Theoretical phonetics. Study guide for second year students. Борискина О.О - 26 стр.

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ochre, occur, rapid, rapidity, mechanical, cooking, potato, big, add, job, nib,
bag, eggs, languages, twelve, swap, queen, глаз, бег, рад, порт, ток, кот,
поле, конь, топь.
What should a non-native speaker of English mispronounce to change the
meaning of the following statements?
The guy in the brown coat is Ted.
To succeed at the interview you should put on a jacket and tie.

Task 5. One way to think of the concepts of the phoneme and the allophone is
to think of the various allophones of a particular phoneme as all belonging to the
same family. A phoneme is a family of similar sounds – allophones - which a
language treats as being “the same”. Comment on this idea, proofreading this
definition if necessary. Illustrate your answer with “the family of the phoneme
[t]”. Will you make use of the terms principal/subsidiary allophones in your
answer?

Task 6. How do you understand the opposition phonetic versus phonological?
Are native speakers most likely to be phonetically naive or phonologically
naive? Why? Do you agree that the distinction between phonemes and
allophones is language specific? Prove your answer.

Task 7. How are the notions of invariant, distinctive or relevant features, non-
distinctive or irrelevant features connected with L.V. Shcherba’s classification
of phonological and phonetic errors? What errors do you think cause a
breakdown in communication? Result in nonnative pronunciation?
Locate a description of typical difficulties for the group of Russian learners that
you work with or anticipate working with. What insights will you gain into the
vowel/consonant challenges that this group experiences to eliminate possible
phonological or phonetic mistakes?

Task 8.What main trends in phoneme theory are known to you?

Task 9. Read the information about methods of phonological analysis in the
textbook Ref. [Соколова, 2004, pp. 51-59] and talk about:
a) the distributional method of analysis: how it works; its aim; its pros and cons;
b) the semantic method of analysis: how it works; its aim; its pros and cons;
c) your understanding of the basic concepts of phonological analysis:
contrastive distribution, complementary distribution, minimal pairs, free
variation, phonetic similarity.

Task 10. Identifying the number of phonemes for a given language is not an
easy matter. There may be problems connected with the phonemic status of
sounds. In the English consonant / vowel system it is first of all, the problem of
stops / fricatives / affricates, the problem of the schwa [ə] / diphthongs / long
VS. short vowels.