Inrtoduction

Chapter II. Phonemic analysis of English vowels.
2.1. Main peculiarities of phonemic analysis.
What is Phonemic analysis? 
Phonemic analysis is the process of deciphering a spoken language's phonemes, allophones, and distribution to identify each allophone's constituents. A phonemicization of the language is the name given to the final comprehensive examination. Keep in mind that a certain phonemicization just indicates one of numerous potential analyses. Languages typically do not have a single distinctive phonemicization since there are numerous methods to break up a language's phonemes into phonemes. Furthermore, since phonemes are conceptual, abstract ideas, there is no easy way to verify the accuracy of our research. In fact, some linguists altogether reject the idea of phonemes because it is feasible to study a language's phonology without them.
However, there is experimental proof that speakers do employ a phoneme-like representation, and phonemes are a reasonable analysis up until we are able to open up the human brain and discover exactly how language is represented. We can evaluate several analyses to determine which one is a better fit for the data and our assumptions even though we are unable to determine whether a specific phonemicization or any phonemicization at all is accurate. Particularly, we would typically favor the easier analysis if there are two competing phonemicizations that both account for all of the available data (if there is one). This is the simplicity tenet. Although there isn't a single, conclusive yardstick for simplicity, there are occasionally two that can be used.
Although we might rely on other considerations in these circumstances, we would typically still be in an unclear position.
Thankfully, the data sets that are normally presented in an introductory linguistics course have been carefully chosen to have one clear ideal phonemicization. In contrast, there are frequently no obvious optimal analyses when working with raw linguistic data in the real world, so we might be less confident in any analyses we do come up with.
An example of phonemic analysis: Georgian laterals
To demonstrate phonemic analysis, consider the following data from Georgian, a Karto-Zan language of the Kartvelian family, spoken in Georgia (data adapted from Kenstowicz and Kisseberth 1979).

[vxlet͡ʃh]	‘I split’	[saxɫʃi]	‘at home’
[t͡ʃet͡ʃxli]	‘fire’	[kaɫa]	‘tin’
[zarali]	‘loss’	[pepeɫa]	‘butterfly’
[t͡ʃoli]	‘wife’	[kbiɫs]	‘tooth’
[xeli]	‘hand’	[ɫxena]	‘joy’
[kleba]	‘reduce’	[erthxeɫ]	‘once’
[leɫo]	‘goal’	[xoɫo]	‘however’
[ɫamazad]	‘prettily’

Step 1: Identify and organize the phones of interest
Searching for minimal pairings or starting an analysis of a small, straightforward natural class, such the voiceless plosives or the front vowels, are good places to start if we don't already have a specific set of phones in mind or wish to phonetically represent the entire language. You will typically be given the exact phones of interest in your phonological introduction assignments.
For the purposes of this demonstration, we will focus on two distinct phonemes: an alveolar lateral approximant (often referred to as a clear or light [l]) and a velarized alveolar lateral approximant (often referred to as a dark []), which has the tongue back raised slightly towards the velum in addition to the primary alveolar articulation.
Many English speakers use both of these two phonemes, with a bright [l] at the start and a dark [] at the end of a word, as in [lif] leaf versus [fi] feel. Due to their complimentary distribution and phonetic resemblance, these two phones for English can be demonstrated to be allophones of a single lateral approximant phoneme, therefore we can ask if the same is true for Georgian.
After deciding on a group of phones to study, we might want to arrange them according to natural classes. There is typically no need to group when there are only two or three. However, if there are four or more, we might find it useful.
We should also consider the peculiarities of the Georgian lateral approximants. The distinction in this case is between a high tongue back for dark [] and a flat tongue back for clear [l]. Since a phone's distribution frequently depends on factors linked to its articulation, if [l] and [] have complimentary distributions, we may anticipate that tongue backness of nearby phones will be important. We cannot rely on this as a uniform technique, though, as there are occasions when there is no obvious phonetic relationship between phones and their environment. As a result, while monitoring tongue-backness in the environment, we should also be alert to other potential influences.
Step 2: Identify the individual environments of the phones of interest
In order to produce a diagram with the phones of interest listed across the top and the individual contexts they occur in listed beneath each phone, we must first understand how the phones of interest are related to one another phonetically.
In order to assess a phone's environment, we can typically just look at what happens immediately to its left and right, though occasionally we may need to take into account other details like syllabic position, stress, tone, or even phones that are further away. However, it will usually be sufficient to only scan the nearby right and left.
For the purposes of compactness in notation when building such lists of environments, it is common to use the hash symbol # (a.k.a. number sign, pound sign, octothorpe, etc.) to mark a word boundary and an underline ▁ to represent the position of the phone of interest. Thus, “#▁a” for [ɫ] indicates that there is some word in the data in which [ɫ] is at the beginning of the word and is followed by [a], in this case, [ɫamazad] ‘prettily’. Using this method for [l] and [ɫ] in Georgian, we would get the following lists of environments.