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37КОГНИТИВНАЯ ФОНОЛОГИЯ В ОБУЧЕНИИ АНГЛИЙСКОГО ПРОИЗНОШЕНИЯ
Дукембай Г.Н.,
Кандидат филологических наук, доцент Евразийского Национального университета имени Л.Н. Гумилева
г. Астана Кусепова Г. Т.,
Магистрант филологического факультета Евразийского Национального университета имени Л.Н. Гумилева
г. Астана
COGNITIVE PHONOLOGY IN TEACHING ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION
Dukembay G.N., Candidate of Philological Sciences, Associate Professor, L.N. Gumilyov Eurasian National University
Kussepova G. T., Master student, the Faculty of Philology, L.N. Gumilyov Eurasian National University
АННОТАЦИЯ
Основная цель данной статьи, проанализировав просодические интерференции в оформлении английской речи у студентов-билингвов, носителей казахского и русского языков, использовать особенности когнитивной фонетики, установить правильное произнесение звуков английского языка. В большинстве случаев изучающие второй иностранный язык акцентируют свое внимание на грамматике, при этом пренебрегают важностью изучения правильного произношения. Современные лингвисты исследуют проблему вариаций произношения с учетом факторов регулирования звуковых реализаций. Нашей задачей является изменение фонетических систем обучения английского языка с учетом влияния носителей языка казахского языка с когнитивной точки зрения.
ABSTRACT
The key purpose of this article is to establish the use of cognitive phonology features in teaching correct pronunciation by analyzing the bilingual students' prosodic contours influence the production of the English language. Second language learners concentrate on grammar to acquire the language omitting the crucial importance of pronunciation. Modern phoneticians investigate the problem of pronunciation variations considering the factors of regulating sound realizations. Our concern here is phonetic system variation of English language taking into account the influence of Kazakh language speakers from cognitive perspective.
Ключевые слова: Фонология, Когнитивная фонология, фонема, двуязычие, трехъязычие, произнесение
Keywords: Phonology, Cognitive Phonology, Phoneme, bilingualism, trilingualism, utterance
Actually, learners acquiring the second language usually face the influence of their first language and difficulty of understanding the utterance of native speaker. This is the result of a simple correspondence lack between the spelling system and the pronunciation system. It is important to propose a new methodological framework within Cognitive Phonology which can help to present a new approach to teach learners to pronounce sounds clearly and understand the word meanings.
In light of cognitive research works have been considered during the 20th century by famous linguists as Chomsky and Halle (1968), Liberman and Mattingly (1985), Browman & Goldstein 1986, Harris (1994) and Anderson and Ewen (1987) we have a better understanding of articulation and perception of sounds. According to their works we can assume that sounds have two layers: an articulatory plan and a perceptual or psycho-acoustic image.
Taking into account an articulatory plan of sound features we've considered works of linguists as Delat-tre(1965) and Allan R.James (1986). Delattre (1965) has made the comprehensive cross-linguistic study of phonetic parameters by comparing and contrasting the prosodic, vocalic and consonantal features of English,
French, German and Spanish according to the articula-tory and acoustic criteria. The main point of his work has been to improve the language teaching.
This investigation offers a clear way of teaching foreign language. However, in Kazakhstan investigation comparing two languages in the point of cognitive phonology features has been overlooked.
To consider the features of cognitive phonology we want to take into account two points of phonology view. Significantly, one of them is how to pronounce sounds with the help of vocal apparatus and another one is sounds role in the meaning expression.
In this article we attempt to consider the sound meanings through the cognitive phonology features. We have paid attention to the work of Riitta Valimaa-Blum (2009) stating that phonemes do not exist as discrete entities in speech. "Words cannot be cut up into sequences of sounds that can be reorganized to form other words without the new words sounding unnatural. This is due to several factors, one is co-articulation, and another has to do with different phonetic contexts involving different phonetic variants of the phonemes. There is also a great deal of inter- and intra-speaker variability due to speaking styles, dialects, age, gender, foreign accents, pathologies, etc., which further means
that the limits of variability of a given phoneme are impossible to demarcate." [2]
This hypothesis proved useful in solving problems concerning the difference between learning words and understanding them in sentences. Learners can recognize words visually, but not aurally.
To illustrate the further point we take into account the provided example of Trask (2004), where the bracketed units in (b) correspond to phonological words:
a. The rest of the books will have to go there.
b. [The rest] [of the books'll] [have to] [go] [there]. [3;485]
In English, in rapid speech some parts of speech are "glued together" into single words as the example shows. In conclusion Trask (2004) states the boundaries laid by the system of pronunciation do not always correspond with the boundaries laid down by meaning or grammar. Johnson, Flemming and Wright (1993) suggest that vowels in words and isolated vowels do not correspond to the same mental entity.
