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Темы семинарских занятий по дисциплине «Теоретическая фонетика (английского

языка)»
1) Production of speech sounds: the articulatory mechanism.
 Organs of speech and their functions
 Positions and activity of organs of speech
 Resonators
 Resonance chambers
 Oral chamber
 The tongue
 Speech mechanism

2) Speech sounds: articulation and classifications of vowels and consonants.

 Major groups of speech sounds
 Classification of English vowel phonemes
 Monophthongs
 Classification of vowels according to the position of the bulk of the tongue
 Classification of vowels according to the height of the raised part of the tongue
 Classification of vowels according to the position of lips
 Classification of English vowels according to length
 Principles of classification
 Classification according to manner of production of noise and type of obstruction
 Constrictive consonants
 Occlusive-constrictive and rolled consonants
 Classification according to the active organ of speech and the place of obstruction
 Lingual consonants
 Classification according to the work of vocal cords
 Classification according to the position of the soft palate

3) Phonemes and symbols. Junction of phonemes.

 Stages of articulation of isolated sounds
 Ways of linking adjacent sounds
 Merging of stages
 Interpenetration of stages
 Identical sounds
 Sounds of different nature

4) The English vowel system.

 A short monophthong :
 A long monophthong
 vowel letters in unstressed syllables
 Mute vowels
 combinations of vowel letters
 vowel digraphs

5) English consonants.
  Consonant letters with several pronunciations
 Consonant letters without alphabetic sound values
 Combinations of consonant letters
 Pronunciation of some consonants in unstressed syllables
 Mute consonant letters

6) Subsidiary variants of English phonemes.

 Difference between primary and subsidiary variants of phonemes
 Factors of subsidiary variants
 Importance of subsidiary variants of phonemes
 Subsidiary variants of consonant phonemes
 Devoicing
 Subsidiary variants of English vowel phonemes
 Relative positional length of English vowel phonemes
7) The syllabic structure of the English language.
 Definitions of a syllable
 Phonetic definition
 Auditory definition
 Role of a vowel
 Various types of classification
8) Classification of syllables
 Phonetic and orthographic syllables
 Morphemic structure
 A dynamic stress
 The acoustic aspect
 The expiratory theory
 The sonority theory
 Free character of vowels
 Formation of syllable by sonorants
 Checked vowels
 Closeness
 The open position
 Cases of confusion

9) Assimilation in the English language.

 What is assimilation?
 Assimilated and assimilating phonemes
 Kinds of assimilation
 Degrees of Assimilation
 Direction of Assimilation
 Historical and Contextual Assimilation
 Established and Accidental Assimilations
 Adaptation, or Accommodation
10) Some aspects of connected speech
 Elision
 Linking
 Phonemic transcription
 Phonetic transcription

11) Stress and accents in words and sentences.

  Stress vs. Accent
 Phonological function of stress
 Place and force of stress in words
 Stress in simple words
 Information for the asterisk *

12) Stress in complex words

 Suffixes attracting the primary stress to the preceding syllable
 Suffixes that do not influence the place of word-stress
 Words with primary and secondary stresses
 Words with 2 primary stresses
 Stress in compound words

13) English intonation.

 Components of intonation
 Kinds of intonation
 Unity of components of intonation
 Method of indicating intonation
 Pitches of stressed and unstressed syllables
 The picture of intonation
 Intonation in a written language
 Role of punctuation marks
 Sentence intonation
 Stresses and tones
14) Functions of intonation.

 The function of intonation

 The functions of speech melody
 Pause
 The functions of tamber
 The role of intonation as a whole

15) Phonological aspect of speech sounds.

 The questions of typology of accentual structure

 Degrees of stress and rhythmical tendency
 Functional aspects of word stress
 Practical analysis showing the types of stress

16) The accentual structure of words and sentences.

 Accentual prominence
 Accent in monosyllabic words
 Types of word accent
 Degrees of word-stress
 Factors determining the degree of stress
 Types of word accent: 1. Fixed
 Free word accent
 Word accent in English
  Recessive stress
 Change of phonemes
 Struggle of tendencies

17) Sentence stress

 Strong and weak forms
 Notional words
 Form words
 Special cases

18) Tone units

 Structure of a tone unit
 The tonic syllable
 Types of heads
 Pitch range