What is a phoneme word - Word и Excel - помощь в работе с программами

There is quite a lot of technical language surrounding phonics that sometimes can be a barrier to parents and even some teachers understanding how to teach it. The aim of this article is to completely demystify one of the most common words you may hear bandied around when you hear people talk about phonics – ‘phonemes’.

So in real talk, what exactly is a phoneme?

A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound in a language. For example, the word ‘dog’ is made up of three phonemes – ‘d’, ‘o’, and ‘g’. These are not the written letters but the spoken sounds. So, for example, the word ‘chain’, although made up of five letters, only contains three phonemes – ‘ch’, ‘ai’ and ‘n’.

There is debate in education whether words like ‘phoneme’ are really useful in that they can add an element of mystery to what is really quite a straight forward process – the teaching of phonics.

I will look at how to see through this mystique, and in particular look at what phonemes are, how to teach them, what phonemes exist in English, how you can help at home, and what do you do with them when you know them.

What Phonemes Are – Real Talk

I think when I went to primary school (in the 1980s), phonemes were called ‘sounds’. That is basically what they are.

We know that a letter has a name and also a sound. For example the letter ‘c’ has the letter name that is pronounced ‘see’. It also has a sound that we pronounce ‘c’. The sound is the phoneme- it is that simple.

You might ask then why do educators not just call them sounds?

This is a good question. Many people in education do just call them this, as it is far easier for parents in particular to understand what they are.

The official reason they are called phonemes is that the word ‘sound’ has multiple meanings.

A ‘sound’ can be a cow mooing, or the noise of hammer hitting nails, or a telephone ringing. The word ‘phoneme’ is a more precise word that specifically is talking about the ‘sound’ of a unit of speech.

However, there are many people that think this is all a bit silly. Children quickly learn that many words in English have dual meanings. I don’t believe they get confused with the terminology ‘sounds’ one bit.

However, this is more a technical issue. Some schools will call these units of sound ‘phonemes’ so we might as well learn what they are!

What Phonemes Are There?

Children will learn 44 phonemes in phonics. These are often split up into different phases or groups, though this will depend on the country you live in.

There seems to be a bit of disagreement about what exactly the 44 phonemes are, but in general I think they are the following…

First, the phonemes represented by a single letter:

s, a, t, p
i, n, m, d
g, o, c

e, u, r
h, b, f, l

j, v, w, x

y, z

Then the phonemes containing two consonants (know as consonant digraphs):

qu, ch, sh, th, th, ng

Then there are the digraphs:

ai, ee, oa, oo, ar, or, ur, ow, oi, er

And finally the trigraphs (phonemes represented by three letters):

Igh, ear, air, ure

Here’s a good youtube video that explains what they are:

Many of the phonemes can be written in different ways. For example the phoneme ‘ai’ can also be written ‘ay’. This does not change the phoneme. It is just the ‘grapheme’ (ie. The letters used to represent it) that change.

Pure Sounds

One really important thing to consider when you are teaching phonemes is that it is best to use the ‘pure sound.’

For lots of parents, this may be different to the way that you were taught at school.

The big thing is to try to avoid putting a ‘uh’ sound at either the beginning of the phoneme or at the end. For example, ‘c’ should just sound like ‘c’, not ‘cuh’. ‘S’ should sound like ‘ssss’ not ‘suh’.

This is a great video to watch to learn a little bit more about this:

Some parents are resistant to this, because I think we definitely didn’t learn phonemes like this back in the day! I remember saying ‘cuh’, and ‘buh’ and all the rest of it.

However, it really does help children to blend and segment if they are saying the pure sounds. It is definitely worth the effort!

So Do You Teach Letter Names As Well?

All letters have a name but they also have a phoneme (sound.)

For example, the letter ‘t’ has a name that is pronounced ‘tee’. Also, it of course has the phoneme that sound like ‘t’.

There is a bit of debate about whether you should teach the letter names at the same time as the phonemes?

There is no right or wrong answer to this question.

I know some schools teach the letter names at the same time as the sounds/phonemes. For example, they might show a letter (e.g. t) and say ‘My name is ‘tee’ and my sound is ‘t’.

This way the children are introduced to both the written and verbal form at the same time.

However, I know many schools do not do this because they think it is too confusing for children to learn both straight away. The approach they take is to teach just the phonemes first. The letter names can then be taught at a later date, probably well after the children are confidently using the phonemes.

If you are a parent, I would recommend finding out what the school does, and following that process.

