Phonemes, Features, and Syllables: Converting Onset and Rime Inventories to Consonants and Vowels

Abstract

Phonemic analysis has been thought to be the 'greatest achievement' in phonology; in contrast, progress at other levels, such as the feature level below and the syllable level above, has been limited. We argue that not only are features and syllables important, but phonemic analysis is inadequate without reference to them. In other words, features and syllables are not separate areas of inquiry, but solve fundamental problems in phonemic analysis. We demonstrate the point with an in-depth analysis of Lanzhou Chinese. We show that, without reference to features and syllables, phonemic analysis is ambiguous in that it is open to alternative solutions, a problem noted by Yuen Ren Chao. In addition, there is no explanation for the patterns of occurring and nonoccurring syllables. In contrast, if we take features and syllables into consideration, not only can we account for occurring and non-occurring syllables, but the phonemic analysis itself becomes simpler and less ambiguous.