Uzbekistan state world language university the first faculty of the english language department of the theory of aspects of the english language

Methods of phonological analysis

The 1st problem of phonological analysis is to establish the phonemes in a definite language. This can be done with the help of particular phonological rules.

There exist 3 principal methods of phonological analysis: distributional and semantic and statistical.
To find it out, scholars use 2 methods: the distributional and the semantic methods.


- distributional method (grouping speech sounds pronounced by native speakers into phonemes according to two laws of phonemic or allophonic distribution):


1st law – allophones of different phonemes occur in the same phonetic context;


2nd law – allophones of the same phoneme never occur in the same phonetic context;
+ articulatory features are taken into account: [ng] and [h];


- semantic method (systematic substitution of a sound for another in order to ascertain in which cases where the phonetic context remains the same, such substitution leads to a change of meaning) - communication text: finding minimal pairs; oppositions - single, double, multiple;

- statistical method (to establish the frequency, probability, predictability, occurrence of phonemes and their allophones in different position in the words).

The distributional method

The distributional methodis based on the phonological rule that different phonemes can freely occur in one and the same position, while allophones of one and the same phoneme occur in different positions. E.g. /pi:/ - /bi:/, p and b are in the same position. That's why the distributional method of analysis is a purely formal method of identifying the phonemes of a language. This method works even if a linguist doesn't know the language he analysis.

The distributional method is mainly used by “structuralists”. The structuralist model of languages flourished from the 1930s to the 1950s. The phoneticians of structuralist persuations (the most outstanding is Z.Harris) underestimated the distinctive function of the phoneme. They consider it possible to discover the phonemes of a language by the rigid application of distributional method, to group all the sounds, pronounced by the native speakers, into phonemes according to the 2 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
tin – pin – bin – θin etc

2. Allophones of the same phoneme never occur in the same phonetic context

pie – p aspirated is in the word imtial position p unaspirated is never found in the word initial position; if is found in spi:k and so on.

Thus, the phoneticians come to the conclusion:

1. If more or less different sounds occur in the same phonetic context they are allophones of different phonemes. In this case their distribution id contrastive.

2. If more or less similar 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 distribution is complementary.

But there is a third possibility besides contrastive and complementary distribution. The sounds both occur in the language but the speakers are inconsistent in the way they use them.