Main trends in phoneme theory

It is generally acknowledged that the phoneme is one of the basic language units. However it is described by different scholars and representatives of different linguistic schools in different ways.

Let’s start with a brief outline of the history of the phonological studies.

The idea of distinguishing between the functional approach to the study of speech sounds and their material substance was first expressed by the Russian linguist I.A. Baudauin de Courtenay at the end of the XIX century. But it was only in the 20s-30-s of the XX th century that a number of phonological conceptions appeared in different countries. We should mention the great Russian scholar N.S.Trubetskoy who left Russia after the revolution and founded the famous linguistic circle in Prague. R.O.Jakobson also took an active part in the development of the Prague phonological conception. The theory of those two linguists formed the basis of functional linguistics and classical phonology in particular. Similar theories appeared at the same time in the USA.

In Russia the ideas of phonology were later elaborated in different ways by the so-called Leningrad and Moscow schools. In Petersburg the phonological theory was developed by L.V.Sherba and his followers L.R.Zinder, L.V.Bondarko. The most outstanding representatives of the Moscow school are R.I.Avanesov, P.S.Kuznetzov, A.A.Reformatsky.

Among American linguists we should mention E.Sapir, who also created one of the classical phonological theories.

All these theories are called traditional and the description of the phonological system of English they give is generally called static, because it’s main concern is the description of all the phonemes and their allophones, in other word, it has a classificatory character.

In the 60s there appeared the so-called “new phonology” which was aimed at explaining how speech was actually produced and understood by humans. Generative phonology, represented by a well-known American linguist N.Chomsky, viewed phonology in close connection with syntax and semantics. The ideas of generative phonology were presented in the book by Chomsky and M.Halle “The Sound Pattern of English”. Classical “static” phonological models were aimed at creating classifications of the sound system of a particular language. “Dynamic” models were aimed at establishing the sound pattern of an utterance on the basis of its semantic and grammar characteristics.

Now if we try to group the phoneme theories into bigger categories we’ll see that the main criterion is the approach of the linguists to the three aspects of the phoneme. Some linguists exaggerate the abstract aspect of the phoneme and tend to ignore the material aspect, others, on the contrary pay more attention to the material aspect and ignore the abstract aspect. We must admit that no theories ignore the functional aspect. The existence of so many theories of the phoneme is acounted for by the fact that the phoneme itself is a fairly complicated linguistic phenomenon and, naturally, it leads to different interpretations and approaches.

The first group includes the conceptions that tend to pay special attention to the abstract aspect. According to “mentalistic” or “psychological” view the phoneme is an ideal mental image, it doesn’t exist objectively, it exists only in the mind of the speaker. Actual speech sounds are imperfect realizations of it. These ideas were first expressed by I.A.Baudauin de Courtenay and later were developed by E.Sapir, A.Sommerfelt and others.

The second group of conceptions can be called “functional”, because special focus is given to the ability of the phoneme to differentiate meaning. Scholars are particularly interested in relevant or distinctive features of the phoneme, while non-distinctive features are often ignored. This view was shared by N.Trubetskoy, R. Jakobson, L.Bloomfield. The great achievement of these scholars was that it gave rise to “phonology” as a linguistic discipline. However, it resulted in the separation of phonetics and phonology. The aim of phonology is the study of system of distinctive features and the meaningful aspect of the phoneme. Phonetics was limited to the description of physiological and acoustic characteristics of speech sounds without reference to their linguistic function. They claimed that only phonology was a linguistic discipline, while phonetics should belong to biology. Thus, we can say that the material aspect of the phoneme was ignored or underestimated within the framework of this approach.

The third group of conceptions is concerned with the material aspect. The “physical” view, represented by D.Jones, B.Bloch and others, regards the phoneme as a “family” of related sounds. In other words, the phoneme is a mechanical sum of its allophones. So similarity between sounds is considered to be the main criterion for attributing them to a particular phoneme. We see that the representatives of this approach tend to ignore the abstract and functional aspects of the phoneme.

This brief overview of the approaches to the phoneme demonstrates that the definition given by prof. Shcherba is definitely a comprehensive one, because it gives equal importance to all the three aspects of the phoneme: material, absract and functional.

Phonological analysis

The aim of phonological analysis is to establish distinctive difference between sounds, create the inventory of the phonemes and describe the phonemic system of a language. In other words, the aim of phonological analysis is the identification of the phonemes and their classification.

When I say that we must identify the sound, I mean, we must decide what phoneme it belongs to.

There are two main approaches to phonological analysis. Formally distributional approach practised by American structuralists is focused on the position of the sound in the word, or its distribution. Semantic method attaches special importance to meaning. It is widely used in this country. Let’s focus on the semantic method.

The analysis is performed through the system of phonological oppositions. It is based on the following fundamental phonological rule: phonemes can distinguish the meaning when opposed to one another in the same phonetic context (day – they, sheep – ship). So to establish the phonemic status of a sound it is necessary to oppose one sound to some other sound in the same phonetic context. This procedure is called commutation test.

To conduct this test we must find the so-called minimal pairs. A minimal pair is a pair of words which differ in one sound only. So we replace one sound by another sound and try to find out if the opposed sounds belong to the same or different phonemes.

Now, the commutation test may have three possible results:

Pin – sin | the meaning is different so the opposed sounds belong to different phonemes.

P(h)in – pin | the meaning is the same so the opposed sounds belong to the same phoneme.

Pin – hin | we have a meaningless word, so we can’t make any conclusion about the phonemic status of the second sound, we can’t identify it.

It should be noted that there are different types of oppositions.

1) If the members of the opposition differ in one articulatory feature the opposition is called single.

Pen – ben | [p] is fortis (voiceless), [b] is lenis (voiced).

2) If there are two distinctive features, the opposition is double.

Pen – den | [p] is labial, fortis, [b] is forelingual, lenis.

3) If three distinctive features are marked, the opposition is triple (multiple).

Pen –then | the differentiating features: occlusive – constrictive, labial – interdental, fortis – lenis.

To establish the system of phonemes of a language it is necessary to oppose sounds in all possible positions (initial, medial, final). But there are cases when the sounds can’t be used in the same position and can’t be opposed. For example [h] is never used in final position, [n ] is never used in the initial position. These sounds are treated as different phonemes on the basis of native speakers’ knowledge and their phonetic dissimilarity which illustrates that they cannot be allophones of one phoneme.

There is another interesting case which is analysed and explained by different schools of classical phonology. In some cases different sounds occur in the same position and in the same phonetic context, but the meaning of the word remains unchanged (калоши –галоши, шкаф – шкап). They are called “free variants”.

Despite these difficulties the semantic method of phonological analysis is widely used and fulfills the task of systematizing the sounds of a language.

The application of this method shows that the English language has 24 consonant and 20 vowel phonemes. As it was mentioned sounds are grouped into classes according to the distinctive (or phonemic) features. In English the following features are distinctive for consonants:

- place of articulation (labial, lingual, glottal)

- type of obstruction (manner of articulation)

- force of articulation (fortis, lenis)

The phonemic features of English vowels are:

- quality (height and front-back position; stability of articulation).