If you are a parent wanting to home-school your child, personally I would teach the phonemes first, and just throw the letter names in much later in the process.

Keeping it simple in the early days of phonics is crucial. It gets them going at a much quicker rate.

How Are Phonemes Taught?

There is no one set way to teach phonemes, but there are some very popular schemes around. These all have a similar approach to teaching them, if not identical.

Most schemes are based around the idea that you teach a phoneme along with an action.

For example, in one scheme, the phoneme ‘p’ is taught alongside the action of putting your index finger to your lips and going ‘p,p,p’ onto it, as though you are blowing out a candle.

These actions are really beneficial in helping children learn phonemes quickly. It makes it a multi-sensory experience. Children are using different senses at the same time and this really helps them keep the phonemes in their minds.

An example of a way phonemes are taught in school could look something like the following:

Tell a simple story that links to the action you are about to teach. For example, if you will teach ‘p’ then tell a story about a party with a birthday cake.
Include some words in the story that start with the sound. For example, in the example of the birthday, good words to include would be ‘party’, ‘pink’, ‘pig’ and anything else like that. Let the children copy and have fun with these words by saying them and really emphasising the phoneme at the start of the word.
All do the action whilst showing them the letter
Have a go of sky-writing. This means all writing the letter in the air with your fingers.
Practice using the learned phoneme in group phonics games or provision activities

All schools are different, but this is a simple formula for learning phonemes.

If you are a parent, it is a good idea to find out how your school teaches phonemes so you are doing a similar thing.

Learning Orally – Before Letters

The big thing about phonemes is that it is sound. And we are all learning to listen to sound from the moment we are born.

Children aged 0 to 4 are all learning to hear and say phonemes, and so the vast majority of learning in this area takes place before you ever actually get round to learning the letters and sounds.

In particular, before children learn letter-sounds it is good if they can:

Say most sounds verbally correctly
Are able to listen for at least a short period of time
Are able to join with simple listening games
Are able to hear some sounds in easy games involving alliteration and rhythm
Are able to hear and differentiate the different sounds that instruments make
Have an understanding of low/high, loud/quiet, and other ways sounds can be changed

There are hundreds of good games you can try that develop skills in these key areas. Some fantastic ones you can try include:

17 Spectacular Segmenting Activities You’ve Got To Try
Rhythm Sticks Games – The Essential Guide
Alliteration Games – Ten Terrific Ones To Try

What Do You Do With The Phonemes You Learn?

The big thing about learning phonemes is that there is not much point in learning them unless you know how to blend and segment (or are at least beginning to do this.)

What Is Blending?

Blending is arguably the crucial skill of early reading. Simply put, blending is merging the sound you hear into words.

For example, if you hear ‘d-o-g’ you merge the phonemes together in your mind to make the word ‘dog’. To find out the full guide on what blending is then check out this article.

This is often the biggest stumbling block in early reading. There are lots of children that will learn many phonemes (sometimes all 44) but will not be able to use them.

Learning how to blend is therefore is key.

Good Games For Blending

1.Use A Puppet

I would say this is definitely the number one way to start.

Select any kind of puppet – it could be a finger puppet, a big puppet, or just a teddy. I like to use this monkey puppet…

The puppet basically makes up a story, but one word of every sentence it splits into sound talk.

For example, it might say, ‘Today I went for a walk with Cath the c-a-t.’ The children try to guess the sound talk word – e.g. ‘cat’. Keep going making up a story and splitting the words up. This really helps add context to the process, and gives them a clue.

Puppets are brilliant for teaching all sorts of phonics skills. If you want to find out many more then check this out article.

2.Dress The Baby

Lots of children are very excited by babies, and this game is brilliant for them.

Have a baby, and some simple clothes to put on the baby – for example a ‘sock’, a ‘hat’, and a ‘boot.’

Say to a child, can you put on the ‘h-a-t.’ See if they can put the right piece of clothing on the baby.

What segmenting Is

The other core skill required when you know some phonemes is segmenting. This is the crucial skill for

If you want to find out in full what segmenting is then check this out. However, here is the short version…

Segmenting is splitting words up into their phonemes. For example, the word ‘pig’ can be split up into the phonemes ‘p-i-g’.

To be able to write words children will need to first sound them out using this process. But how do you teach it?

Good Games For Segmenting

1.Use A Robot

This is the classic way of teaching it, and it definitely works!

Get some kind of robot. It could be a simple box with a face drawn on! Or a robot toy, or puppet. I like to use this one:

The idea is to use your arms like ‘robot arms’. Bend them at ninety degrees at the elbow and move them up and down.

