There two main ideas of difficulty of learning about the phonology of English. The first will be called the problem of analysis. Different writers produce different analysis of the phonemic system of English, it is clear that phonemic analysis is not as clear and simple as studying the letters of alphabet. The second area of difficulty will be called the problem of assignment. We can find many cases where it is difficult to assign a particular speech sound to a particular phoneme.
1. Problem of Analysis
The affricates t∫ and dʒ are phonetically composed of a plossive followed by a fricative. It is possible to threat each of pair t∫ and dʒ as a single consonant phoneme and it is also possible to say they are composed of two phonemes each either already established as independent phonemes of English, we called the two phonemes analysis of t∫ and dʒ. There are several arguments and no single one of them is conclusive, but added together to make the phoneme analysis seem preferable. These some arguments are:
a) One argument could be called “ phonetic” or “allophonic”. In fact there is some allophonic evidence that support the two phoneme analysis, we can find this is in the occurence of glottalisation. If we at glottalilsation of p, t, k and t∫ in RP we find the pattern occurence.
- One consonant phoneme occurring medially, there is no glottalisation is found.
- Two consonat phonemes accurring medially, the glottalisation is normal.
- t∫ occuring medially, the glottalisation is normal after a stressed syllable.
b) It could be argued that the proposed phonemes t∫ and dʒ have distribution similar to other consonant and the other consonant of plossive plus fricative do not. However, several consonant are accepted as phonemes of RP despite not being free to occur in all position, so this argument supporting the one phoneme analysis.
c) If t∫ and dʒ were able to combine quite freely with other consonants to form consonant clusters, this would support the one phoneme analysis. Initial t∫ and dʒ would have to be interpreted as initial t, dplus pos-initial ∫, ʒ, with the result that the post-initial set of consonants would have to contain l, r, w, j and also ∫, ʒ. There are consonant which are rather different from the other four and which could only combine with t and d.
d) 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 or native speaker feel about their own language is not as easy as it might sound. But the result would be distorted by the fact that two consonant letters are used in the spelling.
The analysis of the English vowel contains a large number of phonemes and it is not surprising that some phonologist proposed different analysis which contain less than ten vowel phonemes and treat all long vowels and dipthongs as composed of two phonemes each. There different ways of doing this: one way is to treat long vowels and diphthongs as composed of two vowel phonemes. If we start with a set of basic vowel phonemes ɪ, e, æ, ʌ, ɒ, ʊ, ə it would then be possible to make up long vowels by using vowels twice. Our usual transcription is given in brackets :
ɪɪ (i:) æ æ (ɑ:) ɒɒ (ɔ:) ʊʊ(u:) əə(ɜ:)
This can made to look less unusual by choosing different symbols for the basic vowels. Diphthongs are made from a simple vowel phoneme followed by one of ɪ, ʊ, ə. Triphthongs are made from a basic vowel plus one ofɪ,ʊ followed by ə and are therefore composed of three phonemes.
Another way of doing this kind of analysis is to treat long vowels and diphthongs as composed of a vowel plus a consonant, this may seem a less obvious way of procceding, but it was for many years the choice of most. The idea is that long vowels and diphthongs are composed of a basic vowel phoneme followed by one of j, w, h (in the case of RP). Our usual transcription is :
ej (eɪ) əw (əʊ) ɪh (ɪə)
æ (aɪ) æw (aʊ) eh (e ə)
ɒj (ɔɪ) ʊh (ʊə)
Long vowels:
ɪj (i:) æh (ɑ:) ɒh (ə:) əh (ɜ:) ʊw (u:)
Diphthongs and long vowels are now of exactly the same phonological composition. An important point about this analysis is that j, w, h do not otherwise occur finally in the syllable. There are many other ways of analysing the very complex vowel system of Englishm, some of which are extremely ingenious. Each has its own advantages and disadvantages.
The syllabic consonant are a problem, they are phonologically diffferent different from their non-syllabic counterparts. One possibility is to add new consonant phonemes in our list. We could invent the phonemes l, r, n etc. The distribution of these consonants would be rather limited, but the main problem would be fitting them into the pattern of syllable structure. For a word like ‘button’ b ʌtn or ‘bottle’ bɒtl, it would be necessary to add n and l to the firs post-final set. Another possibility is to set up a phoneme that we might name syllabicity, symbolised with the mark,.
Some phonologists maintain that a syllabic consonant is really a case of a vowel and a consonant that have become combined. Let us suppose that the vowel is ə. We could then say that, for example, ‘Hungary’is phonemically hʌng əri while ‘hungry’ is hʌŋgri, it would then be necessary to say that the vowel phoneme in the phonemic representation is not pronounced as a vowel, but instead causes the following consonant to become syllabic. This is an example of the abstract view of phonology where the way a word is represented phonemically may be significantly different from the actual sequence of sound heard, so that the phonetic and the phonemic level are quite widely separated.
2. Problems of Assignment
One problem of assignment has already been encountered in chapter 9, we saw how althought ɪ and i:are clearly distinct in most contexts, there are other contexts where we find a sound which can not clearly be said to belong to one or other of these two phonemes. The suggested solution to this problem was to use the symbol i, which does not represent any single phoneme.we use the term neutralisation for cases where contrast between phonemes which exist in other places in the language disappear in particular contexts.words like ‘spill’, ‘still’, ‘skill’ are usually represented with the phonemes p, t, k following the s. But, as many writers have pointed out, it would be quite reasonable to transcribe them with b, d, g instead. For example b, d, g are unaspirated while p, t, k in syllable initial position are usually aspirated, but in sp,st, sk we find an unaspirated plosive. There could be a strong argument for transcribing them as sb, sd, sg. We do not do this, perhaps because of the spelling, but it is important to remember that the contrast between p and b, between t and d and between k and g are neutralised in this context.
There are some othercases which are not so clear. It has been suggested that there is not really a contrast between ə and ʌ, since ə only occurs in weak syllables and minimal pairs can be found to show a clear contrast between ə and ʌ is unstressed syllable. Other phonologists have suggested that ə is an allophone of several other vowels. For example, compare the middle two syllables iin the words ‘economy’ ‘ɪ’kɒnəmi and ‘economic’ i:kə’nɒmɪk. It appears that when the stress moves away from the syllable containingɒ the vowel becomes ə. The conclusion that could be drawn from this argument is that ə is not a phoneme of English, but is an allophone of several different vowel phonemes when those phonemes an attractive one, but since it leads to a rather complex and abstract phonemic analysis it is not adopted for this course.
The practical goal of teaching or learning about English pronounciation and for this purpose a very abstract analysis would be unsuitable. This is one criterion for judging the value of an analysis; unless one believes in carrying out phonological analysis for purely aesthetic reasons, the only other important criterion is wether the analysis correspond to the representation of sounds in the human brain. We do not yet know much about this but the brain is so powerful and complex that it is very unlikely that any of the analysis proposed so far bear much resemblance to this reality, they are too heavily influenced by the theoretician’s preoccupation with economy, elegance, and simplicity.
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