To further investigation we have used Emily Jane Bronte's novel "Wuthering heights". We have made an attempt to analyze the conversation written in ancient Yorkshire dialect. As we are aware of the ancient dialect difficulty, Joseph's conversation is the toughest one to pronounce as well as understand the meaning. We face the difficulty of understanding students Yorkshire accent of Joseph in the novel of Emily Jane Bronte. Native speakers can perceive the meaning of his speech but for the second language learners it is not easy to understand it.
Joseph: 'What are ye for?' he shouted. 'T' maister's down i' t' fowld. Go round by th' end o' t' laith, if ye went to spake to him.' [3]
First of all, we assume that if the reader isolates the word, they can't segment the meaning of the above-mentioned sentence. Furthermore, segmenting all words completely, we can have a reasonable outcome since all the phonemes are present. The pronoun 'you' is provided as 'ye' in the sentence, we may consider the meaning of the word 'you' but not 'ye'. It carries less information than 'you', which causes the difficulty of understanding the idea of the word. But the meaning of 'ye' is prompted by the presence of the sentence structure 'what are ... for'. We can say the same about T'. It has no meaning separately, but the word 'master' gives the prompt to 'T'.
Furthermore, to have a clear view of forming speech in foreign language is crucial to know properly practiced minimal material to ensure learners' motivational level.
We have analyzed the conversation between Linton, Catherine and Heathcliff (film shot in 2009, Part 1) with the point of phonological plan and articulatory reduction. Linell (1982) has presented the derivation of an articulatory plan:
1. phonological form (phonological plan) ^ /wintar/ ^ derivation by (perceptual) redundancy rules
2. fully specified articulatory plan of careful pronunciation ^ /win* tha/ ^ (in reality much more detailed) derivation by articulatory reduction rules (e.g. nasal absorption, flapping, /r/ absorption)
3. fully specified articulatory plan of "reduced" pronunciation^ /wire/^(in reality much more detailed) [4;49]
We agree that phonological form differ from the articulatory plan. For instance,
Heathcliff: "Although I don't know if Nelly looks at me with pride for the job she did. "
According to the phonological form the sentence will be as follows:
[o.l'dau ai daunt nau if 'neli luks at : em 'i: wid praid fo:(r) da djvb fii did]
According to the articulatory plan the utterance of Heathcliff in the film shot 2009 is as follows:
[o:l'sau ai dauntnau if 'neli luks at mi: wid praid fo:da djvb fii did]
Particular, couples of words during the pronunciation of actors are linked. For instance Linton's speech: Catherine, will you please [desist in this]?!
When the similar consonant sounds have occurred both of them pronounced together (damn my soul), and to link two vowel sounds they add more sounds.
Linell (1979) states that knowledge how to pronounce words corresponds the knowledge of phonological forms and general conditions on phonological-phonetic structure, ability to perceive pronunciations differently and forming new phonetic plans from lexical structure to morphological operations. It is commonplace that one sentence can be produced in many different ways, even by a single speaker.
The phonetic material that forms the substance of phonology can be viewed in two ways: first, the object of study and second, real phonetic substance [5;290]. In the lexicon as well as in production and perception, and this phonetic substance can be regarded as undergoing permanent change as the result of coarticulation processes. Most linguists investigating cognitive linguists propose that human beings categorize and memorize their experiences in terms of so-called exemplar clouds, large clusters of remembered episodes of individual experiences. "In phonology, exemplar theory proposes that we do not form abstractions of the formal properties of the phonemes and words but remember individual occurrences of them, just as they are perceived. These episodic tokens thus give rise to a mental lexicon containing highly detailed information of both the predictable and non-predictable properties of the sounds, and even data relating to individual speakers, speaking styles and dialects are conserved." [2] Thus, to understand the foreign language we should form the episodic tokens of the English speaking style and dialects.
These observations are support the evidence that we have lack of methods in teaching English language in the view of the language cognition.
We assume that making investigation and comparison analysis of cognitive phonology features of the Kazakh and English languages should be held to improve teaching methods of English language.
It is obvious that the reason of the wrong pronunciation during the speech is the automatic linguistic transference from native language to non-native one. Contrastive analysis of two interacting systems, constant training, simulation and multiple repetitions of
correct samples are the best ways of overcoming difficulty of pronunciation and understanding the utterance.
