The Phonemes of English: A Phonemic Study of the Vowels and Consonants of Standard English

140 Pages·1971·4.89 MB·English

by  Antonie Cohen (auth.)

THE PHONEMES OF ENGLISH
THE PHONEMES OF ENGLISH
A PHONEMIC STUDY OF THE VOWELS
AND CONSONANTS OF STANDARD ENGLISH.
by
ANTONIE COHEN
THIRD PRINTING
•
MARTINUS NIJHOFF - THE HAGUE - 1971
First printing 1952
Second printing 1965
Third printing 1971
ISBN-13: 978-90-247-0639-6 e-ISBN: 978-94-010-2969-8
001: 10.1007/978-94-010-2969-8
©1971 by Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands
All rights reserved, including the right to translate or to
reproduce this book or parts thereof in any form
CONTENTS
Page
Preface VIII
Preface to the second printing x
Chapter I.
INTRODUCTION 1
C hap t e r II.
PROBLEMS CONNECTED WITH PHONEMIC ANALYSIS 14
I. Fundamental Points 14
a. Linguistics as an autonomous science 14
b. Phonetics and Phonemics 16
c. Diachronic v. synchronic method 17
d. Structural relationship between sounds 18
2. Significant Function of Sounds 18
a. The word as a basic unit 18
b. Phonemes 19
c. Commutation Test 20
d. The significant function of place. 22
e. The problem of [hi and [ui . 23
f. "Phoneticism": mono- or biphonematic interpretation. 24
3. Phonemes and their Interrelations 27
a. Identification of the word form . 27
b. Pattern phenomena 28
c. Are phonemes only opposing entities? . 29
d. Martinet's conception of distinctive qualities. 30
e. Neutralization, archiphoneme . 35
4. The Positive factor in the Habitus of the Phoneme 36
5. Consonant and Vowel Phonemes 37
a. How to distinghuish them. 37
b. How to classify them 40
C hap t e rIll.
Page
THE CONSONANT PHONEMES OF ENGLISH. 42
A. INVENTORY
1. 'Plosives' 42
2. 'Affricates' . 43
a. Is [d3} one or two phonemes? . 43
h. Is [3} a phoneme of English? 45
3. 'Nasals' and 'Laterals' . . 46
a. The special nature of [V} 46
h. Clear and dark [I} 48
4. 'Fricatives' . 48
a. The special nature of [r} 49
h. The special nature of [hI 49
5. 'Semi·Vowels' . 51
B. CLASSIFICATION
1. Synchronic v. Diachronic Method 52
2. The Problem of Foreign Words 54
3. Initial Clusters .. . 56
iii . . . .
a. The problem of 56
h. The interpretation of voiceless [fl} 58
c. The interpretation of voiceless [m} • . • • . 58
d. Consonants appearing as first aiul second members 59
e. Consonants appearing as first members only • 60
f. C~nsonants appearing as second members only • 60
g. Triphonematic clusters • • • • 60
4. Final Clusten ... ... . • 61
a. Is. the syllable-a phonemic element in English? 62
h. Biphonematic clusters . 65
c. Triphonematic clusters • 69
d. Quadriphonematic clusters 69
5. Medial Clusten 69
6. Corollary 70
Position Table 72
Table of Consonant Combinations:
Initial clusters 73
Final clusters.. • 74
Chapter IV.
Page
THE VOWEL PHONEMES OF ENGLISH. 75
1. The so·called 'Short' of 'Checked' Vowels 75
a. Is [a] a phoneme? 75
h. Is [u} a phoneme? 78
2. Long versus Short 78
a. Chroneme theory • 79
h. Are length differences relevant? 80
c. Are 'long' and 'short' correlated? • 84
d. 'Silbenschnitt' • 84
e. Other approaches . 85
3. 'Long' Vowels 87
4. Diphthongs 89
a. Some earlier interpretations 89
h. lei} and foul 91
c. [ail and [au} 95
d. [ai} • 97
e. {ju:} • , • , • 99
5. 'Centring Diphthongs' 100
a. One or two phonemes? • 100
h. Phonemic transcription . 101
c. The problem 0/ [a} and [r} 102
d. Triphthongs 104
6. Corollary 105
Appendix.
Publications consulted 108
. .
Index 0/ authors . . . . , • 114
Word index , .. • 115
Subject index • • • • • • 121
Postscriptum . 129
PREFACE
I gladly take this opportunity to convey my heartfelt thanks to those
who have guided me on my way as an undergraduate and who have enabled
me through their teachings and friendly advice to proceed to preparing
for this doctorate thesis.
I should like first of all to thank Prof. C. L. Wrenn, M. A., now of
Pembroke College, Oxford, who has always been extremely helpful to me
and who was generous enough to admit me to the Honours English Course
at King's College, University of London. After moving to Oxford he still
found time to show interest in my progress and on more than one occasion
helped me with his wise counsels.
I am also extremely grateful to his successor at King's College, Prof. G ..
Bullough, M. A., who likewhise helped me whenever he could.
I feel greatly indebted to Prof. D. Jones, M. A., Dr. Phil., who at the time
was Professor of Phonetics at University College, London, and from whose
lectures and methods of expression I greatly benefited.
I am particularly thankful for the kindness shown to me by the staffs
of the English department of King's College and of the Phonetics department
of University College for the excellent tuition I received from them and for
making me feel completely at home among my English fellow students.
I am happy to acknowledge the generosity with which Prof. Dr. P. N. U.
Harting as head of the English department of this University received me on
my return from England and the helpfulness extended to me, enabling me
to complete my course within the shortest possible time.
I am grateful to Prof. A. G. van Kranendonk for the confidence placed in
me and for his readiness to give advice whenever requested.
I consider it a great privilege to be able publicly to express my sincere
gratitude to my supervisor, Prof. Dr. A. J. B. N. Reichling, who has been
such an inspiring mentor to me throughout the preparation of this thesis.
He has patiently helped me with numerous stimulating remarks in what
must have seemed to him almost interminable discussions, but which were
to me exhilarating hours of profit and encouragement. I have tried to do
justice wherever I could in the following text and foot-notes to the debt I
owe him.
I am greatly indebted to Mr. A. C. Gimson and Mr. J. D. O'Connor, both
of University College, London, for many elucidating remarks in the course
of a long correspondence which must have taken up a great deal of their
valuable time.
