочный [мAлóчныj] – молоковоз [мълъкAвóс], гласные первого корня произносятся по-разному в зависимости от места ударения, следовательно, гласные, различающиеся по своим акустико-артикуляционным признакам, находятся в одной и той же функции (входят в состав одного и того же корня) и реализуют одну и ту же фонему. Поэтому говорящие абстрагируются (отвлекаются) от этих звучаний и оценивают звук как одну и ту же единицу языка, т. е. фонему.
Сравним в английском языке слова book – books и day – days, где окончание множественного числа /-s/ звучит по-разному: как [-s] и как [-z], а в словах abbreviation [ә,bri:vi´ei∫n] «сокращение» – abnegate [´æbnigeit] «отрицать» отмечено разное произношение приставки /ab-/.
С другой стороны, в словах род и рот произношение последнего звука совпадает – [т], но функционально эти звуки различны, т. к. реализуют разные лексические единицы.
Таким образом, фонема – это не всякий звук языка, а только такой, который типичен для данного языка и способен различать звуковые оболочки морфем и слов, например: бок – бак – бык – бук и т. п. Возьмем примеры из английского языка: pin «булавка», pen «ручка», pan «кастрюля», звуковой состав и значения которых различаются только гласными звуками.
Дадим определение фонемы. Фонемы – это минимальные единицы звукового строя языка, которые выполняют в данном языке определенную функцию: служат для складывания и различения материальных оболочек значимых единиц языка - морфем, слов.
Уже в определении названы некоторые функции фонем. Кроме того, учёные называют еще несколько функций. Итак, к основным функциям фонемы относятся следующие:

1.       конститутивная (строительная) функция;

2.       дистинктивная (сигнификативная, различительная) функция;

3.       перцептивная функция (опознавательная, т. е. функция восприятия);

4.       делимитативная функция (отграничительная, т. е. способная отделять начала и концы морфем и слов).

Как уже было сказано, фонемы – единицы односторонние, имеющие план выражения (экспонент – по Маслову), в то время как смыслоносителями они не являются, хотя, по мнению Л. В. Бондарко, фонемы потенциально связаны со значением: они относятся к смыслоразличителям. При этом надо иметь в виду, что существуют однофонемные слова или морфемы, например, предлоги, окончания и т. п.
Впервые понятие фонемы в языкознание вел русский учёный И. А. Бодуэн де Куртенэ. Использовав термин, употребленный франц. лингвистом Л. Аве в значении «звук речи», он связывает понятие фонемы с её функцией в морфеме. Дальнейшее развитие учение о фонеме находит в работах Н. В. Крушевского, ученика И. А. Бодуэна де Куртенэ. Большой вклад в разработку этого вопроса внес Н. С. Трубецкой, петербургский учёный, в 20-е годы ХХ в. эмигрировавший за границу.

