Neutralization and the Archiphoneme

Neutralization and the Archiphoneme

The contextual structure of language and the phenomena studied within it form a broad field of distinct dimensions and processes that together constitute language. Language is therefore composed of multiple processes, dimensions, structures, and phenomena, and these phenomena must be identified and studied according to their respective dimensions and processes.

One group consists of allophones that, within words and their contexts, have no effect on lexical meaning and do not distinguish meaning. Their phonological force is weakened and their distinctive function becomes ‘empty and inactive’, or neutralized. They belong to allophonemic variation. This is a type of phonetic, rather than phonological, variation and, as the term indicates, these are neutral allophones. They align with no side of a phonological opposition and therefore perform no meaning-distinguishing function within the context and structure of the word.

The number of such allophones is neither fixed nor identical across languages. Within minimal-pair analysis, however many of them appear, they cannot establish a new phoneme. Kurdish offers several examples of such neutral phones:

تەڕ _ طەڕ
زەرد _ ضەرد _ ظەرد
ڕێنوس _ ڕێنووس
سنور _ سنوور
چاو – چاڤ
سەد _ صەد _ ثەد
خراب _ خراپ
حەب _ حەپ
کردوتەوە _ کرتوتەوە

If we examine the examples above, none of the phones that become allophones within these word contexts distinguishes meaning or affects the meaning of the words. For example, whether ڕێنوس is written ڕێنوس or ڕێنووس makes no difference. Whether /و/ or /وو/ is used, both become neutral phones and do not affect meaning. Likewise, writing ڕێنوس, ڕێنوث, or ڕێنوص produces no phonetic distinction at the pragmatic or semantic level, nor in the mental lexicon of a Kurdish speaker, and the forms acquire no phonemic or distinctive role.

Although Kurdish phonology does not contain the phonemes /ص/ and /ث/, these sounds may appear in the language’s phonetic system. They then belong to the domain of neutral phones and have no effect on lexical meaning. These phones can be produced in speech, but they have no graphemes, or letters, of their own.

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Sources:

Sabir Zhakaw, Phonetics and Phonology of the Kurdish Language, unpublished.

Sabir Zhakaw, A Linguistic Inquiry, vol. 1, 2020–2021, University.