The Interrelationship among the Phonemes of the Language.

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 642.

There are three views on the problem: The morphological viewpoint(Avanesov, Kuznetsov, Reformatsky). They claimed that a phoneme in a "weak" position may lose one of its distinctive features and, therefore, lose its distinctive function. For example, Russian voiced consonants lose their voiced character and are pronounced as voiceless in final position (луг, глаз). This leads to the loss of the distinction between /k/ and /г/, /с/ and /з/. Therefore, in word final position the phonological oppositions based on the phonologically relevant features "voiced vs. voiceless'' are neutralized in Russian. Scholars term this phenomenon neutralization of phonological oppositions. Neutralization of phonological oppositions is the loss of a distinctive feature by one of the phonemes of an opposition. Those who support this view consider that a phoneme is morphemically bound and, therefore, in all the deRivatives of "луга" (лугов, луг) we deal with the allophones of one and the same phoneme /г/, and in all the derivatives of "лука" (луком, лук) we deal with the allophones of the phoneme /к/. Consequently, different phonemes may have common allophones and sometimes a sound may be assigned to either of two phonemes. In the case of [k|, it may either be considered an allophone of the phoneme /k/ (as in "лук") or an allophone of the phoneme /г/ (as in "луг"). But the Russian language is the only language in which the phenomenon of neutralization has been examined more or less in depth. The phonological viewpoint (Jones, Pike) reject the notion of "neutralization of phonological oppositions". They consider that an allophone cannot lose any of its distinctive features If it does, it becomes an allophone of the phoneme the distinctive features of which it acquires. Phonemes can never have common allophones. The third viewpoint is that of Trubetzkoy and some other linguists who consider that there are phonological units higher than a phoneme - the archiphonemes. The archiphoneme is an abstraction which combines the distinctive features common to two phonemes.