N. V. Tatsenko introduction to theoretical phonetics of english

1 Symbols for phonemes
i
i: as in ‘key’ kii u: as in ‘car’ ka: o: as in ‘core’ ko: u: as in ‘coo’ ku: з: as in ‘cur’ кз:


эо as in ‘go’ дэи au as in ‘cow’ kau

as in ‘pit’ pit e as in ‘pet’ pet ae as in ‘pat’ paet л as in ‘putt’ p,\t D as in ‘pot’ pot о as in ‘put’ put
э as in ‘about’, upper’
obaot, лрэ
ei as in ‘bay’ bei ai as in ‘buy’ bai m as in ‘boy’ boi
is as in ‘peer’ pro еэ as in ‘pear’ реэ иэ as in ‘poor’ риэ

p	as in ‘pea’ pi:	b	as in	‘bee’ bi:
t	as in ‘toe’ too	d	as in	‘doe’ dsu
к	as in ‘cap’ kaep	9	as in	‘gap’ gaep
f	as in ‘fat’ fact	V	as in	‘vat’ vi£t
0	as in ‘thing’ 0ig	a	as in	‘this’ 6is
s	as in ‘sip’ sip	z	as in	‘zip’ zip
.r h	as in ‘ship’ Jip as in ‘hat’ hast	3	as in	‘measure’ тезэ
m	as in ‘map’ maep	1	as in	‘led’ led
n	as in ‘nap’ naep	г	as in	‘red’ red
0	as in ‘hang’ haep	j w	as in as in	‘yet’ jet ‘wet’ wet
tf	as in ‘chin’ tfin	d3	as in	‘gin’ d3in

3. 
   Methods of Phonological Analysis
   

The aim of the phonological analysis is, firstly, to determine which differences of sounds are phonemic (i.e. relevant for the differentiation of the phonemes) and which are non-phonemic and, secondly, to find the inventory of the phonemes of this or that language.
A number of principles have been established for ascertaining the phonemic structure of a language. For an unknown language the procedure of identifying the phonemes of a language as the smallest language units has several stages. The first step is to determine the minimum recurrent segments (segmentation of speech continuum) and to record them graphically by means of allophonic transcription. To do this an analyst gathers a number of sound sequences with different meanings and compares them. For example, the comparison of [stik] and [stek] reveals the segments (sounds) [i] and [ж], comparison of [stik] and [spik] reveals the segments [st] and [sp] and the further comparison of these two with [tik] and [txk], [sik] and [sxk] splits these segments into smaller segments [s], [t], [p]. If we try to divide them further there is no
comparison that allows us to divide [s] or [t] or [p] into two, and we have therefore arrived at the minimal segments. From what we have shown it follows that it is possible to single out the minimal segments opposing them to one another in the same phonetic context or, in other words, in sequences which differ in one element only [Vrabel 2009, p. 29].
The next step in the procedure is the arranging of sounds into functionally similar groups. We do not know yet what sounds are contrastive in this language and what sounds are merely allophones of one and the same phoneme. There are two most widely
used methods of finding it out. They are the distributional method and the semantic method.
The distributional method is mainly used by phoneticians of "structuralist" persuasions. These phoneticians consider it to group all the sounds pronounced by native speakers into phonemes according to the two laws of phonemic and allophonic distribution. These laws were discovered long ago and are as follows:

1. 
   allophones of different phonemes occur in the same phonetic context;
   
2. 
   allophones of the same phoneme never occur in the same phonetic context.
   

The fact is that the sounds of a language combine according to a certain pattern characteristic of this language. Phonemic opposability depends on the way the phonemes are distributed in their occurrence. That means that in any language certain sounds do not occur in certain positions. If more or less different sounds occur in the same phonetic context they should be allophones of different phonemes. In this case their distribution is contrastive [ibid.]
If more or less similar speech sounds occur in different positions and never occur in the same phonetic context they are allophones of one and the same phoneme. In this case their
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distribution is complementary. Still there are cases when two sounds are in complementary distribution but are not referred to the same phoneme. This is the case with the English [h] and [g]. [h] occurs only initially or before a vowel while [g] occurs only medially or finally after a vowel and never occurs initially. In such case the method of distribution is modified by addition of the criterion of phonetic similarity/dissimilarity. The decisions are not made purely on distributional grounds.
Articulatory features are taken into account as well. So far we have considered cases when the distribution of sounds was either contrastive or complementary. There is, however, a third possibility, namely, that the sounds both occur in a language but the speakers are inconsistent in the way they use them. In such cases we must take them as free variants of a single phoneme. We could explain it on the basis of "dialect" or on the basis of sociolinguistics. It could be that one variant is a "prestige" form which the speaker uses when he is constantly "monitoring" what he says while the other variant of pronunciation is found in casual or less formal speech [ibid].