I am very grateful to the English department of this University headed by
Prof. Harting and assisted by Dr. J. Swart and Mr. R. Vleeskruyer, B. Litt.,
for having shown such a benevolent interest in my work ahd their helpful
suggestions.
Finally I wish to thank Mr. J. W. M. Verhaar for his very kind help in
indexing the book, and my wife who has been a constant source of encourage
ment and a most able and efficient secretary.
Voorburg, September, 1952.
PREFACE TO THE SECOND PRINTING
At the publishers' request a reprint of this study which originally ap
peared in 1952 as a thesis under the supervision of Professor A. J. B. N.
Reichling (University of Amsterdam), is now offered. The time elapsed since
this request first reached me is considerably longer than the time it had taken
to write the thesis in the past, which should be some insIication of the
qualms I felt and had to overcome before complying with the request.
Nobody with any pretention to a scientific frame of mind would im
mediately agree to have his work reprinted unaltered after such a con
siderable lapse of time. The reason why I have been prevailed upon to
take the admittedly unusual way, which was by no means that of least
resistance, is that some users of this book have given me to understand
that they believe it has an historical interest in giving a reasoned account
of phonemic theory up to 1952.
The book has met some severe adverse criticism and prospective
readers may wish to turn to it first.
One American reviewer, G. L. Trager in Language 29, 1953, 564-566,
complains that the arguments put forward in Chapters I and II are
philosophical rather than scientific and begs to differ on many points about
my analysis of the English phonemes as shown at the end of the review
where his phonemic listing of American English is compared with mine.
A witty, but none the less serious, cri.ticism was raised by A. G. Juilland
in Word 10, 1954, 106-109. He reached the conclusion that I had,
unwittingly, made out a case for some kind of historical importance in
carving out a niche for myself by offering the only attempt at establishing
a phonemic analysis with due regard to meaningful distinctions but
without taking phonetic substance into account, a. type of approach
"nobody had thought or cared to put into practice ..... " (107).
A final but no less stinging reference in this masochistic catalogue
should be a critical note contained in an article by D. Abercrombie as
recently as 1963, in Zeitschrift fiir Phonetik, Sprachw. und Kommuni
kationsf. 16, 1963, 9-12, entitled Pseudoprocedures in Linguistics. In
this I was taken to task for having indulged in thought experiments
without having taken the trouble of carrying them out.
Since over the last five years I have largely occupied myself with
thinking out experiments as well as testing them, I feel I can afford to
agree that there is much truth in this objection. Yet, I believe that
linguistic studies have advanced far enough to allow for a division between
theoretical and experimental linguistics and in this respect the 1952 thesis
should be considered a contribution to theoretical phonemics. It is obvious
that, given this division, it would be highly desirable, if not necessary,
for the outcome of the one to be confronted with that of the other ap
proach. In general it should be understood that experimental science
hardly ever takes its cues directly from theoreticians. The experimenter
on the whole is quite happy in hunting out his own problems and does
pot seem to stand in need of getting'his work meted out to him by others;
any problem that he tackles usually throws up a whole host of new and
unexpected ones and he is therefore never at a loss for work.
In the field of phonemic studies I believe that an interpenetration of
theory and experiment is the only healthy approach. In effect, phonetics
cannot be anything but phonemic, or less paradoxically, studying the
sounds of speech is a worthwhile pursuit only in so far as it is made within
a framework of phonemic knowledge; on the other hand, phonemics should
be clljarly embedded in phonetic knowledge for fear of arriving otherwise
at solutions fm: the sake of convenience, economy, or congruity that need
not coincide at all with what can be checked as operating in actual language
usage. Put differently: the outcome of a purely linguistic, phonemic
analysis should be regarded as a hypothesis that stands in need of ex
perimental ve~fication. The choice between the "God's truth" and "hocus
pocus" approaches can then be seen for what it is worth: a sham dilemma
which need not be taken seriously.
However "pure" the methods handled by the investigator in his analysis
of the phonemic data may be, he can never be sure of having arrived at
any "truth", unless he can verify the outcome of his investigation by
experimental proof. The same applies to the systematiser, needlingly
called the hocus pocus man, who can take no comfort from the purity of
the system he has evolved, unless it can be proved to adhere in some way
to the language users whose behaviour he ultimately wishes to account
for.
But enough of controversy for the moment. I believe that we, that is
all persons who take phonemic work to heart, may agree that before 1928,
i.e. the year of the first international congress of linguists, phoneticians
took a fiendish delight in pointing out that no two speech sounds were
ever quite the same. In crude terms: all speech sounds were different. It
was to the credit of the Prague phonologists to have stressed the point
that some were more different than others, thanks to the concept of the
phoneme.
From a functional point of view it then seemed that all phonemes were
more or less alike. It is largely the Bloomfieldian contribution which has
modified this view in pointing up distributional classes. It would seem
that now we have reached a stage where it has to be admitted that some
phonemes are less equal than others. We should allow for a less rigorous