Causes of allophonic modifications

1) It’s generally considered that allophonic modification is caused by the economy of effort. Which means that the speaker avoids articulatory movements which are not absolutely necessary for intelligibility of speech. That’s why consonants b, d, g in final positions can be voiceless. But they are not replaced by the forties p, t, k.

2) Grammont M. claims that allophonic variations regulated by the law of the stronger. According to it the stronger phoneme influences the weaker adapting it to itself because its articulation is stronger and more stable or because it has particular position in this syllable. The phonetician supposes that the analysis of the combinatore phenomena among phonemes can revile the phonemes that resist modifications. Of course - /ef ko:s/ He supposes that v is assimilated by k.

3) Some scholars consider that the factor that regulates phoneme modifications is the frequency of occurrence of phonemes in phonemic clusters. Frequent phonemes resist modifications and modify rare phonemes. / T, n, s, th, l, d/ - are most frequent resisting modifications.

5. Sound interchange. In English as well as in the other languages there are cases when different speech sounds occur in different derivatives from the same root. Ex: speak – speech. Speak – spoke. Such changes are known in linguistics as sound interchange = alternation of sound. These abstitutions of one sound to another is not accidental, but a regular phenomena. These sounds that can replace each other in definite cases form a so called alternation series. The causes of sound interchange may be:

- Synchronic – are those which are connected with the influence of phonetic laws operating in the language at a given stage of its development; Ex: contextual assimilation, reduction of vowels due to the loss of stress, peculiarities of pronunciation of the sounds in different positions etc. Such sound interchanges are called phonetic alternations or positional alternations sounds. The most important phonetic alternations accompany grammatical phenomena. 1) [t] [d] [id] – the alternation series for the suffix ed of the past tense of regular words. 2) [s] [z] [iz] –the alternation series which occurs in the suffix s, es of the plural form of nouns. 3)[s] [z] [iz] – the alternation series of the 3^rd person singular.

- Diachronic – dated back to some previous period in the historical development of the language; For ex: gradation and mutations of sounds. Sound interchange caused by diachronic causes is called historical alternation of sounds. Historical alternations play an important part in present day form and word building.

Vowel alternations are used:

· To form the plural of some nouns. Ex: man – men.

· To build the basic forms of the irregular forms. Ex: [I – e – a] Begin – began – begun. [I – e – e] meet – met – met.

· To distinguish different parts of speech. [o – i] hot – hit.

· To distinguish causative verbs from other verbs. To rise – to raise, ti sit – to set.

· To distinguish words, which are etymologically related. Mead – meadow, shade – shadow.

Consonants alternations are used:

· To distinguish forms of word. Ex: send – sent – sent.

· To distinguish parts of speech. Ex: to speak – Speech.

· The suffix sh, zh. To express – expression.

· To form plural of some nouns. Ex: leaf – leaves, house – houses.

6. Types of transcription.

Transcription – is a visual system of notation of the sound structure of speech. The first attempts to represent speech sounds date back to the 16^th century. Nowadays there are two types of transcription:

- Phonemic - broad transcription – it’s based on the principal one symbol per phoneme. That’s why the transcription denotes the phoneme as an abstraction and generalization. The symbols of the phonemic transcription are placed between diagonals.

- Allophonic – narrow transcription- is based on the principal one symbol per one allophone. An allophonic transcription provides a special sign for each variant of the phoneme. The symbols are placed between square brackets and there are usually diacritic marks used. Letter – [t> - галочка должна быть под буквой], men – [e>] nasalization. [l] – it can be clear and can be dark.

Nowadays the most widely used transcription is the international phonetic transcription. It was devised by the international phonetic association in 1904. It’s a phonetic alphabet which may be acquired to most of the world languages. The transcription also has broad and narrow types. The broad one is based mostly on Latin symbols, the narrow one makes use of diacritic marks.

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