A quantitative analysis of the phonemic status of the Russian vowel y

Abstract

One of the constant controversies among scholars of Russian phonology is the phonological status of the vowel y. The Moscow School regards the middle vowel y as an allophone of the front vowel phoneme /i/. On the other hand, the Saint Petersburg School argues that the vowel y is a phoneme that has an opposing relationship with all other vowels, including i. The reason why these two Schools argue over this vowel’s identity is that the vowel y has an ambiguous status in the Russian vowel system. The concept of a phoneme in traditional phonology cannot explain these borderline examples. In this paper, the Probabilistic Phonological Relationship Model (PPRM) of information theory is used to reveal the phonological status of the Russian vowel y. Our analysis shows that the status of the vowels y and i in the Russian language system is closer to the opposition of different phonemes than to the relationship of a phoneme and one of its allophones.