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A diaphoneme is an abstract phonology unit that identifies a correspondence between related sounds of two or more varieties of a language or language cluster. For example,Example adapted from . 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 ().
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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.
A diaphonemic inventory is a specific diasystem (a term popularized by Uriel Weinreich) that superimposes dialectal contrasts to access all contrasts in all dialects that are included. This consists of a shared core inventory, citing and, when accounting for contrasts not made by all dialects (whether they are historical contrasts that have been lost or innovative ones not made in all varieties ), only as many contrasts as are needed. refers to this distinction as "differences in phonetic realization" and "differences between accents", respectively. The diaphonemic approach gets away from the assumption that linguistic communities are homogeneous, allows multiple varieties to be described in the same terms (something important for situations where people have abilities in more than one variety),, citing 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., pointing to 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 (presumably) possess but vary in the frequency of use., pointing to 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.See for a more in-depth discussion about communicative competence in relation to variable rules. 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., citing For example, Labov presented the variants (among New York speakers) of the vowel of bad or dance:
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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., citing
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:
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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 (with contrasts only in final position). Due to both varieties having closed allophones of 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 and point to earlier works by these authors as approaching the same goal but in less detail was popular amongst American linguists for a time (in the face of criticism, particularly from Hans Kurathe.g. ); James Sleddparticularly in 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 ( PEAS) by Hans Kurath and McDavid combined several dialects into one system transcribed in the IPA., citing 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.See explanation here
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|Hopi language]] 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:
Wells, expanded on this by splitting up the phonological category into "systemic" differences (those of inventory) and "structural" differences (those of phonotactics).
In addition, both Wells and Weinreich mention realizational overlap, wherein the same phone (or a nearly identical one) corresponds to different phonemes, depending on accent. Some examples:
notes a similar phenomenon in Western Pennsylvania, where occurs either as the vowel of ''ashes'' or as the vowel of ''tiger'' but no speaker merges the two vowels (i.e. a speaker who says will not say ).
Realizational overlap occurs between the three dialects of Huastec language, 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:
| +Huastec diaphonemes ! Diaphoneme !! colspan=2 | word !! Otontepec !! Central !! Potosino |
Yuen Ren Chao created a diaphonemic transcription of major Chinese varieties, in both Latin and Chinese character versions, called "General Chinese". It originally (1927) covered the various Wu Chinese 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.Catherine Bateson, 1967, Arabic Language Handbook, p 75 ff.Versteegh, 1997, The Arabic Language, p 40 ff, 56 ff
Both Haugen and Weinreich considered the use of phonemes beyond a single language to be inappropriate when phonemic systems between languages were incommensurable with each other. reiterates this point when he says,
"Since each state is a system consisting of members solely defined by their mutual relations, any two non-identical systems must necessarily be incommensurable, for no element in one can be identified with any element in the other. ...structurally we cannot identify or even compare any Spanish vowel-phoneme with any Italian vowel-phoneme, because a member of a 5-vowel system is intrinsically different from a member of a 7-term system."
Similarly, , argues that phonemic representations may lead to confusion when dealing with phonological interference and remarks that narrow phonetic transcription can be cumbersome, especially when discussing other grammatical features like syntax and morphology. , which phonemic systems do not account for, may be important in the process of interference and interlingual identifications., citing and
Although no linguists claim that panlectal grammars have psychological validity, and polylectal diasystems are much more likely to be cognitively real for bilingual and bidialectal speakers, speakers of only one dialect or language may still be aware of the differences between their own speech and that of other varieties. Take, for example, the word house, which is pronounced:
In discussing contextual cues to vowel identifications in English, note that controlling for dialect is largely unimportant for eliciting identifications when vowels are placed between consonants, possibly because the /CVC/ structure often forms lexical items that can aid in identification; identifying vowels in isolation, which rarely carry such lexical information, must be matched to the listener's set of vowel prototypes with less deviation than in consonantal contexts., pointing to data from In the first chapter of , Peter Trudgill makes the case that these semantic contexts form the basis of intelligibility across varieties and that the process is irregular and ad hoc rather than the result of any sort of rule-governed passive polylectal competence.
argues that a child's language acquisition process includes developing the ability to accommodate for the different varieties they are exposed to (including ones they would not actually employ) and the social significance of their use.; the authors point to other creolists like Charles-James Bailey and [[Derek Bickerton]] as expanding on this concept in accounting for speaker variation.A similar claim occurs in . point out that there may be [[critical period]]s for this similar to those for language learning. This competence in multiple varieties is arguably the primary vehicle of linguistic change.