§ 25. The concept of the phoneme, and its function
In the mid-nineteenth century when, thanks to the success of the exact sciences and technology, linguists were able to be used for the study of human speech sounds by various technical devices, they were clueless in front of an infinite variety of sounds, are underestimated and systematization. After all, no sound is pronounced absolutely identically, not only by different speakers, but even the one speaking with repetition. To remove this contradiction, and to streamline the whole phonetic háos, to reduce the infinite variety of real speech sounds to the limited number of repeating units of language has allowed the introduction of the concept of the phoneme.
The sounds are combined into phonemes are not on the acoustic or articulatory proximity, and by the functional community that is understood as follows: if the sounds are pronounced differently depending on the pronunciation, but perform the same function, ie, form one and the same root, suffix, prefix or end, these sounds can be combined into a single phoneme.
Consider this example. Take the words genus and family. In these words there is one root, although the first word we utter [mouth], because in Russian voiced consonants at the end of the word stunned. Or another example: milk [mlAkó] - Milk [mAlóchnyj] - milk [mlkAvós], the first root vowels are pronounced differently depending on the location of stress, therefore, the vowels that differ in their acoustic-articulatory features are in the same function (part of the same root) and realize the same phoneme. So speaking abstracted (distracted) of these sounds and appreciate the sound as the same unit of language, ie, the phoneme.
Compare the words in the English book - books and day - days, where the plural /-s / sounds in different ways: as [-s] and how [-z], and in the words of abbreviation [ә, bri: vi'ei ∫ n] «decline» - abnegate ['æbnigeit] «deny" noted a different pronunciation prefix / ab-/.
On the other hand, in the words of mouth from generation to the pronunciation of the last sound the same - [t], but these sounds are functionally distinct, since implementing different lexical items.
Thus, the phoneme - it's not just the sound of the language, but one that is typical for this language and is able to distinguish the sound envelope of morphemes and words such as: side - tank - a bull - beech, etc. Take the example of the English Language: pin «pin», pen «pen», pan «pot», sound composition and the values ​​of which differ only in vowels.
We give a definition of the phoneme. Phoneme - a minimal unit of phonological structure of language, which operates in the language of a specific function: to serve as the folding of membrane material and distinguishing meaningful units of language - morphemes, words.
Already mentioned in the definition of some of the features of phonemes. In addition, the scientists call a few functions. Thus, the main functions of the phonemes are the following:
A. constitutive (construction) function;
Two. of distinctive (signifying, distinctiveness) function;
Three. perceptual function (Identification, ie, the function of perception);
4. delimitation function (otgranichitelnaya, ie, able to distinguish the beginnings and ends of words and morphemes).
As mentioned earlier, phonemes - units sided with the plan of (exponent - of Maslov), while smyslonositelyami they are not, though, according to LV Bondarko, phonemes are potentially associated with the meaning: they refer to smyslorazlichitelyam. It must be borne in mind that there are words or morphemes odnofonemnye, for example, prepositions, endings, etc.
The concept of the phoneme in linguistics led Russian scientist IA Baudouin de Courtenay. Using the terms used French. linguist L. Hail to the meaning of "speech sound", he relates the concept of the phoneme with its function in the morpheme. Further development of the doctrine of the phoneme is in the works NV Kruszewski, a student of IA Baudouin de Courtenay. A great contribution to the development of this issue made by NS Trubetskoy, St. Petersburg scientist in the 20 years of the twentieth century. emigrated abroad.

2 Main trends in the phoneme theory. The basis for their classification. Three aspects singled out by Shcherba (abstract, material, functional) provide us with the basis for classification of the phoneme theories. According to which aspect of the phoneme is particularly favored by the linguists, we distinguish three groups of conceptions. Conceptions based on abstract aspect. There are several varieties of them. Mentalistic psychological (originated by B. de C.). It defines the phoneme as an ideal psychical image of the sound (псих эквивалент звука). Actually pronounced speech sounds are in perfect realization of such images. There is a discrepancy of intended sound and the one actually pronounced. This view was sheared by Sapir, Zommerfield (phonemes as models which speakers seek to reproduce) and was elaborated by generative phonology and the idea of the phoneme as a target was recently been used again, although under different terminology by Tatham. In another variety of entirely conception called abstract the acoustic and physiological properties of the phoneme are completely ignored. It was originated by Фердинанд де Соссюр.  «Фонема отнюдь не есть что-то звучащее, но нечто бестелесное, образуемое не своей материальной субстанцией, но исключительно теми различиями, которые отделяют её акустический образ от прочих».Others: Hjelsmlev, Shaumyan. In the second group, psychical, the material aspect is brought to an extreme, while its abstract character is denied. The psychical view regards the phoneme as a family of related speech sounds. A mechanical sum of such sounds: from a philosophical point of view, such definitions may be qualified as “vulgarly materialistic, metaphysical”. Criticize: The concept of the house is not a mechanical sum of all the houses existing in the world; a phoneme can’t be viewed as the sum of all the speech sounds (variants). Supporters: Daniel Johns, Block and Trager. It views the phoneme as a group of articulatory similar sounds without any regard to abstract and functional aspects of a phoneme. Functional aspect. This group of conceptions regards the phoneme as the min sound unit by which meaning may be differentiated. Meaning differentiation is important; it’s the basic characteristic of a phoneme. These conceptions disregard material & abstract character of the phoneme. It’s only the distinctive function of speech sounds, but it ignores constrictive & recognative. A phoneme is not a family of sounds, since in every sound there are only a certain number of articulatory features, involved in the differentiation of meaning. It’s the so-called distinctive features of the sound, which make up the phoneme corresponding to it. Trubetzkoy: «Фонема – это пучок дифференциальных признаков» (+Haley?). These distinctive features become distinctive in oppositional sets. Some approaches within these take oppositions as the basic elements of phonological structure (Plotkin, теория кинокемы, Broomfield).

