The St. Petersburg Phonological School

1.

THE St. PETERSBURG
PHONOLOGICAL SCHOOL. L.V.
SHCHERBA'S PHONEMIC CONCEPT
The St. Petersburg Phonological School’s theory is
closely connected with the name of academician
Lev Vladimirovich Shcherba (1880-1944), a
talented student of I. A. Baudouin de Courtenay. L.
V. Shcherba developed the phonemic concept rep
resented by his research advisor. L.V. Shcherba
repeatedly stressed the differential function of the
phoneme.

2.

He gave the following definition of the phoneme:
«The shortest general sound image of a given language,
which is capable of associating with images of meaning
differentiating words, ..., is called phoneme»1. In this
definition besides the term «sound image», which shows
the influence of psychology, everything is clear from the
phonological view point. Although L.V. Shcherba realized
that pho names are not general images in the logical
sense, he considered phonemes as concrete sound
images which are the result of different perceptions. L.V.
Shcherba illustrated his phonemic theory with examples
from various languages. The quantitative and qualitative
variations in the pronunciations of languages may de
pend on their phonetic structures and linguistic habits the
sum of which L.V. Shcherba called the articulation basis.

3.

He emphasized the importance of the variants of
phoneme. For example, citing D. Jones’ idea of the
existence of two allophones of the phoneme /1/ in
English - dark and clear L.V. Shcherba wrote that they
cannot be associated with meanings consciously. As
for the Russian pair of ль - л it is capable to distinguish meanings: бил - был. Thus L.V. Shcherba
emphasized the practical value of sound types in the
pronunciation of a given language. He explained that
in concrete speech we pronounce a number of
speech sounds which may be summed up in a com
operatively small number of sound types capable of
distinguishing words and word forms. Such sound
types are called phonemes.

4.

Actually pronounced speech sounds, in
which phonemes may be realized, would be called
the phoneme shades (allophones or variants of the
phoneme). But among those shades of the
phoneme usually there may be one that is the
typical representative of the phoneme which can
be pronounced isolately, actually, this is what is
perceived by us consciously as an element of
speech. All other shades cannot be understood
consciously and it is difficult to perceive them all
by ear normally. These explanations make it clear
to understand the distinction between general
sound types and concrete speech sounds, which
can prove the distinction between a phoneme and
allophone (speech sound).

5.

L.V. Shcherba also indicated three aspects of speech
sounds: biological (physiological), physical and
linguistic (social), of which he paid special attention
to the last aspect. In speech communication
physiologically and physically different articulations
(for example [a]) may be generalized by one
meaning. Such a generalized unit is called a
phoneme. Thus, L.V. Shcherba under lined the
concrete, generalized and functional aspects of the
phoneme. He explained that each phoneme may be
distinguished from all other phonemes by its
features, while all the phonemes of a given
language form a unit system of oppositions in which
each phoneme is defined by its oppositions against
another separate phoneme or phoneme groups.

6.

L.V. Shcherba invented his own system of
transcription. He wrote about different
pronunciation styles and advanced very interesting ideas on the subjective and objective
methods of scientific investigation. L.V.
Shcherba’s phonological theory was developed
and improved by many linguists. His followers
and pupils L.R. Zinder, M.I. Matusevich, L.V.
Bondarko, A.N. Gvoz dev, V.I. Litkin, Y.S.
Maslov, O.I. Dickushina are representatives of
the St. Petersburg phonological school.

7.

L.R. Zinder defines the phoneme as the smallest, i.e.
indivisible in time (or linearly) unit, but from the
structural view point, it may have different features
some of which are considered to be common with
other phonemes and some other features which
distinguish it from all other phonemes. The
phoneme is very complex unit and it may be
realized in different allophones (or shades, variants).
There are two of allophones: positional and
combinatory i.e. depending on their positions and
on the neighboring sounds. If the distinctions
between the sounds are not capable of
distinguishing the meanings of words or wordforms, then such sounds are the allophones of a
phoneme.

8.

For example, let us examine consonant sounds t,
t°, t', t'° in the words так /tak/, тот /t°ot/, стяг
/st'ak/, тётя /t'ot'b/ etc. The distinction
between the first and second sounds, and
between the third and fourth sounds can not
serve to distinguish the meanings of the words.
Thus, they represent one phoneme. The
distinctions be tween the first and the third
sounds and between the second and fourth
sounds are capable of differentiating the
meanings of the words. Therefore they may
represent different phonemes.

9.

Accordingly we can state that some sound
distinctions may be phone-matic and some of
them may be phonetic1.
L. R. Zinder points out the reality of the
phoneme i. e, its existence in a given language,
being the sound unit of a language phoneme
through its different representatives may have
very complex phonetic characteristics. Besides,
being independent and autonomous unit of a
language expression, the phoneme can be
separated from the sound material of words.

10.

For example, the word прут /prut/, may be
broken up into /р/, /г/, In/, /t/2. This comes
from the discrete character of the phoneme.
L. R. Zinder also proposes rules to determine
phonemes and phoneme combinations. He
thoroughly analyses the most valuable
phonological ideas of I. A. Baudouin de
Courtenay, L. V. Shcherba, N. S. Trubetzkoy and
other linguists.

11.

It must be kept in mind that the St. Petersburg
Phonological School's definition of a phoneme is
based on words and word- forms, i.e. the
phoneme is the smallest unit capable of
differentiating words and word forms. This
phonemic concept is applied to the description
of English phonemes by G. P. Torsuyev, V.
A.Vassilyev, О. I. Dickushina and V. N.
Vitomskaya.