PHONETICS AND PHONOLOGY

PROBLEMS IN PHONEMIC ANALYSIS

Pramod l Suraya l Laily l Hafizah l Syafiqa

AFFRICATES

• The affricates t∫ and dʒ are phonetically composed of a plosive followed by a fricative.

• It is possible to threat each of pair t∫ and dʒ as a single consonant phoneme.

• We call this as one phoneme analysis.

• It is also possible to say they are composed of two phonemes each , t plus∫ and d plus ʒ. This is called two phoneme analysis.

• If we use two phoneme analysis, the word church and judge would be composed as :

t - ʃ - ɜ: - t - ʃ d - ʒ - ʌ - d - ʒ• But if we use one phoneme analysis , it would

be like the usual. tʃɜːtʃ dʒʌdʒ

So, how can we decide that which analysis is preferable ?

• The two phoneme analysis has one main advantage , that if there is no separate of tʃ and dʒ , then the total set of English consonants is smaller.

• Many phonologists have claimed that one should choose which analysis is more economical and easier to practice.

• However, it is the one phoneme analysis that is generally chosen by phonologists.

• There are several arguments, but none of them is conclusive.

1) One argument could be called "phonetic" or "allophonic". Allophone is one of a set of multiple possible spoken sounds.

• If it could be shown that the phonetic quality of the t and ʃ ( or d and ʒ ), in tʃ and dʒ , is clearly different from the realisations of t, ʃ , d, ʒ , this would support the analysis of tʃ and dʒ , as separate phonemes.

Example :

• It might be claimed that ʃ in 'hutch' /hʌtʃ/ was different from ʃ in 'hush' / hʌʃ / .

• Or it might be claimed that the place of articulation of t in 'watch apes' / wɒtʃ eɪps / was different than 'what shapes' / wɒt ʃeɪp /.

• This argument was a weak one, there is no evidence that such phonetic differences exist.

2) It could be argued that the phonemes tʃ and dʒ have different distributions similar to other consonants.

• It can easily be shown that tʃ and dʒ are found initially, medially or finally. And there's no other combination (eg: pf, dz or tθ) has such wide distributions.

• However, there are several consonants are accepted despite not being free to occur in all positions (eg: r, w, j , h , ŋ and ʒ) .

• So this argument although supporting the one phoneme analysis, does not actually prove that tʃ and dʒ must be classed with other single consonant phonemes.

3) If tʃ and dʒ were able to combine with other consonants to form consonant clusters, this would support the one phoneme analysis.

• In initial position , tʃ and dʒ can never occur clusters with other consonants.

• In final positions, we find that tʃ can be followed by t.

• Eg: 'watched' / wɒtʃt /

• or dʒ by d , 'wedged' / wedʒd / .• Final tʃ and dʒ can be preceded by l.• Eg : 'squelch' / skweltʃ /• But ʒ is never preceded by l , and ʃ is preceded

by l only in few words which is Welsh , / welʃ /.

• It is also the same if we ask whether n can precede tʃ and dʒ or not.

• Some BBC speaker have ntʃ in 'lunch' and never pronounce the nʃ , while other speaker pronounce ntʃ .

• It seems that there are no possibilties for final consonant clusters containing tʃ and dʒ except that pre final l or n and post final t, d.

4) Finally, it has been suggested that if native speakers of English who have not been taught phonetics feel that t∫ and dʒ are each “ one sound”.

• The problem with this is that discovering what untrained native speaker feel about their own language is not as easy as it might sound.

• There would be question that need to ask like "Would you say the word 'chip' begins with one sound like 'tip' or with two sounds , like 'trip' ?

THE ENGLISH VOWEL SYSYTEM

• The analysis of the English vowel system presented contains a large number of phonemes.

• There are different ways of treating all long vowels and diphthongs.

1.Treating all long vowels and diphthongs as composed of two vowel phonemes.

• Starting with a set of basic or simple vowel phonemes (I, e, ә, υ)

• long vowels can be seen as containing short vowels twice.

• In this approach, diphthongs would be composed of a basic vowel phoneme followed by one of i, u, ə.

• Triphthongs would be made from a basic vowel plus one of i,υ followed by ə and would therefore be composed of three phonemes.

2. Treating long vowels and diphthongs as composed of a vowel plus a consonant

• Long vowels and diphthongs are composed of a basic vowel phoneme followed by one of (j, w, h, r)

• Thus, diphthongs would be made up like this. Examples:

ej eı

әw әυ

υh υә

• Long vowels:

• Thus, inequality of distribution is corrected for consonants that do not otherwise occur finally in a syllable.

