Seminar 1

1. Phonetics: the study of the sound system of language.
2. Branches of Phonetics.
3. Phonology: the functional aspect of the sound system of language.
4. Phonetics at the intersection of linguistic studies. Research in communicative phonetics and language teaching methodology.
5. Experimental phonetics and computational linguistics. New speech transmission technologies; machines with a voice control operations; automatic machine translation.

Seminar 2

1. Speech sounds as phonological units. The hierarchy of discrete and non-discrete phonological units.
2. Phoneme as the main concept of phonology and its functions. Classification of vowels and consonants. Major types of phonemes in English.
3. Basic methods of phonological analysis. Phoneme theories. Schools of phonology.
4. Feature theory. The system of phonological oppositions. Phonologically relevant features of phonemes. Modifications of phonemes in speech continuum.
5. Articulation basis of English. Basic phonological rules. Modifications of English vowels and consonants in connected speech.

Seminar 3

1. Syllable as a phonetic and phonological unit. Types of syllables.
2. Syllable formation theories.
3. Phonotactics as a branch of phonology. Phonotactic possibilities of English vowels and consonants.

Seminar 4

1. Lexical word stress as a non-discrete phonological unit. Acoustic and perceptual clues to word stress.
2. Functions of lexical word stress in languages with fixed and free word accent.
3. Degrees of word stress. Functions of word stress.
4. Word accentuation tendencies and accentual types of English words. The variability of word accentual structure in connected speech.

Seminar 5

1. Segmental and suprasegmental phonology. Different approaches to the definition of intonation; its components on the acoustic and perceptual levels.
2. Functions of intonation. Intonation/prosody as a complex semantic unity of suprasegmental features (prosodic subsystems).
3. Speech melody, sentence stress, rhythm, loudness, tempo and pausation, voice timbre. Their interplay in discourse.
4. Intonation group as a meaningful unit. Constituent parts of an intonation group and their functional loading.
5. Systems of graphical notation of intonation by different phonological schools.

Seminar 6

1. Phonostylistics as a branch of phonetics; its interaction with other linguistic disciplines. Extralinguistic factors causing phonetic modifications in speech.
2. Phonostyle and its definition. Classification of phonostyles. The phonetic style-forming means.
3. Informational style and its registers.
4. Scientific or Academic style.
5. Publicistic or Oratorial style.
6. Declamatory (Artistic or Belles-letter) style: fiction, drama, poetry.
7. Conversational (Informal or Familiar) style.

Seminar 7

1. Dialectology and dialect studies. The linguistic atlas of England and the United States. National pronunciation standards of English in the English-speaking countries. Orthoepic norms and the choice of the teaching norm. Major accents in the UK (Southern or RP, Northern, Scottish; Estuary English, Cockney). Chief differences between RP and regional accents of British English.
2. General American (GAm) as the American English pronunciation norm; types of American English pronunciation (Eastern, Southern and General American). Majour differences between Received Pronunciation (RP) and General American (GAm) pronunciation.
3. Phonological and Phonetic distinctions of Australian, Canadian and New Zealand English pronunciation.
4. Peculiarities of Ukrainian accent of English.
5. Social factors causing phonetic modifications in the pronunciation of English. Basic research in sociophonetics.