The robot gives you a word to say like a robot, for example ‘kid’. Children move their arms up and down and say ‘k-i-d. Kid! K-i-d. Kid!’ Always repeat each word a few times, probably three or four when you start off.

2. Dance Segmenting

This is really good fun. Put some kind of pumping disco tune on!

Do a simple dance move, something like arms up then arms down. Do this while segmenting a word, for example ‘c-o-t. Cot! C-o-t. Cot!…’

These are two really fun ways of learning how to segment, but if you want to find out a list of the full 16 ways of teaching segmenting then check this out.

Games Using Phonemes

When children know some phonemes there are lots of ways they can use them to start to build, write and read words. Some of the most common are:

1.Phoneme Frames

These are simple grids that you can use to help you build and write words. They are excellent for adding a visual structure to early word building.

You can make a simple phoneme frame using lots of different materials – for example, draw one on a whiteboard with permanent marker, paint one on a log, or just draw one on paper.

You can build words on it by using objects with letters on, for example shells, stones, magnetic letters, or bottle tops.

To find out more about what a phoneme frame is and how to use it, check this out.

2.Sound Buttons

These are basically circles that you draw under phonemes in a word.

The idea is that the child presses the button and says the phoneme. Then they blend the word.

3.Play-Based Games

There are lots of fun games you can play with different objects to bring the whole process of reading and writing words to life. For example:

Peg sounds up on washing lines to build words
Put letters on a train-track and drive the train over them
Put letters on things like duplo or megablocks and try to build word

How You Can Help At Home With Phonemes

Any of the things I have highlighted here can be done just as easily at home.

In particular you want to focus on:

1.Find Out What Your School Do

All schools will probably follow pretty similar systems, but there will be some variations between settings. This is usually due to slightly different schemes used.

Try to find out what the school does, and stick to that system.

Many schools are keen to publicise their methods, and may offer parents meetings, or send out letters and information.

2. Complete Any Work The School Sets

Getting children started with phonics successfully will be one of the school’s top priorities, and often they will set some form of homework to help this process.

It is always best to do this rather than inventing your own.

If there is consistency between home and school then this is really motivating for children, and always the best solution.

3.Practise Phonemes

Regular practice of the phonemes children learn both at school and home will really help them. The more fluent children become, the easier the process of reading will be.

4. Practise Blending.

Blending really is the crucial step!

When children know a handful of phonemes, blending becomes the priority.

Try some of the games listed earlier, such as making up a story with a puppet.

5.Use Things Like Phoneme Frames

Using simple physical structures like phoneme frames really helps to get them confident at building words.

If you can use something like magnetic letters, or shells with sounds on, then these are great for creating words and beginning to read.

6.Point Out Sounds In Picture Books

Help children become aware of the phonemes they see around them.

Talk about letters on signs, posters, and wherever else you see them.

Point them out in books that they enjoy, and see if they can spot any letters they recognize.

Other Terminology You May Come Across In Phonics

Grapheme

A grapheme is the written form of the phoneme. It is basically how the sound is represented.

Many phonemes have graphemes of just one letter, such as ‘a, e, i, t’.

Other phonemes are represented by graphemes that contain two letters (e.g. ai, ee, oo), or three letters (e.g. igh, ear, air)

Digraph

This is a phoneme that is represented by two letters together. There are lots of these in English.

Some examples are ‘ai, or, oa, ee’ (though there are many more).

Trigraph

A trigraph is a phoneme that is represented by three letters. There are fewer trigraphs. Some examples are ‘igh, air, ear, ure’.

Top-Tips For Learning Phonemes

Start when the children are ready
Make it multi-sensory
Have songs, rhymes, chants or actions for each phoneme
Help them to hear the phoneme in words
Get them blending and segmenting words, and using the phonemes they have learned

Conclusion

I hope all this real talk has helped you to learn exactly what a phoneme is, as well as how to teach it. It really is not rocket science!

When you understand just a few of the terms used in phonics, many people see that it really is not as complex as it first appears. Keep things simple, both for yourself and the children, and you will always find the best results.

How To Teach Tricky Words – 12 Games That Work

Parachute Phonics Games – 10 Brilliant Ideas

Источник

Phoneme

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In human language,
a phoneme (from the Greek:
φώνημα,
phōnēma, «a sound uttered») is the smallest
posited structural unit that distinguishes meaning.
Phonemes are not the physical segments
themselves, but, in theoretical terms, cognitive abstractions
or categorizations of them.

An example of a phoneme is the /t/
sound in the words tip, stand, water,
and cat. (In transcription, phonemes are
placed between slashes, as here.) These instances of /t/
are considered to fall under the same sound category despite
the fact that in each word they are pronounced somewhat
differently. The difference may not even be audible to
native speakers, or the audible differences not perceived.
That is, a phoneme may encompass several recognizably
different speech sounds, called phones.
In our example, the /t/
in tip is aspirated,
[tʰ],
while the /t/
in stand is not, [t].
(In transcription, speech sounds that are not phonemes
are placed in brackets, as here.) In many languages, such
as Korean
and Spanish,
these phones are different phonemes: For example, /tol/
is «stone» in Korean, whereas /tʰol/
is «grain of rice». In Spanish, there is no aspirated
[tʰ],
but the phone in American English writer
is similar to the Spanish r /ɾ/
and contrasts with Spanish /t/.

Phones that belong to the same phoneme, such as [t]
and [tʰ]
for English /t/,
are called allophones.
A common test to determine whether two phones are allophones
or separate phonemes relies on finding minimal
pairs: words that differ by only the phones in question.
For example, the words tip and dip
illustrate that [t]
and [d]
are separate phonemes, /t/
and /d/,
in English, whereas the lack of such a contrast in Korean
(/tʰata/
is pronounced [tʰada],
for example) indicates that in this language they are
allophones of a phoneme /t/.

In sign
languages, the basic elements of gesture and location
were formerly called cheremes
(or cheiremes), but general usage changed to phoneme.
Tonic
phonemes are sometimes called tonemes, and timing
phonemes chronemes.

Some linguists (such as Roman
Jakobson, Morris
Halle, and Noam
Chomsky) consider phonemes to be further decomposable
into features,
such features being the true minimal constituents of language.
Features overlap each other in time, as do suprasegmental
phonemes in oral language and many phonemes in sign languages.
Features could be designated as acoustic
(Jakobson) or articulatory
(Halle & Chomsky) in nature.

1
Background and related ideas
- 1.1
  Notation
- 1.2
  Examples
2
Restricted phonemes
3
Biuniqueness
4
Neutralization, archiphoneme,
underspecification
5
Phonological extremes
6
See also
7
External links

Background and related ideas

The term phonème was reportedly first used
by Dufriche-Desgenettes in 1873, but it referred to only
a sound of speech. The term phoneme as an abstraction
was developed by the Polish linguist Jan
Niecislaw Baudouin de Courtenay and his student Mikolaj
Kruszewski during 1875-1895. The term used by these
two was fonema, the basic unit of what they called
psychophonetics. Conceptions of the phoneme were
then elaborated in the works of Nikolai
Trubetzkoi and others of the Prague
School (during the years 1926-1935), as well as in
that of structuralists
like Ferdinand
de Saussure, Edward
Sapir, and Leonard
Bloomfield. Some structuralists wished to eliminate
a cognitive or psycholinguistic function for the phoneme.

Later, it was also used in generative
linguistics, most famously by Noam
Chomsky and Morris
Halle, and remains central to many accounts of the
development of modern of phonology.
As a theoretical concept or model, though, it has been
supplemented and even replaced by others.

Some languages make use of pitch
for phonemic distinction. In this case, the tones used
are called tonemes.
Some languages distinguish words made up of the same phonemes
(and tonemes) by using different durations of some
elements, which are called chronemes.
However, not all scholars working on languages with distinctive
duration use this term.

Usually, long vowels
and consonants
are represented either by a length indicator or doubling
of the symbol in question.

In sign languages, phonemes may be classified as Tab
(elements of location, from Latin tabula), Dez
(the hand shape, from designator), Sig (the
motion, from signation), and with some researchers,
Ori (orientation). Facial expressions and mouthing
are also phonemic.

Notation

A transcription that only indicates the different phonemes
of a language is said to be phonemic. Such transcriptions
are enclosed within virgules (slashes), / /; these
show that each enclosed symbol is claimed to be phonemically
meaningful. On the other hand, a transcription that indicates
finer detail, including allophonic variation like the
two English L’s, is said to be phonetic, and is
enclosed in square brackets, [ ].