ıj i:

uw u:

ah a:

• NEUTRALISATION• Neutralisation of /i:/ and /ı/ to /i/• i.e. Cases where contrasts between

phonemes which exist in other places disappear in certain contexts

SYLLABIC CONSONANTS• Syllabic consonants are a problem whereby they

are phonologically different from their non-syllabic counterparts. For below, how do we account for the following minimal pairs?

SYLLABIC NON-SYLLABIC

‘Coddling’ /kɒdlɪŋ/ ‘Codling’ /kɒdlɪŋ/

‘Hungary’ /hʌŋgri/ ‘Hungry’ /hʌŋgri/

• One possibility is to add new consonants phonemes to the existing list where we could invent the phonemes l, r, n, etc. • For a word like ‘button’ /bʌtn/ or ‘bottle’

/bɒtl/, it would be necessary to add n, l to the first post-final set; the argument would be extended to include r in ‘Hungary’

• Syllabicity is a phoneme that is set up to account if the consonants form part of a syllable-final consonant cluster and to allow the English speakers hear the consonants as extra syllables.

• Then the word ‘Codling’ would consists of six phonemes: k-ɒ-d-l-ɪ-ŋ while the word ‘Coddling’ would consists of seven phonemes:

k-ɒ-d-l and simultaneously –l-ŋ.

• Another possibility to overcome the problem in syllabic consonants is by saying that the new phonemes are to be classed as vowels.• Let us take for example that the vowel is ə.

We could then say for eg, ‘Hungary’ is phonemically /hʌŋgəri/ while ‘hungry’ is /hʌŋgri/.• The ə vowel phoneme in the phonemic

representation is not pronounced as vowel, instead causes the following consonant to become syllabic.

CLUSTERS OF S PLOSIVES

•Words like ‘spill’, ‘still’, ‘skill’ are usually represented with the phonemes p, t, k following s. • However, many writers argue they can still

be transcribed as b, d, g instead.• For example, phoneme b,d,g are unaspirated

while p,t,k in syllable-initial position are usually aspirated

• However, in sp, st, sk we find an unaspirated plosive, and that could be an argument for transcribing them as sb, sd, sg.•We usually do not do this due to the spelling,

but it is good for us to remember that the contrasts between p and b, t and d and k and g are neutralized in this context.• This means that no matter whether it is p,t,k

or b,d,g all of these phonemes will remain unaspirated if they follow with “s” in a word or sentence.

SCHWA (ə) • There is not really a contrast between ə and ʌ, since ə

only occurs in weak syllables.• This has resulted in a proposal that the phoneme symbol

ə should be used for representing any occurrence of ə or ʌ• For eg, ‘cup’ (which is usually stressed) would be

transcribed as /’kəp/ and ‘upper’ (with stress on initial syllable) as /‘əpə/.• This new ə phoneme would thus have 2 allophones, one

being ə and the other ʌ; where the stress mark would indicate the ʌ allophone and in weak syllables with no stress it would be more likely that the ə allophone would be pronounced

• Other phonologists have suggested that ə is an allophone of several other vowels; for eg compare the middle two syllable in the words ‘economy’ /ɪ'kɒnəmi/ and ‘economic’ /iːkə'nɒmɪk/- it appears that when the stress moves away from the syllable containing ɒ the vowel becomes ə• Similarly, when the stress moves away from the

syllable containing ə, the vowel becomes eventually ɒ

• Other eg is through the word ‘Germanic’ where the stress is on mæn /ʤɜː’mænɪk/ , and when the word is substituted with ‘German’ the stress is taken away from mæn and weakens to ə /ʤɜːmən/• The conclusion that can be drawn is that ə is not a

phoneme of English, but is an allophone of several different vowel phoneme when those phonemes occur in an unstressed syllable

DISTINCTIVE FEATURES• It is based on the principle that phonemes should be

regarded not as independent and indivisible units, but instead as combinations of different features.• For example, if we consider the English d phoneme, it

is easy to show that it differs from the plosives b, g, in its place of articulation (alveolar), from t in being lenis, from s, z in not being fricative, from n in not being nasal, and so on.• If we study back all these consonants and see which

features they possess, we will com out with a table where if the sign is + means that a phoneme does possess that feature and if the sign is – means that the phoneme does not possess the feature

d b g t s z n

Alveolar + - - + + + +

Bilabial - + - - - - -

Velar - - + - - - -

Lenis + + + - - + (+)*

Plosive + + + + - - -

Fricative - - - - + + -

Nasal - - - - - - +

THE END