Incorporating Metaphonemes in a Multilingual Lexicon

English bed This paper describes a framework for multilingual /bEd/ inheritance-based lexical representation which alrib lows sharing of information across languages at /rib/ all levels of linguistic description. The paper fohand cuses on phonology. It explores the possibility /h{nd/ of establishing a phoneme inventory for a group cat of languages in which language-specific phonemes /k{t/ function as "allophones" of newly defined rectaphonemes. Dutch, English, and German were taken as a test bed and their vowel phoneme inventories were studied. The results of the cross-linguistic analysis are presented in this paper. The paper concludes by showing how these metaphonelnes can be incorporated in a multilingual lexicon.