Problems of the phonemic inventory of English consonants

The 1st problem of the phonological analysis is to establish phonemes in a language. There are some difficulties in English:

1. IF [J] AND [W] ARE ALLOPHONES OF [I] AND [U] OR THEY ARE SEPARATE PHONEMES? Some linguists treat them as allophones on account of their weakness and unstable articulatory features. Others treat them as phonemes, because, as they say, [j] and [w] can form phonological oppositions with each other and with other phonemes (yell-well, yet-met); moreover, they occur in phonetic positions that are generally occupied by consonant phonemes, consequently, they cannot be considered to be allophones of vowel phonemes.

2. IF THE SOUNDS [Ч], [дЖ], [TR], [DR], [TS], [DZ] ARE MONOPHONEMIC? Trubetzkoy worked out a number of rules which help to determine whether a sound of a complex nature is monophonemic: 1) a phoneme is indivisible, as no syllable division can occur within a phoneme; 2) a phoneme is produced by 1 articulatory effort; 3) the duration of a phoneme should not exceed that of other phonemes in the language => 1. acoustic and physiologic analysis proved that the sounds [ч] and [дж] are produced by 1 articulatory effort, and their duration doesn't exceed the duration of either [t] or [ш], or [d]. Besides, no syllabic division occurs within the sounds. So they are monophonemic. 2. [ts] and [dz] are obviously biphonemic combinations, because their duration exceeds the average duration of either [t], [d], [s] or [z]. 3. some linguists consider [tr] and [dr] as affricates as they are closely linked in the pronunciation of Englishmen. But most phoneticians regard them as biphonemic clusters.

Не нашли, что искали? Воспользуйтесь поиском: