Among the many linguistic disciplines, it is especially worth highlighting such a section as phonology. This is a science that studies the sound structure of a language, the realization of phonemes in it. They master this discipline in the first courses of specialties related to translation, language teaching, especially Russian.
We will consider what phonology is, what its subject and tasks are, the structure of our language at this level. We will also get acquainted with the basic terminology of this section.
Definition
We begin our conversation with the definition itself.
Phonology is a section of modern linguistics that examines the sound structure of a language, the functioning of various sounds in its system and their characteristics.
It refers to theoretical linguistics. The main language unit that science is studying is the phoneme.
It originated in the 70-80s of the 19th century in Russia. Its founder is Ivan Alexandrovich Baudouin de Courtenay, a Russian scientist with Polish roots. In the 30s of the 20th century it took shape as an independent science. Today it is one of the main philological disciplines and takes first place in the cycle of subjects of the theoretical grammar of the language.
Subject and Tasks
Like any other science, this section of linguistics has its own tasks and subject.
The subject of phonology is the phoneme, which is the minimum language unit. It is studied by phonologists. Inattentive students may think that the subject is sound, but this is not at all. In fact, they are being studied by another discipline - phonetics.
The second issue to consider is the task. These include:
- implementation in the language;
- entity analysis;
- establishing the relationship between phoneme and sound;
- description of the system of phonemes and their modifications;
- description of the phonological system;
- the connection between the phoneme and other significant units of the language - morphemes and word forms.
And this is far from all the tasks of phonology. It is worth noting that the above priorities are for all existing phonological schools.
Famous Phonologists
As noted above, the founder of science was Ivan Alexandrovich Baudouin de Courtenay. He developed its foundations, gave impetus to its further development.
No less famous is his student Nikolai Sergeevich Trubetskoy, who wrote the famous "Fundamentals of Phonology." He greatly expanded the scientific apparatus of the discipline, described the basic classifications and concepts.
Roman Osipovich Yakobson, Lev Vladimirovich Shcherba, Avram Noam Chomsky and many others worked in this section of linguistics.
A lot of scientific works are devoted to the problems of this section of linguistics. It should be noted the following articles and monographs, which will give an exhaustive idea of the development of science, its main postulates:
- R. I. Avanesov, V. N. Sidorov published in his time the monograph "The system of phonemes of the Russian language."
- Quite famous is the work of S. I. Bernshtein "Basic concepts of phonology."
- J. Wachek, "Phonemes and Phonological Units".
For those who are interested in the history of the issue, the book by L. R. Zinder “Basic Phonological Schools” is useful.
We also note the work:
- S. V. Kasevich, "Phonological Problems of General and Oriental Linguistics".
- T. P. Lomtem, "Phonology of the modern Russian language based on set theory."
- V. I. Postovalov, "Phonology".
A. A. Reformed is the author of three works in which the fundamentals of science are described in detail:
- "From the History of Russian Phonology".
- "Essays on phonology, morphology and morphology".
- "Phonological studies".
Phonological schools
Phonology was dealt with by various linguistic schools. The most famous are the works of scientists who were part of the Prague Linguistic Circle, which included N. Trubetskoy and R. Jacobson.
Scientists from the Moscow phonological school, to which A. Reformed belonged, had their vision. Representatives of this direction paid attention to the study of the identity of sound shells of phonemes.
Representatives of the Leningrad school, including the famous linguist L. Shcherba, believed that science, on the contrary, should study their difference.
But regardless of the views, scientists adhere to a common terminology and definitions.
Terminology
As already mentioned, phonology is a science that studies phonemes. Like any other field of knowledge, it has its own terminological apparatus.
Its main concepts include: phoneme, allophone, position of the phoneme, hyperphoneme, archiphoneme and others. Consider the main ones.
- A phoneme is the smallest indivisible language unit. Serves to build word forms and performs a meaning-distinguishing function. It is realized with the help of sounds - backgrounds. It is worth noting that it is quite abstracted from specific speech sounds.
- An allophone is the realization of a certain phoneme depending on its phonetic environment.
- Hyperfonem is a phoneme that combines the features of two paired sounds.
- Archiphoneme is a phoneme that has a combination of signs of neutralizing phonemes.
- The position of the phoneme is its realization in speech. Constitutive and combinatory positions are distinguished.
- A constitutive position is the realization of a phoneme depending on the place in speech. For example, unstressed or stressed syllable for vowels.
- Combinatorial position - implementation depending on the phonetic environment. For example, vowels in a position after hard or soft consonants have different characteristics.
- The strong position of the phoneme is the position in which it clearly shows its properties.
- Weak (the second name is the neutralization position) is the position in which the phoneme does not perform a distinguishing function.
- Neutralization is the coincidence of different phonemes in one allophone.
- Differential signs of phonemes are signs by which they differ among themselves.
This is not a complete list of terms used by phonology. Linguistics as a whole also uses some of them in other sections - phonetics, grammar.
Phonological structure of the Russian language
Each language is distinguished by its phonological system. In Russian today, 43 phonemes are distinguished. Of these, 6 are vowels and 37 are consonants.
Moreover, each of them is characterized by the presence or absence of a specific set of features.
Vowel phonemes have the following functional characteristics: degree of rise, where the upper, middle, and lower rise are distinguished, the absence or presence of labilization.
Consonants have a more impressive range of characteristics. The following symptoms are noted here, most of which are divided into pairs. So, phonemes are:
- noisy or sonorous;
- deaf or voiced.
By the nature of education:
- closure;
- affricates;
- slotted;
- trembling
- labial;
- Dental
- palatine;
- hard or soft.
These characteristics are well known to those who study Russian. Phonetics, phonology are sciences that operate on characteristics, and philologists are required not only to memorize this set of characteristics, but also be able to apply them in practice, characterizing certain phonemes depending on their position in the word.
Phonological Transcription
Another definition used by this section of linguistics is phonological transcription. This is also one of the required skills that philological students should learn. Phonological transcription is a recording of the transmission of the sound of words with the help of special conventional signs that reflect phonemes used in words.
At the same time, only the main phoneme is recorded on paper, allophones are not indicated. For writing, we use both the Cyrillic alphabet and the Latin alphabet, as well as a number of diacritics.
conclusions
Phonology is one of the main sections of linguistics. This science studies the functioning of phonemes, minimal language units. It has more than a century of history, its own terminological apparatus, tasks and subject of research.
Philology students study it in the first year of university, before acquaintance with phonetics or in parallel with it. Knowing the fundamentals of this discipline in the future helps not only to master the grammar, but also the rules of spelling and spelling.