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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Yuri Tambovtsev.<BR>Novosibirsk,
Russia<BR>Dear colleagues, I wonder if I could apply with my project
for<BR>your PhD Studentship? I wonder if I can write my doctoral
<BR>dissertation along the lines of phono-stylistics? I'd like to create<BR>the
phonostatistical distances between some English and American <BR>writers. Here
is my plan for the project:<BR>The Structure of the Frequency of Occurrence of
Consonants in the Speech <BR>Sound Chain as a Clue of Typological Closeness of
English Writers.<BR> Every English writer has a specific
structure of the speech sound chain. It can <BR>be distinguished by its
structure from any other writer. English, as every <BR>language, has a unique
structure of distributions of speech sounds in its phonemic <BR>chain. One must
find out how much English as the super structure, influences this <BR>or that
English author and what unique can this author retain, as his[her own <BR>style.
The distribution of English vowels will not be considered till the second
<BR>stage of the investigation. Let's point out that consonants bear the
semantic load <BR>in the word, not vowels. Therefore, it is more possible to
understand the meaning <BR>of the message by consonants, rather by vowels.
However, if we fail to recognise <BR>and distinguish two languages, then we
resort to the structure of occurrence of <BR>vowels in the speech sound chain.
While comparing English authors, it is <BR>necessary to keep to the principle of
commensurability. Therefore, one must <BR>keep to the same genre or text
type, for example, poetry. Actually, different style <BR>will give no hardship
to differentiate. Having it in mind, it is not possible to <BR>compare texts on
the basis of the frequency of occurrence of separate phonemes, <BR>because they
may yield the same frequencies. The articulartory features may <BR>serve as the
basic features in phono-typological reasoning. First of all, it is the
<BR>classification of consonants according to the work of the active organ of
speech <BR>or place of articulation (4 features). Secondly, it is the
classification from the <BR>point of view of the manner of articulation or the
type of the obstruction (3 <BR>features). Thirdly, it is the classification
according to the work of the vocal cords <BR>(1 feature). In this way, 8 basic
features are obtained: 1) labial; 2) front; 3) <BR>mediolingual or palatal; 4)
back or velar; 5) sonorant; 6) occlusive; 7) fricative; <BR>and 8) voiced
consonants. One should take the values of the frequency of <BR>occurrence of
these 8 features in the speech chain of one author and compare <BR>them to those
of the others. On the basis of the "chi-square" test and Euclidean <BR>distance,
I have developed my own method of measuring the phono-typological <BR>distances
between different English writers. It takes into account the frequency of
<BR>occurrence of the 8 consonantal groups mentioned above and builds up the
<BR>overwhelming mosaic of the English language sound picture on the one hand,
<BR>and of every original English writer on the other. Comparing one English
writer <BR>to some others, one will receive some phono-typological distances
between the <BR>English writers. One must use some English corpus since it is
not possible to feed <BR>into computer many English writers.<BR>Address:
Russia, Yuri <BR>Tambovtsev, E-mail: <BR><A
href="mailto:YUTAMB@HOTMAIL.COM">YUTAMB@HOTMAIL.COM</A>
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