1. THE MOST ANCIENT ONE: there are as many syllables in the word as there are vowels.

2. EXPIRATORY/CHESTPULSE/PRESSURE THEORY (American psychologist R.H. Stetson): there are as many syllables in the word as there are expires/chestpulses.

3. SONORITY THEORY (Danish phonetician O. Jesperson): there are as many syllables in the word as there are peaks of prominence/sonority. O. Jesperson proved that the least sonorous sounds are those for which the mouth is closed (the most sonorous: open vowels - mid open vowels - close vowels - semi-vowels - sonorants - voiced fricatives - voiced stops - voiceless fricatives - voiceless stops: the least sonorous)

4. THEORY OF MUSCULAR TENSION (L. Sherba): the centre of a syllable is a syllable-forming phoneme and the sounds preceding and following it make an arc of tension. 3 types of consonants: 1. initially strong: beginning - strong, ending - weak (time, see); 2. finally strong: ending - strong, beginning - weak (sad, pet); 3. double-peaked: combination of 2 similar sounds, beginning and ending - energetic, middle - weak (good-day, pen-knife). This theory helps to understand when we pronounce "a name" and "an aim".

5. LOUDNESS THEORY (Zhinkin - Moscow school): every phoneme possesses a specific loudness; a syllable is a peak of loudness. Loudness shouldn't be confused with sonority (loudness - amplitude of sound waves, sonority - degree of noise).

6. ACOUSTIC THEORY: peak of syllable vowel or sonorant has more prominence than consonant.

14. The notion of the orthoepic norm. Received Pronunciation (RP). Present-day
situation.

There is a wide range of pronunciation varieties of the English language. These varieties reflect the social class the speaker belongs to, the geographical region he comes from, and they also convey stylistic connotations of speech.

Every national variant of the English language has an orthoepic norm of its own: RP or Southern English for BrE, General American for AmE, the Australian Standard Pronunciation for AustrE. It is generally considered that the orthoepic norm of BrE is RP. Received Pronunciation was accepted as a phonetic norm of English about a century ago. It is mainly based on the Southern English regional type of pronunciation, but has developed its own features which have given it a non-regional character, i.e. there is no region in Britain to which it is native. RP is spoken all over Britain by a comparatively small number of Englishmen who have had the most privileged education in the country - public school education. RP is actually a social standard pronunciation of English. It is often referred to as the prestige accent.

15. Geographical factors of phonetic variation. National and regional variants of English
pronunciation.

There exist numerous varieties of pronunciation in any language, in English as well. The pronunciation of almost every locality in the British Isles has peculiar features that distinguish it from the pronunciation of other localities. The varieties that are spoken by a socially limited number of people and used only in certain localities are called DIALECTS.

1. NORTHERN DIALECT (northern part of England)

- [u] instead of [/\] (cup, love, much)

- [o:] instead of [ou] (go, home)

- [e] or [з:] instead of [ei] (may, say, take)

2. SCOTTISH DIALECT

- [ir], [er], [/\r] instead of [з:] (bird, heard)

- [u] instead of [ou] (down)

- no distinguishing between [æ] and [a:] (bad, path, dance, half)

3. COCKNEY (less educated classes of people, part of London)

- [ai] instead of [ei] (today, late)

- [з:] instead of [æ] (bag)

- [h] doesn't occur, only in stressed position (think of (h)im, but History)

- [f, v, d] instead of dental consonants (thin [f], this [d])

- glottal stop instead of [p, t, k] and between vowels (back door [bæ? do:]

Other well-known dialects in Britain:

1) Geordie (Newcastle-on-Tyne)

2) Scouse (Liverpool)

3) Cornish (Cornwall)

etc.

16. American English pronunciation. Peculiarities of General American pronunciation
compared to British English.

 AmE, which is the variant of English, has developed its own peculiarities in vocabulary, grammatical structure and pronunciation. It embraces a wide range of pronunciation varieties. The most widely used regional types of American pronunciation are the Eastern, the Southern and the General American types.

The GA pronunciation is usually referred to as the standard pronunciation of AmE, though it is often debated whether there is a standard pronunciation in the USA. Nevertheless, it is the GA that has the greatest "acceptability", if not prestige, in the United States.

Peculiarities:

- [l] is always dark (film - look)

- [ш] is voiced in words like "excursion, version, Asia"

- [h] is often dropped in weak syllables (I saw (h)im)

- [j] is omitted before [u] (student, duty)

- glottal stop is used instead of [t] before sonorants and semi-vowels (cert[?]ainly, that[?] one)

- no differentiation in length of vowels (all vowels are long)

- [æ] is used instead of [a:] in words which do not contain [r] in spelling (path, glass, dance)