English Phonetics (contrastive analysis of English and Ukrainian pronunciation)

Abstract

The present textbook “English Phonetics” (a contrastive study of English and Ukrainian pronunciation), written by T.A. Brovchenko and T.M. Korolova, is the second edition of the manual “English Phonetics”, written by T. Brovchenko and I. Bant in 1964. The period of the second half of the 20th century was characterized by intensive development of all the sciences and linguistics as well. The achievements of the scientists in the sphere of the theory of linguistics, the new elaborations of difficult problems, the development of new methods and apparatuses of experimental phonetics made it necessary to revise the book and make additional theoretic and experimental investigations. The method of contrastive phonetics, which began to be developed in Ukraine in 1950s-60s and the needs of the teachers of foreign languages who realized that the most successful way for adults to acquire the current pronunciation of a foreign language is to learn the phonetic structure of the given language in comparison with the mother tongue caused the necessity of systematic comparative scientific investigations of phonetic structure of the foreign and native language of the learner. Consequently, all the chapters of the present book were revised and most of them written anew. In the investigation of the speech sounds articulation in English and Ukrainian the experimental methods of palatograms, linguagrams and photography were applied, a detailed and exact position of the speech organs was obtained. Some specific peculiarities of the shape and the position of the speech organs, typical of each of the two languages and unknown before, were registered. A new treatment of the acoustic nature of word stress was suggested. It has been proved that the main acoustic characteristic of word stress in English and Ukrainian, as well as in other languages with the dynamic type of stress, is the total acoustic energy, which is defined as intensity over time, i.e. the result of coordination of two components of the total energy – intensity and duration. It has been proved experimentally that the share of duration and intensity is not equal in English and Ukrainian and depends upon the peculiarities of the phonematic structure of the language. These hypotheses were supported by the results of the experimental analysis of objective, relative and subjective parameters of stressed and unstressed syllables in English and Ukrainian. The chapter devoted to the theory of syllables (Syllabics) was revised. The syllable was treated as an impulse of energy, retaining all the characteristics as a classical impulse of energy. The chapter devoted to intonation was also revised. A review of development of the theory of intonation was given. A thorough description of the components, functions and the intonation structure of the utterance in various communicative types of utterance and under various conditions of speech production were presented. The book is intended as a textbook for the students of Philological departments of the Universities and other higher education institutions of Ukraine as well as for those who are interested in the problems of sounding speech. “Introduction” and Part I of the present book “Segmental Units of Speech” were written by T.A. Brovchenko. Part II of the present book “Suprasegmental Units of Speech” were written by T. M. Koroljova. We would like to express special thanks to our colleagues N.V. Lanchukovskaya and A.S. Shaljov for much assistance when preparing the book for publication.