Diaphoneme
A diaphoneme is an abstract phonological unit that identifies a correspondence between related sounds of two or more varieties of a language or language cluster. For example, some English varieties contrast the vowel of late with that of wait or eight. Other English varieties contrast the vowel of late or wait with that of eight. This non-overlapping pair of phonemes from two different varieties can be reconciled by positing three different diaphonemes: A first diaphoneme for words like late, a second diaphoneme for words like wait, and a third diaphoneme for words like eight.
Diaphonology studies the realization of diaphones across dialects, and is important to evaluate if an orthography is adequate for more than one dialect of a language. In historical linguistics, it is concerned with the reflexes of an ancestral phoneme as a language splits into dialects, such as the modern realizations of Old English.
The concept goes back to the 1930s. The word diaphone was originally used with the same meaning as diaphoneme, but was later repurposed to refer to any of the particular variants, making the relationship between diaphoneme and diaphone analogous to that between phoneme and allophone.
Usage
The term diaphone first appeared in usage by phoneticians like Daniel Jones and Harold E. Palmer. Jones, who was more interested in transcription and coping with dialectal variation than with how [|cognitively real] the phenomenon is, originally used diaphone to refer to the family of sounds that are realized differently depending on dialect but that speakers consider to be the same; an individual dialect or speaker's realization of this diaphone was called a diaphonic variant. Because of confusion related to usage, Jones later coined the term diaphoneme to refer to his earlier sense of diaphone and used diaphone to refer to the variants.A diaphonemic inventory is a specific diasystem that superimposes dialectal contrasts to access all contrasts in all dialects that are included. This consists of a shared core inventory and, when accounting for contrasts not made by all dialects, only as many contrasts as are needed. The diaphonemic approach gets away from the assumption that linguistic communities are homogeneous, allows multiple varieties to be described in the same terms, and helps in ascertaining where speakers make diaphonic identifications as a result of similarities and differences between the varieties involved.
The linguistic variable, a similar concept presented by William Labov, refers to features with variations that are referentially identical but carry social and stylistic meaning. This could include phonological, as well as morphological and syntactic phenomena. Labov also developed variable rules analysis, with variable rules being those that all members of a speech community possess but vary in the frequency of use. The latter concept met resistance from scholars for a number of reasons including the argument from critics that knowledge of rule probabilities was too far from speakers' competence. Because of these problems, use of variable rules analysis died down by the end of the 1980s. Nevertheless, the linguistic variable is still used in sociolinguistics. For Labov, grouping variants together was justified by their tendency to fluctuate between each other within the same set of words. For example, Labov presented the variants of the vowel of bad or dance:
| Phonetic value | Score |
| 1 | |
| 2 | |
| 3 | |
| 4 | |
| 5 | |
| 6 |
The different phonetic values were assigned numerical values that were then used in an overall score index.
Overdifferentiation is when phonemic distinctions from one's primary language are imposed on the sounds of the second system where they are not required; underdifferentiation of phonemes occurs when two sounds of the second system are not maintained because they are not present in the primary system.
Dialectology
Inspired by, Uriel Weinreich first advocated the use of diasystems in structural dialectology, and suggested that such a system would represent a higher level of abstraction that can unite related dialects into a single description and transcription. While phonemic systems describe the speech of a single variety, diaphonemic systems can reflect the contrasts that are not made by all varieties being represented. The way these differ can be shown in the name New York. This word may be transcribed phonemically as in American English, as many varieties thereof do not allow the cluster as a syllable onset; in Received Pronunciation, syllable-final does not occur so this name would be transcribed to reflect that pronunciation. A diaphonemic transcription such as would thus cover both dialects. Neither is described exactly, but both are derivable from the diaphonemic transcription.The desire of building a diasystem to accommodate all English dialects, combined with a blossoming generative phonology, prompted American dialectologists to attempt the construction of an "overall system" of English phonology by analyzing dialectal distinctions as differences in the ordering of phonological rules as well as in the presence or absence of such rules. even went so far as to claim that principled description of interdialectal code-switching would be impossible without such rules.
An example of this concept is presented in with a phonological difference between Castilian and Uruguayan Spanish:
| Castilian | Uruguayan | Gloss |
| 'class' | ||
| 'classes' |
Without the use of ordered rules, Uruguayan Spanish could be interpreted as having two additional phonemes and morphophonemic vowel alternation with its plural marker. Attempting to construct a diasystem that encodes such a variety would thus represent all Spanish varieties as having seven vowel phonemes. Due to both varieties having closed allophones of mid vowels in open syllables and open allophones in closed syllables, using ordered rules minimizes the differences so that the underlying form for both varieties is the same and Uruguayan Spanish simply has a subsequent rule that deletes at the end of a syllable; constructing a diaphonemic system thus becomes a relatively straightforward process. suggests that the rules needed to account for dialectal differences, even if not [|psychologically real], may be historically accurate.
The nature of an overall system for English was controversial: the analysis in was popular amongst American linguists for a time ; James Sledd put forth his own diaphonemic system that accommodated Southern American English; both and modified the scheme of The Sound Pattern of English by focusing on the diaphoneme, believing that it could address neutralizations better than structuralist approaches; and The Pronunciation of English in the Atlantic States by Kurath and McDavid combined several dialects into one system transcribed in the IPA. More recently, The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language makes use of a diaphonemic transcription of Standard English so that examples can be expressed concisely without favoring any particular accent.
argued that fell short in accurately representing dialects because their methodology involved attempting to create a diasystem before establishing the relevant component phonemic systems. argues a similar problem occurs in the study of Hopi where transfer of training leads phoneticians to fit features of a dialect under study into the system of dialects already studied.
Beginning with linguists attempting to account for dialectal differences have generally distinguished between three types:
- Phonological: the phonemic inventories and phonotactic restrictions
- Phonetic: how a given phoneme is realized phonetically. This distinction covers differences in the range of allophonic variation.
- Incidence: one phoneme rather than another occurs in a given word or group of words
In addition, both Wells and Weinreich mention realizational overlap, wherein the same phone corresponds to different phonemes, depending on accent. Some examples:
- Autistic in Canadian English overlaps with the way speakers of Received Pronunciation say artistic:
- Impossible in General American overlaps with RP impassable:
Realizational overlap occurs between the three dialects of Huastec, which have the same phonological system even though cognate words often do not have the same reflexes of this system. For example, while the Central and Potosino dialects both have ch and ts-type sounds, the words they are found in are reversed:
Yuen Ren Chao created a diaphonemic transcription of major Chinese varieties, in both Latin and Chinese character versions, called "General Chinese". It originally covered the various Wu dialects, but by 1983 had expanded to cover the major dialects of Mandarin, Yue, Hakka, and Min as well. Apart from a few irregularities, GC can be read equally well in any of those dialects, and several others besides.
Qur'anic Arabic uses a diaphonemic writing system that indicates both the pronunciation in Mecca, the western dialect the Qur'an was written in, and that of eastern Arabia, the prestige dialect of pre-Islamic poetry. For example, final was pronounced something like in Mecca, and written ي, while it had merged with in eastern Arabia and was written as ا. In order to accommodate both pronunciations, the basic letter of Meccan Arabic was used, but the diacritic was dropped: ى. Similarly, the glottal stop had been lost in Meccan Arabic in all positions but initially, so the Meccan letters were retained with the eastern glottal stop indicated with a diacritic hamza.