The common notation used in linguistics employs virgules
(slashes) (/ /) around the symbol that stands for the
phoneme. For example, the phoneme for the initial consonant
sound in the word «phoneme» would be written as /f/.
In other words, the graphemes
are <ph>, but this digraph represents one
sound /f/.
Allophones,
more phonetically specific descriptions of how a given
phoneme might be commonly instantiated, are often denoted
in linguistics by the use of diacritical or other marks
added to the phoneme symbols and then placed in square
brackets ([ ]) to differentiate them from the phoneme
in slant brackets (/ /). The conventions of orthography
are then kept separate from both phonemes and allophones
by the use of angle brackets < > to enclose the
spelling.

The symbols of the International
Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) and extended sets adapted
to a particular language are often used by linguists to
write phonemes of oral languages, with the principle being
one symbol equals one categorical sound. Due to problems
displaying some symbols in the early days of the Internet,
systems such as X-SAMPA
and Kirshenbaum
were developed to represent IPA symbols in plain text.
As of 2004, any modern web
browser can display IPA symbols (as long as the operating
system provides the appropriate fonts), and we use
this system in this article.

There are 2 published set of phonemic symbols for sign
language: SignWriting
and Stokoe
notation. SignWriting is capable of writing any sign
language and is currently used in over
38 countries. People in these countries use SignWriting
on a daily basis as a natural writing system for education
and recreation. Stokoe notation is used for linguistic
research and was originally developed for American
Sign Language. Stokoe notation has since been applied
to British
Sign Language by Kyle and Woll, and to Australian
Aboriginal sign languages by Adam Kendon.

Examples

Examples of phonemes in the English
language would include sounds from the set of English
consonants, like /p/
and /b/.
These two are most often written consistently with one
letter for each sound. However, phonemes might not be
so apparent in written English, such as when they are
typically represented with combined letters, called digraphs,
like <sh> (pronounced /ʃ/)
or <ch> (pronounced /tʃ/).

To see a list of the phonemes in the English language,
see IPA
for English.

Two sounds that may be allophones (sound variants belonging
to the same phoneme) in one language may belong to separate
phonemes in another language or dialect. In English, for
example, /p/
has aspirated and non-aspirated allophones:aspirated as
in /pɪn/,
and non-aspirated as in /spɪn/.
However, in many languages (e. g. Chinese),
aspirated /pʰ/
is a phoneme distinct from unaspirated /p/.
As another example, there is no distinction between [r]
and [l]
in Japanese;
there is only one /r/
phoneme, though it has various allophones that can sound
more like [l],
[ɾ],
or [r]
to English speakers. The sounds [z]
and [s]
are distinct phonemes in English, but allophones in Spanish.
The sounds [n]
(as in run) and [ŋ]
(as in rung) are phonemes in English, but allophones
in Italian
and Spanish.

An important phoneme is the chroneme,
a phonemically-relevant extension of the duration a consonant
or vowel. Some languages or dialects such as Finnish
or Japanese
allow chronemes after both consonants and vowels. Others,
like Italian
or Australian
English use it after only one (in the case of Italian,
consonants; in the case of Australian, vowels).

Restricted phonemes

A restricted phoneme is a phoneme that can only
occur in a certain environment: There are restrictions
as to where it can occur. English has several restricted
phonemes:

/ŋ/,
as in sing, occurs only at the end of a syllable,
never at the beginning (in many other languages, such
as Swahili
or Thai, /ŋ/
can appear word-initially).
/h/
occurs only before vowels and at the beginning of a
syllable, never at the end (a few languages, such as
Arabic,
or Romanian
allow /h/ syllable-finally).
In many American dialects with the cot-caught
merger, /ɔ/
occurs only before /r/,
/l/,
and in the diphthong
/ɔɪ/.
In non-rhotic
dialects, /r/
can only occur before a vowel, never at the end of a
word or before a consonant.
Under most interpretations, /w/
and /j/
occur only before a vowel, never at the end of a syllable.
However, many phonologists interpret a word like boy
as either /bɔɪ/
or /bɔj/.

Biuniqueness

Biuniqueness is a criterial definition of the phoneme
in classic structuralist phonemics. The biuniqueness definition
states that every phonetic allophone must unambiguously
be assigned to one and only one phoneme. In other words,
there is a many-to-one allophone-to-phoneme mapping instead
of a many-to-many mapping.

The notion of biuniqueness was controversial among some
pre-generative linguists and was prominently challenged
by Morris Halle and Noam Chomsky in the late 1950s and
early 1960s.

The unworkable aspects of the concept soon become apparent
if you consider sound changes/alternations and assimilation/co-articulation.
Take English for its examples. If many vowels reduce to
a ‘schwa’, what is ‘schwa’ then? Its own phoneme? Or totally
unrelated allophones, only grouped under the phonemic
vowels? Or both?

