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Next: Patterning of distribution Up: LING 057: Language and Previous: Sound and Writing.

Finding Phonemes

What our task now is to find the phonemes of English. When we have found them we will have a phonemic transcription that is the most efficient and unambiguous writing system for English that could exist; all unimportant phonetic detail will be ignored; no important phonetic details will be left out. Having found a phonemic system for English, we can then represent the morphemes and words of E. in this system.

Principles: one symbol for each phoneme; no phoneme has more than one symbol (i.e. no (ph) for (f); no (sh) or (th) or (ng) type digraphs).





Harold Schiffman
Fri Jan 17 09:48:04 EST 1997