Phonemic inventory of English

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 433.

The problems in Eng consonantal system concerns affricates: [tƒ, d3] – monophonemic entity or biphonemic combination; if they are monophonemic, do the phonemes of the same kind exist in English. Jones considered that there are 6 affricates [tƒ, d3, tr, dr, ts, dz], gimson considered that there are 8 affricates […+Ө, ð]. They are monophonemic if: its elements belong to one syllable; produced by one articulatory effort; its duration should not exceed normal duration. Some more questions: is [j] an allophone of [i] and is [w] an allophone of [u], or they are separate phonemes. Americans treat them as allophones because of their weakness and unstable articulatory features; other scholars think they are phonemes because [j] and [w] can form phonological oppositions with each other and other phonemes (yet – wet [j-w], yet – met [j-m]). The problems in Eng vowel system: is [ə] a phoneme (it can form phonological opposition with a number of other phonemes and can distinguish words ([ə] – [ou] temper – tempo); it is sometimes considered that [ə] is an allophone of [Λ] because [Λ] is almost always used in stressed syllables, [ə] – in unstressed); are eng diphthongs and triphthongs monophonemic or biphonemic clusters (the duration of diphthongs doesn't exceed the duration of eng historically long vowels [i:, u:, o:, a:, 3:] clearly determine their monophonemic character; as for [aiə, auə] it has been proved that they can't be considered monophonemic because they are produced by more than one articulatory effort. The syllabic division generally occuers in between the diphthong and [ə]).