TUTORIAL WEEK 11 Group work: Discuss issues pertaining to problems of phonemic analyses and present to the class.

Affricates
Distinctive Features
PROBLEMS IN PHONEMIC ANALYSIS

English Vowel System

Schwa () Clusters of s plus plosives

Syllabic Consonants

AFFRICATES
One-phoneme analysis
t, d
Treated as a single consonant phoneme E.g: judge = d + + d

Two-phoneme analysis
t+ =t , d+ =d

Composed of two phonemes each E.g: judge = d+ + +d +

Total set of English consonant is smaller / economical in the number of phonemes it results in.

SYLLABIC CONSONANTS
A consonant can constitute the centre (or peak) of a syllable instead of a vowel. Example:- Saddle = | sdl | Between /d/ and /l/

SCHWA
The schwa is the vowel sound in many lightly pronounced unaccented syllables in words of more than one syllable. It is sometimes signified by the pronunciation "uh" or symbolized by an upside-down rotated e. A schwa sound can be represented by any vowel. In most dialects, for example, the schwa sound is found in the following words:

Schwa

Vowel

Examples about /bat/

a
e
i

sofa /sf/
Enemy /enmi/ Incredible /nkredbl/

o
u

Oppose /pz/
Focus /fks/ Vinyl /van l/

ENGLISH VOWEL SYSTEM

Analyses

To Keep Total Number Of Phonemes Small.

Treat long vowels and diphthongs as composed of two vowel phonemes.

Treat long vowels and diphthongs as composed of a vowel plus a consonant.

Long vowels - using short vowels twice II (i:) AA () oo () UU (u:) EE ()

Composed of a basic vowel phoneme followed by one of j, w, h (add r for rhotic accents).

Diphthongs - a simple vowel phoneme

followed by one of I, U, e Trip thongs a basic vowel plus one of I, U followed by @ (compose three phonemes) Diphthongs ej (e) aj (a) oj () ew () aw (a) Ih () eh (e) Uh () Long Vowels Ij (i:) ah () oh () eh()

Uw (u;)

CLUSTERS OF S PLUS PLOSIVES

spill, still, skill s+ /p/, /t/, /k/ /p/, /t/, /k/ aspirated in syllable initial position but not in the above, replaced by unaspirated /b/, /d/, /g/? sb, sd, sg Contrasts neutralised.

DISTINCTIVE FEATURES
Distinctive feature refers to a minimal contrastive unit used as a means of explaining how the sound system of language is organised. The first of these views is found in the approach of the Praque School, whereas the phoneme is seen as a bundle of phonetic distinctive feature: the English phoneme /p/, for example, can be seen as the result of the combination of the feature of bilabial, voice, plosive, etc.

 According to Victoria Fromkin and Robert Rodman in their book An Introduction to Language page :73, distinctive feature is a feature that distinguishes one phoneme from another. Further, for features indicating opposite traits, we can employ a binary system using the symbols [+] and [-] (pluses and minuses) to show whether or not the attribute is present. For example, we need set up only a single feature [voiced] for two separate labels, such as voiced and voiceless.