VOWEL PHONEMES

PHONOLOGY

Name :

Ade Nurmalia 1711040003

Alfaynie Axelfa T.A 1711040012

Earsy Alma A. 1711040044

English Study Department

Faculty Of Teacher Education
Uin Raden Intan Lampung
2019
 TABLE OF CONTENT

TABLE OF CONTENT ................................................................................................... 1

CHAPTER I .................................................................................................................... 2

A. BACKGROUND............................................................................................... 2
B. PROBLEM FORMULATION ........................................................................... 2
CHAPTER II ................................................................................................................... 3
A. Establishing vowel contrast ................................................................................. 3
B. Standard lexical sets............................................................................................ 4
C. Vowel features and Allophonic rules ................................................................... 5
D. Phonetic similarity and defective distribution ...................................................... 7
E. Free variation, neutralisation and morphophonemics .........................................
1. Free variation .............................................................................................
2. Neutralisation .............................................................................................
3. Morphoponemics .......................................................................................

CHAPTER III ................................................................................................................ 14

CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................. 14

REFERENCES ............................................................................................................ 15

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 CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION

A. Background

In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is aspeech sound that is articulated with complete

or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are [p], pronounced with the lips; [t],

pronounced with the front of the tongue; [k], pronounced with the back of the tongue; [h],

pronounced in the throat; [f] and [s], pronounced by forcing air through a narrow channel

(fricatives); and [m] and [n], which have air flowing through the nose (nasals).

Contrasting with consonants are vowels.

Since the number of possible sounds in all of the world's languages is much greater than

the number of letters in any one alphabet,linguists have devised systems such as the

International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) to assign a unique and unambiguous symbol to

each attested consonant. In fact, the English alphabet has fewer consonant letters than

English has consonant sounds, so digraphslike "ch", "sh", "th", and "zh" are used to

extend the alphabet, and some letters and digraphs represent more than one consonant.

For example, the sound spelled "th" in "this" is a different consonant than the "th" sound

in "thin". (In the IPA, they are transcribed [ð] and[θ], respectively.)

B. Problem Formulation

1. Consonant Classification

2. The Anatomy of a Consonant

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 CHAPTER II
CONTENT

A. Establishing vowel contrast

1. Minimal Pairs
Minimal pairs and the commutation test are the main tools available to the
phonologist in ascertaining phonemic contrast among both consonants
and vowels.
a. Vowel minimal pairs
Below is a list of words that vary only by one having the sound :

/ɪ/ and the other the sound /i:/

Bin bean

chip cheap

his he’s

it eat

sit seat

/æ/ and the other the vowel sound /e/.

bag beg

had head

ham hem

pan pen

Sets of minimal pairs like this may work very well for one accent, but not for
another. Some disparities of this sort were discussed in earlier chapters; for
instance, minimal pairs like lock /k/ versus loch /x/, or witch /w/ versus which //
will be relevant for many Scottish speakers in establishing the voiceless velar
and labial-velar fricative phonemes, but both members of the pairs will have
/k/ and /w/ respectively in many other accents of English.

B. Standard lexical sets

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 A lexical set consists of a group of words all of which have the same
pronunciation for a certain sound in a given variety. For instance, the lexical
set TRAP is used to refer to the pronunciation which speakers of a variety
have for the sound which is /æ/ in Received Pronunciation. So if speaker uses
[a] or [ɛ] in TRAP it is taken that they will use [a] or [ɛ] in all other words which
contain this vowel, e.g. BAD, LATTER, SHALL, that is, in the words which
comprise the lexical set. The advantage of this is that instead of saying the
realisation of the /æ/ vowel in variety X, which phonetically can be quite far
removed from [æ], one can refer to the vowel in the lexical set TRAP. The
original group of lexical sets was presented in John Wells' three volume
work Accents of English (Cambridge University Press, 1982). These were
intended to cover the vowels of Received Pronunciation and their realisations
in accents of English throughout the world. However, the group is not always
appropriate for the description of varieties far removed from Received
Pronunciation. For this reason many modifications and additions to the
original lexical sets have been proposed, especially as Wells' lexical sets only
refer to vowel values.

C. Vowel features and Allophonic rules

Once phonemic contrasts have been established for the accent in question,
and the appropriate representation for each phoneme has been selected, the
realisations of those phonemes must be determined and rules written to
describe allophonic variation. Again, features and rule notation can be used to

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 formalise these statements. We saw in Chapter 4 that vowels are [+syllabic, –
consonantal, +sonorant, +voice, –nasal]. To distinguish English vowels
appropriately, we also require the features [±high], [±mid] for the dimension of
tongue height; [±front], [±back] for place of articulation; and [±round]. These
give the illustrative matrix in.

