Re: Allophones or Separate Phonemes?

Kristian:
> I thought I had solved all my orthographical problems when I decided
> to transcribe Boreanesian in the IPA for the grammar I'm preparing.
> But I just discovered a problem. There are a group of sounds I'm not
> sure of how to transcribe. They all have that in common that they
> evolved from the voiced and voiceless approximants of the
> Proto-language, but both their similarity/dissimilarity to each
> other and their distrubution is such that I can't figure out whether
> they are allophones of the same phoneme or different phonemes
> altogether.
>
> One pair of approximantal proto-phonemes are the voiced and
> voiceless pharyngeal approximants. Both can be represented in the
> IPA by a turned m with a long right leg,
>From your post I haven't been able to work out the rationale for that
choice of symbol. Unless things have changed in some recent revision
of the IPA, the symbol represents a velar approximant glide. Why not
use the symbols for pharyngeal fricatives (hook-top <h> and barred
<h>)?

> the voiceless one marked by
> an under-ring. In this post I'll have to represent them radically as
> *R and *H respectively.
>
> In the Boreanesian dialect I'm working on, syllable initial *R is
> now realized as [?], while syllable initial *H is now realized as
> [h]. In syllable final position, *R and *H are now respectively
> realized as creaky voiced and voiceless [@] after [i] and [u], and
> as creaky voiced and voiceless vowel length [:] after [@] and [a].
> (Note that I have only used brackets [] as I'm not sure whether they
> are allophones or separate phonemes in the modern language). These
> are summarized in the table a) below:
>
> a)
> PROTO-B.  ->  MODERN-B.
>   *Ra-    ->    [?a-]
>   *R@-    ->    [?@-]
>   *Ri-    ->    [?i-]
>   *Ru-    ->    [?u-]
>   *-aR    ->    [-a:?]
>   *-@R    ->    [-@:?]
>   *-iR    ->    [-i@?]
>   *-uR    ->    [-u@?]
>
>   *Ha-    ->    [ha-]
>   *H@-    ->    [h@-]
>   *Hi-    ->    [hi-]
>   *Hu-    ->    [hu-]
>   *-aH    ->    [-a:h]
>   *-@H    ->    [-@:h]
>   *-iH    ->    [-i@h]
>   *-uH    ->    [-u@h]
>
> As of now, I have been transcribing the sounds that evolved from
> syllable-final *R and *H by IPA's turned-m-with-a-right-long-leg in
> the grammar. The difference in phonation is marked by following this
> symbol by either a glottal stop [?] for creaky voiced or [h] for
> voiceless. In doing so, I have assumed that the various syllable
> final sounds that evolved from *R and *H are allophones of each
> other. The new syllable-initial sounds are simply [?] or [h], and
> are represented likewise. In doing so, the
> turned-m-with-a-right-long-leg only occurs in syllable final
> position, while [?] and [h] can occur in both syllable initial
> position and syllable final position.
>
> The fact that all the new sounds that derive from *R and *H have [?]
> and [h] respectively prompted me to wonder if the new sounds are in
> fact allophones of each other. I mean, [?-] [-:?] and [-@?] all
> could be allophones of the same phoneme, while [h-] [-:h] and [-@h]
> all could be allophones of another.
If you're going to do a traditional phonemic analysis, then this
seems the obvious analysis: two phonemes, /?/ and /h/ that can be
syllable-final or syllable initial, and with the phonetic
realizations that you describe.

> But on the other hand, one could
> say that [-:h] and [-@h] are allophones of an approximant that
> occurs only in syllable-final position while [h-] is an independant
> phoneme on its own right since it is not an approximant.
These are pseudoproblems that arise only when your minimal unit of
phonological contrast is the segment. Well-known problems arise: In
English are /t-/ and /-t/ the same phoneme? (standard answer is yes,
even though their allophones are markedly different) Are /h/ and /N/
the same phoneme? (standard answer is no, because of their
dissimilarity even though they're in complementary distribution)

Modern phonological theory separates out "structural" or "prosodic"
properties like "syllable-intial/final" from "segmental" or "melodic"
properties like "nasal" or "noisy" or "occluded".

For an expository description -- as opposed to a full analysis -- of
Boreanesian, I see no problem in using phonemic analysis, so long as
you accept that the analytical system is itself imperfect.

In my view, there is another problem that can face either kind of
phonological analysis. The problem lies in trying to cram all of
phonology into a single level of phonological representation. This
(in my view, again), is not how phonology works: there are two
levels. One is the level that interfaces with the lexicon, which
represents only phonological *contrasts*. The other is the level that
interfaces with phonetics, specifying what the phonetic realization
should be. It is entirely usual for the repertoire of representational
elements to be much larger for the phonetic interface level than for
the lexical interface level.

> If indeed they are allophones of each other, then it would be
> difficult justify (for me at least) a similar conclusion for the new
> sounds that derived from the other approximants of Proto-B. There
> are similar diachronic sound changes that have occured to the other
> approximant phonemes of Proto-B. For instance, table b) below
> summarizes how *j (voiced palatal approximant) and *hj/jh (voiceless
> palatal approximant) evolved in similar environments to table a):
>
> b)
> PROTO-B.  ->  MODERN-B.
>   *ja-    ->    [ja-]
>   *j@-    ->    [j@-]
>   *ji-    ->    [ji-]
>   *ju-    ->    [ju-]
>   *-aj    ->    [-aj?]
>   *-@j    ->    [-@j?]
>   *-ij    ->    [-i:?]
>   *-uj    ->    [-uj?]
>
>   *hja-    ->    [sa-]
>   *hj@-    ->    [s@-]
>   *hji-    ->    [si-]
>   *hju-    ->    [su-]
>   *-ajh    ->    [-ajh]
>   *-@jh    ->    [-@jh]
>   *-ijh    ->    [-i:h]
>   *-ujh    ->    [-ujh]
>
> One could say for instance that [s-] [-:h] and [-jh] are all
> allophones of the same phoneme. But somehow, it seems more
> appropriate to assume that the new sound [s] is indeed a separate
> phoneme since it bares little resemblance to either [-:h] or [-jh].
Ah, well: the lesson one must learn is that if one is faced with an
analytical choice that is apparently (i) pointless, (ii) forced by
the analytical system, and (iii) made with difficulty or
arbitrariness, then something is wrong with the analytical system.

In this instance I think the solution is as follows. At the lexical
interface, you can have just one "melodic" unit - call it /S/, say.
This then entails that [s-], [-:h] and [-jh] are noncontrastive,
without you having add to the phonology a stipulation restricting
/s-/ to syllable initial position and /-jh/ to syllable final.
But at the phonetic interface level the distinction must be
represented, because of course it is *systematically* reflected
in the pronunciation of Boreanesian.

> Like [?] and [h] in syllable-initial position, [s] is not an
> approximant. So if [s] is indeed a separate phoneme from [-:h] and
> [-jh], then [h] must be a separate phoneme from [-:h] and [-@h],
> right? Hey wait a sec, what about [-:h]??!! Is it an allophone with
> both [s][-jh] and [h][-@h]?
There doesn't seem to be a contrastive unit ":h". You have either
/-@H/ or /-IH/. [Where @ could be taken as notation for a melodically
unspecified structural segment].

> Oh this is sooo confusing!!
One has to *invent* the analytical machinery necessary to accommodate
the data. If one expects an already established analytical apparatus
to necessarily accommodate novel data, then this generally results
either in perplexity or in traducing and fiddling the data.

> Comments, please!
My comment is that I very much hope that you *will* study linguistics
at university.

--And.