Types of allophones and the main features of the phoneme

Let us consider the English phoneme [d]. It is occlusive forelingual apical alveolar lenis consonant. This is how it sounds in isolation or in such words as door, darn, down, etc, when it retains its typical articulatory characteristics. In this case the consonant [d] is called principal allophone. The allophones which do not undergo any distinguishable changes in speech are called principal.

Allophones that occur under influence of the neighboring sounds in different phonetic situations are called subsidiary, e.g.:

1. deal, did – it is slightly palatalized before front vowels
2. bad pain, bedtime – it is pronounced without any plosion
3. sudden, admit – it is pronounced with nasal plosion before [n], [m]
4. dry – it becomes post-alveolar followed by [r].

If we consider the production of the allophones of the phoneme above we will find out that they possess three articulatory features in common – all of them are forelingual lenis stops. Consequently, though allophones of the same phoneme possess similar articulatory features they may frequently show considerable phonetic differences.

Native speakers do not observe the difference between the allophones of the same phoneme. At the same time they realize that allophones of each phoneme possess a bundle of distinctive features that makes this phoneme functionally different from all other phonemes of the language. This functionally relevant bundle is called the invariant of the phoneme. All the allophones of the phoneme [d], for instance, are occlusive, forelingual, lenis. If an occlusive articulation is changed for a constrictive one [d] will be replaced by [z]: e. g. breed – breeze, deal – zeal. The articulatory features which form the invariant of the phoneme are called distinctive or relevant.

To extract relevant feature of the phoneme we have to oppose it to some other phoneme in the same phonetic context. If the opposed sounds differ in one articulatory feature and this difference brings about changes in the meaning this feature is called relevant: for example, port – court, [p] and [k] are consonants, occlusive, fortis; the only difference being that [p] is labial and [t] is lingual.

The articulatory features which do not serve to distinguish meaning are called non-distinctive, irrelevant or redundant. For example, it is impossible to oppose an aspirated [p^h] to a non-aspirated one in the same phonetic context to distinguish meaning.

We know that anyone who studies a foreign language makes mistakes in the articulation of sounds. L.V. Shcherba classifies the pronunciation errors as phonological and phonetic. If an allophone is replaced by an allophone of a different phoneme the mistake is called phonological. If an allophone of the phoneme is replaced by another allophone of the same phoneme the mistake is called phonetic.

Thus, a phoneme can only perform its distinctive function if it is opposed to another phoneme in the same position. Such an opposition is called phonological. Let us consider the classification of phonological oppositions worked out by N.S. Trubetskoy. It is based on the number of distinctive articulatory features underlying the opposition.

1. If the opposition is based on a single difference in the articulation of two speech sounds, it is a single phonological opposition, e.g. [p]–[t], as in [pen]–[ten]; bilabial vs. forelingual, all the other features are the same.

2. If the sounds in distinctive opposition have two differences in their articulation, the opposition is double one, or a sum of two single oppositions, e.g. [p]-[d], as in [pen]-[den], 1) bilabial vs. forelingual 2) voiceless-fortis vs. voiced-lenis

3. If there are three articulatory differences, the opposition is triple one, or a sum of three single oppositions, e.g. [p]-[ð], as in [peɪ]-[ðeɪ]: 1) bilabial vs. forelingual, 2) occlusive vs. constrictive, 3) voiceless-fortis vs. voiced-lenis.

N.S. Trubetskoy has also suggested the oppositions based on the relations between their members. He distinguished:

1. Privative oppositions, one member of them is characterized by the presence and the – by the absence of the feature, e.g. voiced – voiceless, rounded – unrounded. The member of the opposition which is characterized by the presence of the feature is called “marked” and the member of the opposition which is characterized by the absence of the feature is called “unmarked”. This type of oppositions is extremely important in phonology.

2. Graded oppositions are the oppositions the members of them are characterized by the different degree or gradation of one and the same feature, e.g. vowels – sonorants – voiced consonants. These oppositions are comparatively rare and less important in phonology.

3. Equipollent oppositions are the oppositions both members of which are equal from the point of view of logic, i.e. they are not the grades of a feature or they do not state or negate a feature, p – t, f – k etc. Equipollent oppositions are the most frequent in any language.

The distributional method means to group all the sounds pronounced by native speakers into phoneme according to the rules of phonemic and allophonic distribution.

1. Allophones of different phonemes occur in the same phonetic context. In this case their distribution is contrastive: pig – big.

2. Allophones of the same phoneme(s) never occur in the same phonetic context. In this case their distribution is complementary: down – deal – dry – sudden.

3. The sounds both occur in a language but the speakers are inconsistent in the way they use them: калоши-галоши, ["eɪʃǝ – "eɪʒǝ]. In such cases we take them as free variants of a single phoneme and their distribution is called free variation.

 

Main phonological schools

The aim of the phonological analysis is, firstly, to determine which differences of sounds are phonemic and which are non-phonemic and, secondly, to find the inventory of phonemes of the language. The results of the analysis depend on the phonological fundamentals which may differ in different phonological schools.

The first school is so-called morphological (Moscow phonological) (R.I. Avanesov, V.N. Sidorov, P.S. Kuznetsov, A.A. Reformatsky, and N.F. Yakovlev). The proponents of this school maintain that two different phonemes in different allomorphs of the same morpheme may be represented on the synchronic level by one and the same sound, which is their common variant and, consequently, one and the same sound may belong to one phoneme in one word and to another phoneme in another word. The school supports the theory of neutralization of phonemes. Neutralization occurs when two or more closely related sounds, which are in contrast with each other in most positions, are found to be non-contrastive in certain other positions. That means that there are environments where the two sounds do not contrast with each other, even though they normally do. When this happens, the opposition between the two sounds is said to be neutralized. The loss of one or more distinctive features of a phoneme in the weak position is called phonemic neutralization.

In order to decide to which phoneme the sounds in a phonologically weak position belong, it is necessary to find another allomorph of the same phoneme in which the phoneme occurs in the strong position, i.e. one in which it retains all its distinctive features. According to this school of thought, the neutral vowel sound in original should be assigned to the English phoneme /ɒ/ because this phoneme occurs in the strong position in such word as origin.

The second school of thought, originated by L.V. Shcherba, advocates the autonomy of the phoneme and its independence from the morpheme. Different allomorphs of a morpheme may differ from each other on the synchronic level not only in their allophonic, but also in their phonemic composition. According to the Petersburg phonological school (L.V. Shcherba, L.R. Zinder, M.I. Matusevich), speech sounds in a phonologically neutral position belong to that phoneme with whose principal variant they completely or nearly coincide.

According to the third school of thought, there exist types of phonemes higher than the unit phoneme. Different linguists identify them differently. One of the terms for them introduced by Prague Linguistic Circle, namely by N.S. Trubetzkoy and R. Jacobson, is archiphoneme. According to them, the archiphoneme is a combination of distinctive features common to two phonemes. Thus each of the speech sounds [t] and [d] represents the phonemes /t/, /d/. These two phonemes differ from each other only in matter of voice, while both of them possess the other two distinctive features: (1) forelingual (2) occlusive articulation. These two features together constitute the archiphoneme to which both [t] and [d] belong. This archiphoneme is, therefore, neither voiceless nor voiced.

Lecture 5