PRINCIPLES OF PHONOLOGY

N. S. TRUBETZKOY

Students: Shakurova Yulia,

Turikova Anastasia
Group 2A
 THE CONTENT

• Biography of Trubetzkoy
• History of Phonology
• Phonology and Phonetics
• The Theory of Distinctiveness (The Distinctive or Meaning – differentiating, Function of Sound)
• Basic Notions
• Rules for the Determination of Phonemes
• Logical classification of Distinctive Oppositions
•
Nikolay Sergeyevich Trubetskoy (born April 16, 1890, Moscow
—died June 25, 1938, Vienna), Slavic linguist at the centre of
the Prague school of linguistics, noted as the author of its most
important work on phonology, Grundzüge der Phonologie
(1939; “Principles of Phonology”).

Trubetzkoy N. S.
The distinction between act of speech and
system of language was first recognized by
the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure.
He defined that anything that is the part of
language and the act of speech as well as
the system of language has two aspects: le
significant (the signifier) and le signifie (the
signified), but he did not insist on the
necessity of distinguishing between the
study of sound pertaining to the act of
speech and that pertaining to the system of
language.
Baudouin de Courtenay was the first to
arrive at the idea that there should be two
distinct types of descriptive sound study,
depending on whether concrete sounds
were to be investigated as physical
phenomena or as phonic signals used by a
speech community for purposes of
communication.
 R. Jacobson S. Kareevskij S. Trubetskoy

At the First International Congress of Linguists in The Hague in 1928 three Russian scholars, none of whom happened to be from the
school of J. Baudouin de Courtenay, formulated a short program in which the distinction between the study of sound pertaining to the
act of speech and the study of sound pertaining to the system of language was clearly and distinctly set forth. They were R. Jacobson,
S. Kareevskij and S. Trubetskoy.
 Phonology
The study of sound pertaining to the system of
language
Use the methods of linguistics, the humanities,
the social sciences
Examines what sound differences in the
language are related to semantic differences,
what are the relations of distinctive elements.
Phonologists study the aspect of sound which
fulfills a specific function in the system of
language.
Phonetics
The study of sound pertaining to the act of
speech
Use the methods of the natural sciences
The sole task - to deal with the question of speech
production. This question can be answered only by
stating exactly how the sounds are perceived and in
what manner, by what movements of the vocal
organs, a particular acoustic effect is achieved.
Phonetician study all features of sound.
 PHONOLOGY AND PHONOSTYLISTICS

Linguistic utterance

A manifestation A representation of the

An appeal to the hearers
(an expression) of the topic
speaker
What he says
Who is speaking His intonation and pitch

Planes

The plane of
The plane of expression The plane of appeal representation
 Phonological means of appeal
Phonological means of expression
The conative means
• They belong to the phonic aspect of the
formal system of signs which constitutes the
system of language. • They serve to evoke or “release” certain
• They express the characteristics of the emotions in the hearer.
speaker:belonging to a certain age group, to a
particular social class, gender, the degree of
education, social origin.
 PHONOLOGY

Phonic properties have

A culminative function A meaning – differentiating

Indicate how many “units” A delimitative function Distinctive function
(words, combinations of Signal the boundary Distinguish the individual
words) are contained in a between two units units of meaning
particular sentence (compound words, E.g.: [pit] –[bit]
Eg.: pitch, stress morphemes)
Eg.: for German this
includes initial glottal stop
before vowel
 THE PHONOLOGICAL (DISTINCTIVE) OPPOSITION

Phonological / Phonologically distinctive/ Phonologically irrelevant/ Nondistinctive

Distinctive oppositions oppositions

Oppositions of sound capable of differentiating the Oppositions of sound that do not have this
lexical meaning of two words in a particular property, do not affect communication.
language
Eg.: [pit ]- [pin]; [sɪk] –[si:k], [fæn] – [bæn] Eg.:aspirated and non – aspirated
 Sounds

Interchangeable Noninterchangeable
Can occur in the same phonic environment Can never occur in the same phonic
in a given language environment
Eg.: aspirated – unaspirated
Eg.:[bɑːθ] – [beɪð], [tuːθ] – [tuːθ] [spæt] – [pæt] ; [spiːk] – [piːk]

can form distinctive as well as cannot form phonological (distinctive)

nondistinctive oppositions oppositions as they never occur in the same
phonic environment.
 THE PHONOLOGICAL (DISTINCTIVE) UNIT,
PHONEME, AND VARIANT

Phonological (distinctive unit)

Phoneme Variant
Phonological units that cannot be Sound Various speech sounds, which are
analyzed into still smaller realizations of the same
the realization of this phoneme.
distinctive units. It is the smallest phoneme.
distinctive unit of a given
language. The phoneme is the
sum of the phonologically
relevant properties of a sound. Speech Sound
The sum of all distinctive as well
as nondistinctive properties
[t] – occlusive, plosive, occurring at a specific point in the Twice : [t] – rounded
forelingual, apical, alveolar, sound flow. Let them
strong, voiceless
 R U L E S F O R T H E D E T E R M I N AT I O N O F P H O N E M E S

Two sounds of a given If two sounds occur in  If two sounds of a given Two sounds that
language are merely exactly the same position language, related otherwise meet the
optional phonetic and cannot be acoustically or conditions of Rule III can
variants of a single interchanged without a articulatory, never occur still not be regarded as
phoneme if they occur in change in the meaning of in the same environment, variants of the same
exactly the same the words or without they are to be considered phoneme if, in a given
environment and are rendering the word variants combinatory of language, they can occur
interchangeable without a unrecognizable, the two the same phoneme. next to each other, that is,
change in the lexical sounds are phonetic if they are part of a sound
meaning of the word. realizations of two sequence in those
different phonemes. positions where one of
the sounds also occurs in
isolation.

• General /Individual Тятя – тётя Я–Ё [prəˈfeʃn] – [pəˈfekʧ(ə)n]

• Stylistically А-О
relevant/ irrelevant
CLASSIFICATION OF OPPOSITION
 ON THE BASIS OF THEIR RELATIONSHIP TO THE
ENTIRE SYSTEM OF OPPOSITION

Bilateral Multilateral
[p] – [b] , [t] – [d], [к] – [g] [din] – [pin]

Homogeneous Heterogeneous
[p] – [t]
Linear Nonlinear

Proportional Isolated
 ON THE BASIS OF THE RELATION BETWEEN THE
OPPOSITION MEMBERS

Private Gradual Equipollent

one member is characterized by
the presence, the other by the
absence, of a mark
voiced /voiceless
rounded/unrounded
the members are characterized by
degrees or gradations of the same
property
both members are logically
equivalent, that is, they are
neither considered as two
degrees of one property nor as
the absence or presence of a
property
[p]/[t] ; [f]/[k]
 ON THE BASIS OF THE EXTENT OF THEIR
DISTINCTIVE FORCE

Constant Neutralizable
members are independent the distinctive opposition is
phonemes neutralized in certain
position; the opposition is
relevant – positions of
relevance