The Phonemic Structure of Unstressed Vowels in English

Abstract

THE recent study of unstressed vowels by Allan F. Hubbell' deserves considerable attention, as it presents a modification of the theory of the phoneme. He concludes with this statement: 'The phonetic facts are far better explained and more simply set forth if we conceive of a separate phonemic category in which all stressed-vowel oppositions are suspended.' This notion is certainly impossible to deny in the whole; yet the mention of a 'separate phonemic category' seems to imply a distinctive category of phonemes or a category governed by Bloomfield's secondary phonemes of stress. It seems rather that the phonemic structure of the vowels of unstressed syllables could be arranged in a classification dependent upon the phonemes of the stressed vowels. This may, in fact, be what is meant by a separate phonemic category. Let us first be certain of the definitions of the terms. By phoneme we mean that group of sounds which is intended to be heard or is heard as a single sound carrying possible meaningful significance and which can be represented by a single symbol. Consequently, the phonemic structure or phonemic pattern is the groups of sounds and the set of symbols which represent them. An unstressed or unaccented vowel is the vowel of any syllable bearing secondary stress or being unstressed and may even be the absence of any vowel in an unstressed syllable. When, therefore, we speak of the phonemic structure of unstressed vowels in English, we mean all the vowels and sounds as well as their symbols which are not in stressed syllables. The unstressed vowel sounds of English, because of their quality and because of their conventionalized spelling, can be readily restressed by any literate speaker into almost any of the accented vowels. The illiterate speaker, unaware of the conventionalized spelling, does not restress them into as great a variety of sounds. Actually, his choice is fairly wide in syllables bearing secondary stress; but when the syllable is normally unstressed in the isolated word, he is limited to [i] or [a]. This difference between the capacities of the literate and the illiterate suggests the prob-