THE PHONOLOGICAL ANALYSIS. Problem 1. THE PHONEME INVENTORY

In analyzing speech phoneticians carry out a phonetic and a phonological analyses. Phonetic analysis is concerned with the articulatory and acoustic characteristics of particular sounds and their combinations. Phonological analysis is concerned with the role of those sounds in communication. The main problems in phonological analysis are as follows: 1. The establishment of the inventory of phonemes of a certain language. (The inventory of phonemes of a language is all phonemes of this language. Every language has it's own inventory of speech sounds that it uses to contrast meaning. English has one of the larger inventories among the world's languages. Cantonese has up to 52 vowels when vowel + tone combinations are considered. Many languages include consonants not found in English). 2. The establishment of phonologically relevant (distinctive features of a language). 3. The interrelationships among the phonemes of a language.

Problem 1. The establishment of the inventory of phonemes of a certain language. The great variety of allophones complicates the identification of phonemes in connected speech. There are two main methods of establishing phonemes in a language: SEMANTIC and FORMAL, or DISTRIBUTIONAL. The SEMANTIC method attaches great significance to meaning. It is based on the rule that a phoneme can distinguish words when opposed to another phoneme or ZERO in an individual phonetic position. The investigator studies the function of sounds by collecting MINIMAL PAIRS (lexical or grammatical pairs of words that differ in only one speech sound in the same position). If the substitution of one sound for another results in the change of meaning, the commuted sounds are different phonemes. E.g. if we replace /b/ by /f/ in the word PAIR, we get a new word FAIR. This pair of words is distinguished in meaning by a single sound change. So the phonemes /p/ and /f/ contrast in English. The opposition /p/versus/f/ is called PHONOLOGICAL OPPOSITION. In PAIR-AIR, /p/is opposed to /-/, this is called ZERO OPPOSITION. Examples of grammatical pairs; SLEEP- SLEEPY, /-/ v /i/. Allophones can not make up minimal pairs. For example, /pʰ/ in PIN and /p/ in spin are allophones of the phoneme /p/ and no minimal pair can be found to distinguish them. Languages like Cantonese, Mandarin, and Thai distinguish between them and they represent distinct phonemes /p/ and /pʰ/. In Korean /r/ in KOREA and /l/ in SEOUL are allophones of the phoneme /l/. The are perceived by native speakers of Korean as a single phoneme and have a single L letter. The difference is that /r/ is pronounced before vowels. In Spanish, /z/ and /s/ are both allophones of /s/, while /z appears only before voiced consonants, as in MISMO /mizmo/.

A series of minimal pairs, called a MINIMAL SET, can establish a larger group of contrasts. That is how the inventory of E consonantal PH_mes can be established. The series of words PIN, BIN, TIN, DIN, FIN, CHIN, GIN, KIN, SIN, THIN, SHIN, WIN supplies us with 12 words which are different in respect of only one speech sound, the first, consonantal phoneme of the sound sequence. These contrastive elements, or phonemes, are symbolized as /p/, /b/, /t/, /d/, /f/, / ʧ/ /ʤ/, /k/, /s/, /θ/, /ʃ/, /w/. Other sound sequences will show other consonantal oppositions, e.g.: (1) TAME, DAME, GAME, LAME, MAIM, NAME, adding /g/, /l/, /m/, /n/ to the inventory. (2) POT, TOT, COT, LOT, YACHT, HOT, ROT, adding /j/, /hr, /r/. (3) PIE, TIE, BUY, THIGH, THY, VIE, adding /ð/ and /v/. (4) TWO, DO, WHO, WOO, ZOO, adding /z/. Such comparative procedure reveal 22 consonantal phonemes, capable of contrastive function initially in a word. But considering one position in a word is not sufficient. Phonemic opposition in medial position discovers one more consonantal phoneme /ʒ/, in words LETTER, LEATHER, LEISURE. Phoneme /ʒ/ does not occur in initial position and is rare in final position (ROUGE). In final position we do not find /h/, /r/, /w/, and /j/. Phoneme /ŋ/ is common in medial and final positions but unknown initially. The analysis will give us a total of 24 consonantal phonemes in English, of which six are of restricted occurrence. Similar procedures may be used to establish the 20 vowel phonemes of English, which makes the total inventory of 44 units in the English language.

The FORMAL (DISTRIBUTIONAL) method does not resort to the meaning. It is based on the rule that allophones of different phonemes can freely occur in one and the same position, while allophones of one and the same phoneme can not occur in the same position. For example, as /p/ and /f/ freely occur in the same context (as in PEA-FEE, PAN-FAN), they are different phonemes. But we can never find /p/ aspirated and non-aspirated in the same phonetic context in E. These sounds are regarded as the allophones of one and the same phoneme /p/, whereas in Chinese and Hindi aspirated and non-aspirated plosives /p/ are different phonemes: they occur in the same phonetic environment and distinguish words.

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