Applied English Phonology, Second Edition ( PDFDrive )

PHONOLOGY 37
2.3 Phonemic Analysis: A Mini-demo
In the following, we will review the points made thus far and briefly show
the mechanics of phonemic analysis. When we do a phonemic analysis to
establish the phonological status of a pair or a group of sounds (phonetically
similar sounds that could potentially be allophones of the same phoneme), it
is necessary to examine their distribution. They are either in contrast and
belong to separate phonemes, or represent allophones (positional variants) of
a phoneme that are in complementary distribution. The first task is to spot the
‘suspicious’ pair or group of sounds. To exemplify this, we look at the sounds
[s], [z], and [S] in English and Korean. The three sounds [s, z, S], which can be
heard during the conversations of both English and Korean speakers, reveal
the needed phonetic similarities. Namely, (a) they all share manner of articulation
features (sibilant fricatives); (b) [s] and [z] share place of articulation
(alveolar), differing only in voicing; (c) [s] and [S] share voicing (voiceless),
differing only in place of articulation. The decision on their distributional
character starts with the search for minimal pairs. When we look at English,
we find these three sounds in an overlapping distribution, in that we have the
following minimal pairs: sip [sIp] – ship [SIp] – zip [zIp]. In other words, the
sounds in question do occur in the same word position (initial) before the same
vowel, [I], and the words mean different things. From this, we can conclude
that the three sounds are in contrast and belong to three separate phonemes.
Now, let us examine the situation in Korean. The following data, although
limited in scope, are representative of the pattern in the language.
(1) [us] “upper” (8) [maSi] “delicious”
(2) [sek] “color” (9) [Sigan] “time”
(3) [kas@l] “hypothesis” (10) *[Silsu] “mistake”
(4) [saram] “person” (11) *[Sipsam] “thirteen”
(5) [sos@l] “novel” (12) [Sike] “clock”
(6) [sul] “wine” (13) [paèz@k] “cushion”
(7) [Si] “poem” (14) [inza] “greetings”
* Words that have both [s] and [S]
We start the search for the distribution of these sounds in Korean in exactly
the same way we started for English, namely by looking for minimal pairs.
The examination of the data reveals that here, unlike English, we do not have
minimal pairs to establish contrasts. Our next step is to look for near-minimal
pairs, in which the immediately preceding and the immediately following
environments are the same. We do not seem to have those either. Under such
conditions, we list the environments in which the sounds in question appear,
and ask whether the sounds occur in the same or similar environments. We
do this by putting the preceding environment to the left of a blank, and the
following environment to the right of it. The blank itself shows the place
that the sound occupies. For example, “# __ a” indicates that [s] occurs in