John Wells argues that going past the common core creates difficulties that add greater complexity and falsely assume a shared underlying form in all accents:
Wells gives the example of straight, late and wait, which rhyme in most English varieties but, because some dialects make phonemic contrasts with the vowels of these words (specifically, in parts of the north of England), a panlectal transcription would have to encode this contrast despite it being absent for most speakers, making such a system "a linguist's construct" and not part of the grammar present in any native speaker's mind (which is what adherents of such a system attempt to achieve).In a similar vein, argues that the linguistic variable is essentially a sociolinguistic construct.
argues that such constructs are appropriate but only when they are removed before the final formulation of grammatical analysis. Wells puts even more weight on the [[phonotactic|phonotactics]] difference between [[rhotic|rhotic accent]] and non-rhotic accents—the former have an underlying in words like ''derby'' and ''star'' while the latter, arguably, do not—and to the unstressed vowel of ''happy'', which aligns phonetically with the vowel of in some varieties and that of in others.
Hans Kurath, particularly prominent in comparative analysis of British and American regional features, makes the case that the systematic features of British and American English largely agree but for a handful of divergences, for example:, cited in
Despite downplaying the divergences, Kurath argued that there is no "total pattern" (a term from ) that can be imposed on all English dialects, nor of even American ones:
The description of a cognitively real polylectal grammar came with 's set of rules for the speech of Norwich that, presumably, could generate any possible output for a specific population of speakers and was psychologically real for such speakers, pointing particularly to chapter 8 of such that native residents who normally exhibited sound mergers (e.g. between the vowels of days and daze) could accurately and consistently make the distinction if called upon to imitate older Norwich speakers.In , the author points out that there are Norwich speakers who do not accurately imitate the speech of others, and present "hyperdialectisms" (similar to hypercorrection); such speakers may then be said to have a different, less polylectal, grammar than the one described in .
argues that comprehension across varieties, when it is found, is insufficient evidence for the claim that polylectal grammars are part of speakers' linguistic competence.Cited in argues that an extrapolated panlectal (or even broadly polylectal) grammar from "idiosyncratic" grammars, such as those found in , would still not be part of speakers' linguistic competence; argues that attempting a polylectal grammar that encodes for a large number of dialects becomes too bizarre and that the traditional reconstructed proto-language is more appropriate for the stated benefits of polylectal grammars. , notable for advocating the construction of polylectal grammars, says that the generative rules of such grammars should be panlectal in the sense that they are ''potentially'' learned in the acquisition process, though no speaker should be expected to learn all of them.
Although question remains to their psychological reality, the usefulness of diaphonemes is shown in with the loss of the front rounded vowel phoneme in Greek language words like ξ ύλο and κ οιλιά; this vowel merged with in most words and in the rest, though the distribution varies with dialect. A diasystem would thus have to present an additional underlying diaphoneme with generative rules that account for the dialectal distribution. Similarly, the diaphonemic system in goes beyond the common core, marking contrasts that only appear in some varieties; Geraghty argues that, because of Fijian marriage customs that prompt exposure to other dialects, speakers may possess a diasystem that represents multiple dialects as part of their communicative competence.
The concept does not necessitate the formation of a transcription system. Diaphones can instead be represented with double slashes.; similarly, double wavy lines (≈) indicate oppositions within a diasystem in the same way that wavy lines (~) indicate phonemic oppositions within an individual variety. This is the case, for example in and where diaphonemes are represented with bracketing:
In this scheme, Scottish Standard English and the accent of Kirkwall are shown to make a phonemic contrast between and while RP and General American are shown to possess only the former so that lock and loch are pronounced differently in the former group and identically in the latter.
Diaphonemic systems do not necessarily even have to utilize the IPA. Diaphones are useful in constructing a writing system that accommodates multiple dialects with different phonologies., cited in Even in dialectology, diaphonemic transcriptions may instead be based on the language's orthography, as is the case with Lee Pederson's Automated Book Code designed for information from the Linguistic Atlas of the Gulf States and the diaphonemic transcription system used by Paul Geraghty for related Fijian languages uses a modified Roman script.
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