Neutralization, archiphoneme,
underspecification

Phonemes that are contrastive in certain environments
may not be contrastive in all environments. In the environments
where they don’t contrast, the contrast is said to be
neutralized.

In English there are three nasal phonemes, /m,
n, ŋ/, as shown by the minimal triplet,

/sʌm/	sum
/sʌn/	sun
/sʌŋ/	sung

However, with rare exceptions, these sounds are not contrastive
before plosives such as /p,
t, k/ within the same morpheme.
Although all three phones appear before plosives, for
example in limp, lint, link, only one of these
may appear before each of the plosives. That is, the /m,
n, ŋ/ distinction is neutralized before
each of the plosives /p,
t, k/:

Only /m/
occurs before /p/,
only /n/
before /t/,
and
only /ŋ/
before /k/.

Thus these phonemes are not contrastive in these environments,
and according to some theorists, there is no evidence
as to what the underlying representation might be. If
we hypothesize that we are dealing with only a single
underlying nasal, there is no reason to pick one of the
three phonemes /m,
n, ŋ/ over the other two.

(In some languages there is only one phonemic nasal anywhere,
and due to obligatory assimilation, it surfaces as [m,
n, ŋ] in just these environments, so this
idea is not as far-fetched as it might seem at first glance.)

In certain schools of phonology, such a neutralized distinction
is known as an archiphoneme (Nikolai
Trubetzkoy of the Prague
school is often associated with this analysis). Archiphonemes
are often notated with a capital letter. Following this
convention, the neutralization of /m,
n, ŋ/ before /p,
t, k/ could be notated as |N|, and limp, lint,
link would be represented as |lɪNp,
lɪNt, lɪNk|. (The |pipes| indicate underlying
representation.) Other ways this archiphoneme could be
notated are |m-n-ŋ|, {m,
n, ŋ}, or |n*|.

Another example from American English is the neutralization
of the plosives /t,
d/ following a stressed syllable. Phonetically,
both are realized in this position as [ɾ],
a voiced alveolar
flap. This can be heard by comparing writer
with rider (for the sake of simplicity, Canadian
raising is not taken into account).

[ɻaɪˀt]	write
[ɻaɪd]	ride

with the suffix
-er:

[ˈɻaɪɾɚ]	writer
[ˈɻaɪɾɚ]	rider

Thus, one cannot say whether the underlying
representation of the intervocalic consonant in either
word is /t/
or /d/
without looking at the unsuffixed form. This neutralization
can be represented as an archiphoneme |D|, in which case
the underlying representation of writer or rider
would be |‘ɻaɪDɚ|.

Another way to talk about archiphonemes involves the
concept of underspecification:
phonemes can be considered fully specified segments while
archiphonemes are underspecified segments. In Tuvan,
phonemic vowels are specified with the articulatory features
of tongue height, backness, and lip rounding. The archiphoneme
|U| is an underspecified high vowel where only the tongue
height is specified.

phoneme/ archiphoneme	height	backness	roundedness
/i/	high	front	unrounded
/ɯ/	high	back	unrounded
/u/	high	back	rounded
\|U\|	high

Whether |U| is pronounced as front or back and whether
rounded or unrounded depends on vowel
harmony. If |U| occurs following a front unrounded
vowel, it will be pronounced as the phoneme /i/;
if following a back unrounded vowel, it will be as an
/ɯ/;
and if following a back rounded vowel, it will be an /u/.
This can been seen in the following words:

-\|Um\|			‘my’	(the vowel of this suffix is underspecified)
\|idikUm\|	→	[idikim]	‘my boot’	(/i/ is front & unrounded)
\|xarUm\|	→	[xarɯm]	‘my snow’	(/a/ is back & unrounded)
\|nomUm\|	→	[nomum]	‘my book’	(/o/ is back & rounded)

Not all phonologists accept the concept of archiphonemes.
Many doubt that it reflects how people process language
or control speech, and some argue that archiphonemes add
unnecessary complexity.

