The phonemic status of diphthongs, triphthongs and affricates

There are cases when the establishment of phonological oppositions is not sufficient to determine the phonemic status of a sound, especially when the sound is of a complex nature.

In the English language the sounds / ʧ/, / ʤ /, /tr/, /dr/, /ts/, /dz/ form phonological oppositions and distinguish such words as "eat — each, "head —hedge, tie-try, die - dry, hat - hats, buzz - buds". But does that mean that all of them are monophonemic and should be included into the phonemic inventory?

Trubetzkoy worked out a number of rules which help to determine whether a sound of a complex nature is monophonemic. The main rules state that:

• Firstly, a phoneme is indivisible, as no syllabic division can occur within a phoneme.
• Secondly, a phoneme is produced by one articulatory effort.
• Thirdly, the duration of a phoneme should not exceed that of other phonemes in the language.

Consequently, / ʧ/, / ʤ /, in words like "cheese, each, jail, hedge" are monophonemic, because both acoustic and physiological analysis provide suf­ficient evidence that these sounds are produced by one articulatory effort, their duration does not exceed the duration of either /t/ (as in "tear"), or / ʃ / (as in "share"), or /d/ (as in "dare"). Besides that, in words like "cheese, chair, each, hedge, John, jail", no syllabic division occurs within the sounds / ʧ/, / ʤ /.

/ts/, /dz/ are obviously biphonemic combinations (i.e. combinations of two phonemes), because their duration exceeds the average duration of either /t/, /d/,/s/or/z/.

As for /tr/, /dr/ (as in "tree, dream") their phonemic status will remain undecided until special acoustic and physiological analysis is made. As /t/ and /r/, on the one hand, and/d/ and /r/, on the other, are so closely linked in the pronunciation of Englishmen, D.Jones calls them affricates alongside of / ʧ/, / ʤ /. (He distinguished them from sequences/t/+ /r/and/d/+ /r/ as in "rest—room, hand—writing".) Most phoneticians regard /tr/ and /dr/ as biphonemic clusters.

There appears to be another analogical problem. It concerns the phonemic status of the English diphthongs and the so—called " triphthongs ". Are they monophonemic or biphonemic clusters in English?

The syllabic and articulatory indivisibility of English diphthongs and their duration which does not exceed the duration of English historically long vowels /i:, u:, о:, a:, 3:/, clearly determine their monophonemic character in English.

As for /aia /, /aua /, it has been proved acoustically and physiologically that in English they cannot be considered monophonemic. They are not produ­ced by a single articulatory effort, as there is an increase in the force of arti­culation and intensity not only for the first element, but for the last element as well. The syllabic division generally occurs in between the diphthong and the schwa vowel (/ ai-ə /, /аu-ə/ as in "flier", "flower"). So, they should be regarded as biphonemic clusters of a diphthong with the schwa vowel.

In such a way it has been established that in RP there are 12 vowel phone­mes, 8 diphthongs, 24 consonant phonemes.