3 Methods of Phonological Analysis

The aim of the phonological analysis is, firstly, to determine which differences of sounds are phonemic (i.e. relevant for the differentiation of the phonemes) and which are non-phonemic and, secondly, to find the inventory of the phonemes of this or that language.29A number of principles have been established for ascertaining the phonemic structure of a language. For an unknown language the procedure of identifying the phonemes of a language as the smallest language units has several stages. The first step is to determine the minimum recurrent segments (segmentation of speech continuum) and to record them graphically by means of allophonic transcription. To do this an analyst gathers a number of sound sequences with different meanings and compares them. For example, the comparison of [stik] and [stæk] reveals the segments (sounds) [i] and [æ], comparison of [stik] and [spik] reveals the segments [st] and [sp] and the further comparison of these

two with [tIk] and [taek], [sik] and [sæk] splits these segments into smaller segments [s], [t], [p]. If we try to divide them further there is no comparison that allows us to divide [s] or [t] or [p] into two, and we have therefore arrived at the minimal segments. From what we have shown it follows that it is possible to single out the minimal segments opposing them to one another in the same phonetic context or, in other words, in sequences which differ in one element only.The next step in the procedure is the arranging of sounds into functionally similar groups. We do not know yet what sounds are contrastive in this language and what sounds are merely allophones of one and the same phoneme. There are two most widely used methods of finding it out. They are the distributional method and the semantic method.  The distributional method is mainly used by phoneticians of "structuralist" persuasions. These phoneticians consider it to group all the sounds pronounced by native speakers into phonemes according to the two laws of phonemic and allophonic distribution. These laws were discovered long ago and are as follows.1. Allophones of different phonemes occur in the same phonetic context.2. Allophones of the same phoneme never occur in the same phonetic context.The fact is that the sounds of a language combine according to a certain pattern characteristic of this language. Phonemic opposability depends on the way the phonemes are distributed in their occurrence. That means that in any language certain sounds do not occur in certain positions. If more or less different sounds occur in the same phonetic context they should be allophones of different phonemes. In this case their distribution is contrastive.If more or less similar speech sounds occur in different positions and never occur in the same phonetic context they are allophones of one and the same phoneme. In this case their distribution is complementary.Still there are cases when two sounds are in complementary distribution but are not referred to the same phoneme. This is the case with the English [h] and [n]. [h] occurs only initially or before a vowel while [n] occurs only medially or finally after a vowel and never occurs initially. In such case the method of distribution is modified by addition of the criterion of phonetic similarity/dissimilarity. The decisions are not made purely on distributional grounds. Articulatory features are taken into account as well.So far we have considered cases when the distribution of sounds was either contrastive or complementary. There is, however, a third possibility, namely, that the sounds both occur in a language but the speakers are inconsistent in the way they use them. In such cases we must take them as free variants of a single phoneme. We could explain it on the basis of "dialect" or on the basis of sociolinguistics. It could be that one variant is a "prestige" form which the speaker uses when he is constantly "monitoring" what he says while the other variant of pronunciation is found in casual or less formal speech. The semantic method. It is applied for phonological analysis of both unknown languages and languages already described. In case of the latter it is used to determine the phonemic status of sounds which are not easily identified from phonological point of view. The method is based on a phonemic rule that phonemes can distinguish words and morphemes when opposed to one another. The semantic method of identifying the phonemes of a language attaches great significance to meaning. It consists in systematic substitution of the sound for another in order to ascertain in which cases where the phonetic context remains the same such substitution leads to a change of meaning. It is with the help of an informant that the change of meaning is stated. This procedure is called the commutation test. It consists in finding minimal pairs of words and their grammatical forms. For example, an analyst arrives at the sequence [pin]. He substitutes the sound [p] for the sound [b] or [s], [d], [w]. The substitution leads to the change of meaning, cf.: pin, 30bin, sin, din, win. This would be a strong evidence that [p], [b], [s], [d], [w] can be regarded as allophones of different phonemes.To establish the phonemic structure of a language it is necessary to establish the whole system of oppositions. All the sounds should be opposed in word-initial, wordmedial and word-final positions. There are three kinds of oppositions. If members of the opposition differ in one feature the opposition is said to be single, e.g. pen – ben. Common features: occlusive – occlusive, labial – labial. Differentiating feature: fortis – lenis.If two distinctive features are marked, the opposition is said to be double, e.g. pen – den. Common features: occlusive – occlusive. features: labial – lingual, fortis voiceless – lenis voiced.If three distinctive features are marked the opposition is said to be triple, e.g. pen – then. Differentiating features: occlusive – constrictive, labial – dental, fortis voiceless – lenis voiced.