Theoretical Grammar The subject-matter of theoretical grammar. Its relation to practical grammar

Articulatery and physiological classification of E vowels. According to the degree of tenseness, length.
Accord to the degree of tenseness traditionally long vowels are defined as tense (напряженные) and short as lex (ослаблен). The tense and lex were introduced by Sweet. When the muscles of the lips, tongue, chicks and the back walls of the pharynx are tense, the vowels produced can be characterized as tense. When tense organs are relatively relaxed, lex vowels are produced. The Rus v – s are not differentiated according to the tenseness.
Eng v- s can be checked and unchecked. Checked v – s are those which occur in stressed closed syllables, ending in a fortis voiceless cons, e.g. [e] in bed, letter. The checked v – s are pronounced without any lessening in the force of utterance towards their end. Unchecked v – s are those, which occur terminally or are followed by a lenis voiced cons, e.g. [i:]. There are no checked v – s in Rus. All of them are unchecked.
According to the length Eng vowels are subdivided into long and short. Vowel length may depend on:
1position of the vowel in a word,2word stress,3the number of syllables in a word
4the character of the syllable structure,5sonority
1. positions of dependants of length can be illustrated by the following example [bi: - bid – bit]. In the terminal конец position a vowel is the longest it shortness before a voiced consonant, it is the shortest before a voiceless consonant.
2. a vowel is longer in a stressed syllable than in unstressed one: fOrecast - fourcAst.(прогноз – предсказывать погоду). In the verb [o] is shorter than in the noun, though it maybe pronounced with [o] equally long.
3. if we compare a one syllable word and a word consisting of more than one syllable, we may observe that similar vowels are shorter in a polysyllabic word. Thus in the word verse (стих) [3:] is longer than in university.
4. In words with V,CV,CCV type of syllable the vowel length is greater than in words with VC,CVC, CCVC type of syllable. Ex. [3:] is longer in err (ошибаться) (V type) than in Earn (VC type).
5. vowels of low sonority are longer than vowels of greater sonority. It is so because the speaker makes more affort to produce greater auditory effect, while pronouncing vowels of lower sonority thus making them longer. Ex. [i] is longer than [o], [i:] is longer than [a:]
Besides vowel length depends on the tempo of speech.