20, The Main Trends in the Phoneme Theory. Different points of View.

It is known 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.

The idea of distinguishing between the functional approach of the study of speech sounds and their material substance was first expressed by the Russian linguist Baudauin de Courtenay at the end of the 19th century. But it was only at the end of the 20s and 30s of the 20th century that a number of phonological conceptions appeared in different countries. We should mention the great Russian scholar Трубецкой who left Russia after the revolution. The theory of those two linguists formed the basis of functional linguistics and classical phonology. Similar theories appeared at the same time in the USA.

I. According to mentalistic and 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 realization of it. These ideals were expressed by Baudauin de Courtenay and by Sommerfelt.

II. Functional view - special focus is given to the ability of the phoneme to differentiate the 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 Трубецкой, Якобсон and Bloomfield. The great achievement of these scholars was that it gave rise to phonology as a linguistic discipline. According to this conception the phoneme is not a family of sounds, since in every sound only a certain number of the articulatory features, that is those which from the invariant of the phoneme, are involved in the differentiation of meanings. The functional approach extracts non-distinctive features from the phonemes thus divorcing the phoneme from actually pronounced speech sounds.

The physical view represented by Daniel Jones and B.Bloch regards the phoneme as the 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.

21. Methods of phonological analysis

Before we speak about methods of phonological analysis we should formulate why the phonological investigation is conducted, what the aim of phonological analysis is:

- to establish distinctive differences between sounds, that is to establish relevant features;

- to create the inventory of the phonemes and establish the phonemic system of a language.

Generally speaking, the final aim of the phonological analysis is the identification of the phonemes (1) and their classification (2).

There are two approaches to the phonological analysis:

1. Distributional approach was practiced by American linguists and focuses on the position of the sound in the word or its distribution.

2. Semantic method attaches special importance to meaning. It is widely used in Russia. The semantic 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. (ship [ɪ] – sheep [iː], day [d] – they [ð])

So, to establish the phonemic status of the sound it is necessary to oppose one sound to some other in the same phonetic context. This procedure is called “commutation test”. We must find or establish 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 and try to find out if they opposed sounds belong to the same or different phonemes. The commutation test may have three possible results:

- [pin] – [sin]

The meaning is different, so they opposed sounds [p/s] belong to different phonemes.

- [pin] – [phin]

The meaning is the same, so they opposed sounds belong to the same phoneme. Here the allophone is different, is used wrongly.

- [phin] – [hin]

We have a meaningless word [hin], so we cannot make any conclusion about the phonemic status of the second sound. We can’t identify it.