These features can distinguish four contrastive degrees of vowel

height, and three degrees of frontness, which allows all varieties of English to
be described. However, /i;/ and /ɪ/, and /uː/ and /υ/, will be identical in this
matrix. In SSBE and GA, the former in each pair is typically long, and the
latter short; and long vowels are also articulated more extremely, or more
peripherally than corresponding short ones: the long high front vowel is higher
and fronter than the short high front vowel, while the long high back vowel is
higher and backer than its short counterpart.

• The Scottish Vowel Length Rule

/ɪ/, /ε/ and /ʌ/, which are short and lax in other accents, do not lengthen
in any circumstances. In SSE and Scots, then, we can define the two classes
of phonemic vowels as lax (the three which never lengthen) and tense (the
others, which are sometimes long and sometimes short, in predictably
different environments). It is possible to predict length from [±tense], but not
the other way around. The allophonic rule involved will then state that tense
vowels lengthen before /r/, before a voiced fricative, or before a word
boundary (that is, in word-final position),

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D. Phonetic similarity and defective distribution
phonetic similarity can help us decide which vowel allophones to assign to
which phonemes, and defective distributions hinder our decision-making. For
instance, schwa in accents other than NZE is confined to unstressed
positions, and therefore does not strictly speaking contrast with most other
vowels. Its defective distribution means it could be regarded as the
unstressed allophone of almost any other vowel phoneme. So, schwa
appears in the unstressed syllables of about, father, fathom, sherbet,
pompous; but which vowel phoneme is involved in each case? Since
speakers do not tend to produce vowels other than schwa in any of these
forms, even when speaking rather carefully, it is difficult to say. We could say
that there is wholesale neutralisation of vowel phonemes in unstressed
syllables; alternatively, because speakers of English can hear the difference
between schwa and other vowels quite reliably, and seem to regard schwa as
a distinct vowel, the best solution might be to accept that schwa is a phoneme
of English in its own right, albeit with a defective distribution. Again as with
consonants, defective distributions often result from language change. For
instance, spelling evidence from Old English indicates that a much wider
range of vowels was probably found in unstressed syllables at that period;
these have gradually merged into schwa during the history of English.
Similarly, the centring diphthongs of SSBE are generally found where there is
an in the spelling, and where other accents, like SSE and GA, have
combinations of a vowel found elsewhere in the system, plus [ɹ]. Historically,
all varieties of English followed the SSE/GA pattern; but accents like SSBE
lost [ɹ] in certain contexts, with a related change in the realisation of vowels
producing the centring diphthongs.

E. Free variation, neutralisation and morphophonemics

1. Free variation
Sounds that are in free variation occur in the same context, and thus
are not predictable, but the difference between the two sounds does
not change one word into another. Truly free variation is rather hard to
find. Humans are very good at picking up distinctions in ways of
speaking, and assigning meaning to them, so finding distinctions that

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 are truly unpredictable and that truly have no shade of difference in
meaning is rare. Free variation, however infrequent, can be found
between the realizations of separate phonemes (phonemic free
variation, as in [i] and [aI] of either), as well as between
the allophones of the same phoneme (allophonic free variation, as in
[k] and [k˥] of back).

2. Neutralisation
Neutralization is when two sounds can distinguish meaning in at least
one phonological context (for instance word-initially) but sound the
same in another phonological context (for instance intervocalically),
because in the neutralization context sound A is turned into sound B, or
sound B is turned into sound A, or both sound A and sound B are
turned into a third sound C.
Example : The English words "hat," "hot" and "hut" have three
vowel phonemes. The first word has a low front vowel, the second a
low back vowel and the third a mid central one. However, in word final
position, this phonemic contrast is neutralized. In the words "sofa,"
"drama" and "opera," all three words have either a high or low mid
central unrounded vowel. This unstressed vowel is very common in
English.

3. Morphophonemics
Morphophonemics, in linguistics, study of the relationship
between morphology (q.v.) and phonology (q.v.). Morphophonemics
involves an investigation of the phonological variations within
morphemes, usually marking different grammatical functions; e.g., the
vowel changes in “sleep” and “slept,” “bind” and “bound,” “vain” and
“vanity,” and the consonant alternations in “knife” and “knives,” “loaf”
and “loaves.”