After experiment we have a model of perceiving English as the native speaker of Kazakh. There are several factors of the native language influence to the English pronunciation. Firstly, Kazakh learners use sounds that are in Kazakh language, but may not exist in English. They are: i, e, y, ¥. In contrast of English that has 26 letters with twice more sounds, the Kazakh language has 42 letters but less sounds. Secondly, when reading or speaking Kazakh students apply the rule of last syllable prominence which is not presented in English. In conclusion, Kazakh learners do not distinguish difference between written and spoken form of a word, as the result of the Kazakh language influence that written and spoken forms resemble and goes hand in hand with pronouncing the silent letters e.g. the word water is usually pronounced as /'wo:ter/ instead of /'wo:ta/ by Kazakh learners. In other hands, we assume that to understand the utterance we need to be aware of English speaking style and dialects.
Scrutinizing the novel we have found 207 words with vowel combination ou with 11 options of pronunciation; 201 words of vowel combination ee with 2 options of pronunciation; 68 words vowel combination ea with 8 options of pronunciation.
Only considering three vowel combinations we have made the following hypothesis: Meaningful teaching of sounds is possible due to the comparative study of them in two languages. Students should maintain awareness of the linguistic features of foreign speech to the development of skills.
To maintain awareness of the linguistic features it is important to take into account the characteristics of monolinguals and bilinguals. Kazakhstan is known with bilinguals, population of Kazakhstan can speak both in Russian and Kazakh. It is assumed that bilin-guals have a number of communicative advantages over the monolinguals. They have greater freedom of communicative behavioral choice and dynamism, flexibility in changing the linguistic code in the foreign language communication process. People living in Kazakhstan acquired the language according to the language environment. And to acquire the third language we need to recreate the real language situation under artificial multilingualism. An effective teaching material selection gives students the opportunity of being acquainted with the normative manifestations of the language variation that is the formation of a correct understanding of the dynamic nature of the language being studied.
As our observations indicate, there is ample evidence to suggest that the Kazakh language has similar sounds to English. Logically, almost all vowels in English have more or less similar couples in the Kazakh language. Thus, features of sounds similar to Kazakh one, however there are long vowel sounds not typical to the Kazakh language. In other words, the correct
English pronunciation is only achieved when the teacher shows the examples in foreign language shown with the comparative analysis to construe the episodic tokens of a mental lexicon containing highly detailed information of both the predictable and non-predictable properties of the sounds, and even data relating to individual speakers, speaking styles and dialects.
The revealed features of cross-language transfer not only reflect the differences between prosodic systems of English and Kazakh languages, but also indicate the lack of phonetic competence of students-bilin-guals, unconsciously relying on the already familiar prosodic models as native and second language acquisition in their English speech.
As exemplified by our study of the Kazakh and English languages we have made the following claims. Education of foreign speech in this regard is difficult linguistic didactical task. At first, effect of the superposition of three prosodic systems invariably accompanied by accent, melodic distortion of English speech of bilinguals and trilinguals. Second, requires the review of educational strategies aimed at consideration of possible interfering factors in learning a foreign language intonation linguistically inhomogeneous audience.
References
1. Gerald Kelly How to teach pronunciation. Malaysia, 2000, p.1
2. Riitta Valimaa-Blum The phoneme in cognitive phonology: episodic memories of both meaningful and meaningless units. Cognitexts v. 2, 2009
3. Emily Jane Bronte Wuthering height. Film shot in 2009. The episodes were adapted for the screen by Peter Bowker and directed by Coky Giedroyc.
4. Linell, P. The Concept of Phonological Form and the Activities of Speech Production and Speech Perception. Journal of Phonetics, 1982a, 10: 37-72.
5. Joan L. Bybee A view of phonology from a cognitive and functional perspective. Cognitive Linguistics 5-4 ( 1994 ), Walter de Gruyter, p.290
6. Keith Johnson, Edward Flemming, Richar Wright The hyperspace effect: Phonetic targets are hy-perarticulated. Language v.69 no3, 1993, p.505
7. 2010Vyvyan Evans and Melanie Green Cognitive Linguistics. An introduction. Edinburgh University Press, 2006 p. 484-485
8. Harry van der Hulst Cognitive Phonology University of Connecticut
9. Riitta Valimaa-Blum Cognitive Phonology in Construction Grammar: Analytic Tools for Students of English
10. Allan R. James Suprasegmental phonology and segmental form
11. Linell, P. Psychological Reality in Phonology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1979
12. Charles W. Kreidler Phonology: Critical Concepts in Linguistics, Volume VI London and New York, 2001
