General principiles of vowel formation Contents Introduction

TYPES OF TRANSCRIPTION
Transcription – the system of signs in which sounds are symbolized. There are different types of transcription: phonemic or broadcontains as many symbols as there are phonemes in the language (phoneme is usually enclosed between diagonals - /t/); phonetic or narrow or allophonic – “one symbol to allophone”. The symbols of this transcription are placed between square brackets – [t]. To mark different allophones of one phoneme scholars use diacritic marks – additional symbols used to characterize separate phonemes of their allophones (й). Diacritic marks help to use the inventory of the letters of the alphabet, without enlarging it. Allophonic transcription is the most convenient so that is why one can hardly do without it in foreign language teaching. The first attempts to represent speech sounds visually by means of special symbols were made in 16 century. The modern phonetic transcription that is most widely used now is the lnternational Phonetic Transcription devised by the International Phonetic Association in 1904. This tr-ion is a phonetic alphabet which may be applied to most of the languages. One of the principles of this transcription is to use the fewest symbols of the simplest possible shape. Most of the symbols it uses are letters of the Latin alphabet. Besides, it contains a series of diacritic marks. Jones took from this type of transcription some symbols to English (I, i:, e, ǽ, ə, a:, o, o:, u, u:, ei, ou, au, oi, uə). Diacritic marks: ~nasalization; • devoicing; ǔ voicing; + advanced variety; - retracted variety; : length mark, etc
Function of the syllable
Constitutive Function. Syllables constitute words, phrases and sentences through the combi­nation of their prosodic features: loudness — stress, pitch — tone, dura­tion — length and tempo. Syllables may be stressed, unstressed, high, mid, low, rising, falling, long, short. All these prosodic features constitute the stress pattern of words, tonal and rhythmic structure of an utter­ance, help to perform distinctive variations on the syllabic level. Distinctive and Differentiatory Function. If we compare the words: lightening освещение and lightning молния, we may observe that their syllabicity is the only minimal, distinc­tive feature: /'laitnirj vs. 'laitnirj/. It is an example of the word-distinctive function of the syllable. There are rather many combinations in English distinguished from each other by means of the difference in the place of the syllabic boundary: a name — an aim, ice cream — / scream: /a 'neim/ — /an 'eim/, /'ais'kiim/ — /ai 'skitm/. The distinctive, differentiatory function of the syllabic boundary makes it possible to introduce the term "juncture". Close juncture or conjunc­ture occurs between sounds within one syllable, e.g. a name, I scream: in the first example the close juncture is between /n/ and /ei/, in the se­cond — between /s/ and /k/. Open juncture, disjuncture or internal open juncture occurs between two syllables. If we mark open juncture with /+/ then in our examples it will occur between a +name, I + scream. Ameri­can scientists H. A. Gleason, L. S. Harris and K. Pike consider the open juncture a separate segmental phoneme. They include /+/ into the inven­tory of phonemes as a separate differentiatory unit. Identificatory Function. This function is conditioned by the pronunciation of the speaker. The listener can understand the exact meaning of the utterance only if he perceives the correct syllabic boundary — "syllabodisjuncture", e.g. my train мой поезд— might rain возможен дождь. The existence of such pairs demands special attention to teaching not only the correct pronunciation of sounds but also the observation of the correct place for syllabodisjuncture.