The English vowel system

The analysis of the English vowel system contains a large number of phonemes, and it is not surprising that some phonologists who believe in the importance of keeping the total number of phonemes small propose different analyses which contain fewer than ten vowel phonemes and treat all long vowels and diphthongs as composed of two phonemes each. There are different ways of doing this: one way is to treat long vowels and diphthongs as composed of two vowel phonemes. Starting with a set of basic or "simple" vowel phonemes (e.g. ɪ, e,  æ,  Λ,  ɒ,  ʊ,  ə) it is possible to make up long vowels by using short vowels twice. Our usual transcription for long vowels is given in brackets:

ii (i:)   ææ (ɑ:)   ɒɒ (ɔ:)   ʊʊ (u:)   əə (з:)

This can be made to look less unusual by choosing different symbols for the basic vowels. We will use i, e, a,  Λ,  ɔ, u, ə: thus i: could be transcribed as ii, a: as aa,  ɔ: as ɔɔ, u: as uu and з: as əə. In this approach, diphthongs would be composed of a basic vowel phoneme followed by one of i, u, ə, while triphthongs would be made from a basic vowel plus one of i, u followed by ə, and would therefore be composed of three phonemes.

Another way of doing this kind of analysis is to treat long vowels and diphthongs as composed of a vowel plus a consonant; this may seem a less obvious way of proceeding, but it was for many years the choice of most American phonologists. The idea is that long vowels and diphthongs are composed of a basic vowel phoneme followed by one of j, w, h (we should add r for rhotic accents). Thus the diphthongs would be made up like this (our usual transcription is given in brackets):

ej (eɪ)              aw (əʊ)             ɪh (ɪə)  

æj (aɪ)            æw (aʊ)             eh (eə)  

ɒj (ɔɪ)                                        ʊh (ʊə)

Long vowels:                 

ɪj (i:)                æh (ɑ:)               ɒh (ɔ:)                  əh (з:)               ʊw (u:)

Diphthongs and long vowels are now of exactly the same phonological composition. An important point about this analysis is that j, w, h do not otherwise occur finally in the syllable. In this analysis, the inequality of distribution is corrected.

We saw how, although ɪ, i: are clearly distinct in most contexts, there are other contexts where we find a sound which cannot clearly be said to belong to one or other of these two phonemes. The suggested solution to this problem was to use the symbol i, which does not represent any single phoneme; a similar proposal was made for u. We use the term neutralization for cases where contrasts between phonemes which exist in other places in the language disappear in particular contexts. There are many other ways of analyzing the very complex vowel system of English, some of which are extremely ingenious. Each has its own advantages and disadvantages.