Phonological extremes

Of all the sounds that a human vocal tract can create,
different languages vary considerably in the number of
these sounds that are considered to be distinctive phonemes
in the speech of that language. Ubyx
and Arrernte
have only two phonemic vowels, while at the other extreme,
the Bantu
language Ngwe
has fourteen vowel qualities, twelve of which may occur
long or short, for twenty-six oral vowels, plus six nasalized
vowels, long and short, for thirty-eight vowels; while
!Xóõ
achieves thirty-one pure vowels—not counting vowel length,
which it also has—by varying the phonation. Rotokas
has only six consonants, while !Xóõ has
somewhere in the neighborhood of seventy-seven, and Ubyx
eighty-one. French
has no phonemic tone or stress, while several of the Kam-Sui
languages have nine tones, and one of the Kru
languages, Wobe,
has been claimed to have fourteen, though this is disputed.
The total phonemic inventory in languages varies from
as few as eleven in Rotokas to as many as 112 in !Xóõ
(including four tones). These may range from familiar
sounds like [t],
[s],
or [m]
to very unusual ones produced in extraordinary ways (see:
Click
consonant, phonation,
airstream
mechanism). The English
language itself uses a rather large set of thirteen
to twenty-two vowels, including diphthongs, though its
twenty-two to twenty-six consonants are close to average.
(There are twenty-one consonant and five vowel letters
in the English alphabet, but this does not correspond
to the number of consonant and vowel sounds.)

The most common vowel system consists of the five vowels
/i/,
/e/, /a/, /o/, /u/. The most common consonants
are /p/,
/t/, /k/, /m/, /n/. Very few languages lack one
of these: Arabic
lacks /p/,
standard
Hawaiian lacks /t/,
Mohawk
and Tlingit
lack /p/
and /m/,
Hupa
lacks both /p/
and a simple /k/,
colloquial Samoan
lacks /t/
and /n/,
while Rotokas
and Quileute
lack /m/
and /n/.

External links

What
is a phoneme? (SIL)
What
is an allophone? (SIL)
What
is a phone? (SIL)
What
is a phonetically similar segment? (SIL)
What
is a minimal pair? (SIL)
What
is complementary distribution? (SIL)
What
is an environment? (SIL)
What
is an contrast in identical environments? (SIL)
What
is an contrast in analogous environments? (SIL)
Comparison
of morpheme-morph-allomorph & phoneme-phone-allophone?
(SIL)
What
is phonology? (SIL)
Phoneme
(Lexicon of Linguistics)
Allophony
(Lexicon of Linguistics)
Transcription
(Lexicon of Linguistics)
Grapheme-Phoneme
Conversion (Lexicon of Linguistics)
Phoneme
Restoration (Lexicon of Linguistics)

Published — December 2008

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Phoneme meaning

A phoneme is typically considered the smallest unit of meaningful sound. We study phonemes in phonology, the branch of linguistics that helps us understand the relationship between speech sounds and meaning in a language. Therefore, phonemes are language-specific, and their meanings may differ from language to language.

This article will focus on the 44 phonemes in the English language (20 vowel and 24 consonant sounds). We’ll cover these in more detail soon.

Phoneme examples

In English, the letters in a word don’t always directly correspond to its pronunciation. Take a look at the following four words as an example of phonemes: Cat, rate, wasp, awe. The phonemic transcriptions for these four words are: /kæt/, /reɪt/, /wɒsp/, and /ɔː/.

As you can see, the letter ‘a’ has been used to represent four different distinct and meaningful sounds, otherwise known as phonemes, and the pronunciation differs across all four words.

Let’s look at some more phoneme examples, starting with the word ‘rate’:

If you changed the phoneme /eɪ/ (the long ‘a’ sound) in the word rate to the phoneme /æ/ (the short ‘a’ sound), you would get a whole new word — rat. This is because phonemes are meaningful units of sound and have an impact on the meaning of words.

Now, take a look at the word thought. The phonemic transcription is: /θɔːt/.

As you can see, the word thought contains three phonemes, they are: /θ/ (the voiceless ‘th’ sound), /ɔː/ (the open-mid back rounded vowel sound), and /t/ (the consonant ‘t’ sound).

The phonemic transcription (that’s the funny letters and symbols between two slashes!) tells us exactly how to pronounce words. Each sound (phoneme) is represented by a letter or symbol from the English phonemic chart, which is derived from the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) — this means that no matter how crazy a word’s spelling is (let’s be honest, some English words have some pretty crazy spellings) we can always examine the phonemes to understand exactly how to pronounce it.

English phonemes

English has 26 letters in its alphabet but 44 different phonemes. The 44 phonemes include:

18 consonants (b, c, d, f, etc.),
Six digraphs (two consonants working together to create a new sound, i.e. ‘sh’ / ʃ / or ‘th’ /θ/ or /ð/),
12 monophthongs (vowels that make a single sound, i.e. the ‘a’ in cat) and,
Eight diphthongs (a sound formed by the combination of two vowels in a single syllable, i.e. the ‘oi’ /ɔɪ/ sound in coin).

