Problems of the phonemic inventory of English vowels

Identifying all the phonemes of a language is not always a simple thing to do. Time and again there emerge difficulties as to the phonemic status of certain sounds. Such difficulties arise when one deals with weakened vowels occurring in unstressed position. It primarily concerns the neutral sound in English which occurs only in unstressed position.

The problem is whether there is a neutral sound a phoneme in English. Scholars are not in agreement on this point. Though /э/ can be opposed only to weakened vowel phonemes, which are partially reduced due to their position in unstressed syllables, it can form phonological oppositions with a number of other phonemes and can distinguish words.

E.g., / э / vs. /i/ accept — except; armour — army

officers — offices;allusion – illusion

/э / vs. /оu/ temper — tempo, solar — solo

/э / vs. / з:/ forward — foreword

It is sometimes considered that /э/is an allophone of /^/, because /^/ is almost exclusively used in stressed syllables (as in "comfort" /'k^ mf э t/, "abundant" / э'b^ndэnt/), whereas /э/ occurs only in unstressed syllables.,

There are controversial views on whether / j / and /w/ in English are allo­phones of / i / and /u/ or they are separate phonemes. R.Jakobson and other American linguists treat them as allophones of /i / and /u/ on account of their weakness and unstable articulatory features. Whereas other scholars treat / j / and /w/ as phonemes, because as they say /j/ and /w/ can form phonological oppositions with each other and with other phonemes (e.g. "yell" — "well", "yet" — "met", "wheat" — "meat"). One ought to mention the fact that /j/ and /w/ in English occur in phonetic positions that are generally occupied by con­sonant phonemes; consequently, they cannot be considered to be allophones of vowel phonemes.

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