METHODS OF PHONOLOGICAL ANALYSIS IN DEFINING PHONEMES AND ALLOPHONES

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 1239.

Phoneme - is the shortest functional unit of a language. Each phoneme exists in speech in the form of mutually non-distributive speech sounds called allophones. Each sppech sound is an allophone of some phoneme.
Allophone - qualitative one and the same phoneme, which never occur in identical positions. They are positional variants of a phoneme.
Semantic method of identifying the phonemes of a language as items of its phonetic system: the districtive function. This method consists:
1) In finding minimal pairs of words and their grammatical forms
2) In replacing one sound of the member of the pair by other sounds of the same language and seeing whether the substitution results.
a) the pronunciation of a different word form
b) the pronunciation of a meaningless sequence of sounds
c) a different repetition variant pronunciation of the same word or form.
T w o L a w s of of phonemic and allophonic distribution (distributional method)
1) allophones of different phonemes always occur in the same phonemic context
2) allophones of the same phoneme never occur in the same phonemic context and always occur in different positions.
If more or less different speech sounds occur on the same phonetic context, they should be allophones of different phonemes.

25. CRITERIA FOR REVEALING THE STATUS OF AN AFFRICATE
The number of affricates depends on whether an affricate is a combination of 2 consonant phonemes or a phoneme as an entity. In the 1^st case there are no affricates in English at all. In the 2^nd case there are 2 affricates in English or even more (ч, дж, ts, dz, t0, d0, tr, dr).
there are 5 main criteria:
1) Articulatory indivisibility. These sounds are produced within one articulatory effort and thus it's impossible to distinguish their beginning and their end.
2) Syllable. The second component is articulatorily indivisible, as it is pronounced within one articulatory effort, dividing a word into syllables the affricate goes like one indivisible unit.
'catching' - catch-ing [kaetsh - in] “court ship”( yere the 2 consonant phonemes are produced within articulatory effort)
3)Duration. /t/ + / sh/ = /t sh/ the length of an affricate is less than the duration of a combination of the corresponding consonant phoneme because of the blendid character of the affricate.
E.g. 'Watch out!' (shorter ) and 'what shout' (longer)
4) Morphophonological. An affricate refers to a root and we can't divide it, e.g. 'catch-ing' /tsh/ goes with the root a morpheme boundary can not pass within a phoneme, it can't separate the stop element from the fricative element of an affricate : 'watch' - 'watcher'
'watching' 'washing' - the affricate /tш/ makes a difference in meaning, bcos /tsh/ is occlusive-constructive and / sh/ is constructive.
5) Commutability. It's conversability through the procedure of replacement. The rule of commutability sounds like this: if a consonant combination has no degree of commutability it's an affricate, otherwise it's a free combination of consonants.
/t sh/ - it's impossible to replace the stop element of the fricative to get a new affricate > their commutability is zero. [dз] - the same.
!!! ts dz tth dth dr tr - are not affricates.
The biphoneme states of the sound complexes (t0 d0 ts dr) is easily proved by the fact that its elements always belong to different phonemes
'eight' - 'eigths' 'bet' - 'bets' 'bed' - 'beds'
/tr/ and /dr/ are divisible from the articulatory point of view. They require 2 articulatory efforts.

26. CRITERIA FOR REVEALING THE STATUS OF A DIPHTHONG
there're many diphthongs in English. In this case a diphthong is a phoneme as an entity. There are no diphthongs in English. In this case a diphthong is a combination of 2 vowel phonemes.

Diphthong is a vowel phoneme which consists of 2 elements: nucleus and glide. The 1st element is more loud and distinct, it is fully articulated, the formation of the second is not accomplished.
They can be normal - similar to the diphthongs occuring in other languages - [eu ai oi au ou ]
and centring [iэ ?э оэ uэ] because of the glide /э/, which is considered to be a central vowel.
There are 5 main criteria in examining the diphthong:
1) Articulatory indivisibility. The nucleus and the glide are produces with one articulatory effort. On the auditory effort it is hard to say where the 1^st element ends and the 2^nd begins.
2) Syllabic. The glide is a partially formed vowel, that's why it can't form a syllable
(articulatory-auditory) e.g. "чай" - "чаю" but 'fly' - 'flying'
3) Duration. As both elements of a diphthong are produced with 1 articulatory effort and the 2^nd element is incomplete the duration of the diphthong doesn't exide the duration of a long monophtong.
4) Morphophonological. The criteria of it treats a diphthong from 2 points of view simultaneously : from the point of view of morphology, from the point of view of phonology.

Morphologicaly the following morphemes can be distinguished: root morpheme, word-building, form-building. Phonologicaly their exist phonological opposition whose main objective is to point out a difference in meaning.

If we take e.g. 'fly' (root morpheme) combining it with a word-building morpheme, we get 'fly-ing', so there's still no division in the root. [ai] remains. And phonologically if we change the glied [i] to [u] 'fly' - 'flew' we get a new word. So, it's capable of differentiating meanings.
5) Commutability. The rule of comutability sounds like this : .the lower the degree of comutability the closer the unit is to true diphthong phoneme. The higher the degree of comutability the closer the unit is to a free combination of vowels. : comutability is defined as convertability through the presidge of replacement based on combinability
[ei] the nucleus has 2 replacements and the glide has no. the degree of commutability for a diphthong is very low, so it's a diphthong.

27. THE PROBLEM OF THE SCHWA VOWEL IN PHONOLOGY
Schwa is a neutral vowel [э]. It can be considered a phoneme or an allophone depending upon the feary put forward by different schools of phonetic thought.
In its description two problems occur, and there are two main positions in the problem.
Leningrad: A phoneme is a sum of acoustic features.
- it's independent
- functionally loaded
- distinctive unit as it differentiates meanings
'officers' [ofisэz] 'offices' [ofisiz] in the phonological opposition the difference in meaning as created by the neutral vowel mid central oppose to [ i] high broad variation front retracted. Here the shwa vowel as a peculiar sum of acoustic features is treated independently and it makes a difference in meaning. So it is a phoneme.
So it is independent and has allophones in different positions.
Moscow: a phoneme is a part of a morpheme and it can't be independent, e.g.:
[эk'tiviti' ] but ['aektiv]
but there's a contradiction as not only one /?/ can have /э/-allophone
[ae] -
[o] - э
[a] -
Prague: Trubetskoy says there is an archiphoneme, not [i] not [э] but something in the middle.

“Ticket” the disappearance of the shwa vowel from the weak position doesn't lead to its total disappearance, it appears in new positions especially in consonant clusters difficult to pronounce. The economy of articulatory effort influences the process.

28. DIPHTONGOID AS A TRANSITION UNIT.
Diphthongoids are diphthongized sounds. it is a transition unit as it a monophtong in the process of its diphtongization. It is a 3-component structure consisting of 2 vocalic elements and 1 consonantal. the presence of the consonantal element makes it neither a monophtong nor a diphtong.

In English they are /i:/ and /u:/ the tongue isn't capable of keeping the same high narrow variation for a long time. The rule of the economy of articulatory effort takes plsce.
The articulation begins with the /i/ and /u/ , glides up to /i:/ and /u:/ and ends up with /j/ and /w/
They are transition units as it is in some thing between a mono and diphthong.
In the production of these vowels the tongue stays in the position of tense high front vowels, and it should keep such a position for quite a time, so it falls down to mid position for the glide /j/ and /w/.