The 44 phonemes of English can be found in the English phonemic chart.

Phonemes: what is the English phonemic chart?

The English phonemic chart uses letters and symbols from the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) and comprises the 44 most useful phonemes for understanding English pronunciation. Of course, the pronunciation of English differs from country to country, and dialect to dialect. Therefore, several different versions of the English phonemic chart exist, and not all charts cover all possible pronunciations.

The British author, Adrian Underhill, created the most famous and widely used English phonemic chart based on British Received Pronunciation.

Received pronunciation (RP) is a standardised version of British pronunciation typically associated with being educated in the south of England (although this isn’t always the case, and RP is used throughout the UK).

Here is the phonemic chart!

Fig. 1 — The English phonemic chart shows all of the phonemes that exist in the English language.

Although the chart may look like a random bunch of symbols and letters, it is actually organised in a helpful way!

The chart is split into three sections:

Monopthongs — Pure vowel sounds, spoken with one tone and one mouth shape.
Diphthongs — Sounds created with two vowel sounds. Diphthongs are also called gliding vowels, as one vowel sound glides into another.
Consonants — Basic speech sounds produced by obstructing breath in the vocal tract.

The monophthongs are arranged in accordance with the mouth shape we make when producing the sound.

Left → right = lips wide → lips rounded. For example, sheep → too.

Top → bottom = jaw closed → jaw open. For example, book → part.

The diphthongs are arranged in the same way as monophthongs and are based on the final vowel sound.

The first two lines of consonants are arranged in voiced and voiceless pairs. As examples, let’s look at the consonant pairs /p/ and /b/.

These two sounds are consonant pairs as the sounds are very similar, and the mouth shape needed to produce the sounds is almost identical. However, the difference between the two phonemes is that /p/ is voiceless and /b/ is voiced.

Try it: Place two fingers on your throat and pronounce the /p/ and /b/ sounds. You should feel a vibration in your vocal cords when pronouncing the /b/ — this is because it is voiced.

The bottom row in the chart includes the single consonant phonemes — these are consonants that have no pairs.

Phonemes: phonemic transcription

When transcribing phonemes, we use the broad transcription (this means we only include the important phonemes that are vital to the correct pronunciation of the word) and place the transcription between two slashes (/ /).

For example, the phonemic transcription of the word ‘language’ looks like this /ˈlæŋgwɪʤ/.

Phonemic transcriptions are the most common type of transcription. If you want to learn the correct pronunciation of a word, a dictionary will provide the phonemic transcription.

You may have seen transcriptions between two square brackets ([ ]) before; these are called phonetic transcriptions. This brings us to our next topic, phonemes vs. phones.

Phonemes vs. Phones

We’ve already established that phonemes are the smallest unit of meaningful sound within a specific language, so what exactly are phones?

A phone (from the Greek fōnḗ) is any distinct speech sound. We study phones within phonetics, the branch of linguistics that deals with the physical production and reception of sound. When transcribing phones, we place the transcription between two square brackets ([ ]) and include as much information about pronunciation as possible — this is called narrow transcription. Phonetic transcriptions also include diacritics.

Diacritics are small marks placed above, below, or next to the letter-like symbols and are used to show slight distinctions in pronunciation.

Phones are not specific to particular languages and aren’t always vital to understanding the meaning of a word, but phonemes are! If one phoneme is exchanged for another, it could completely change the word’s meaning.

For example, look at the words broom and bloom. The /r/ and /l/ phonemes are different, resulting in two different words!

You can tell the difference between phonetic and phonemic transcriptions by looking at the brackets. Phonetic transcriptions go within square brackets ( [ ] ), and phonemic transcriptions go within slashes ( / / ).

Phonemes: minimal pairs

We can understand the importance of phonemes by looking at minimal pairs.

Minimal pairs are two words that sound similar but have one phoneme different, positioned in the same place in the word — for example, lock and rock. The difference between the /l/ and /r/ phonemes changes the entire meaning of the words.

Another common example of a minimal pair is the words ship and sheep. Here, the vowel phonemes in the middle of the word differ, creating two completely different words.

Fig- 2 — ‘Sheep’ and ‘ship’ are a minimal pair as they only differ in their vowel sound.

Phoneme — Key takeaways

A phoneme is the smallest unit of meaningful sound.
We study phonemes in phonology, the branch of linguistics that helps us understand the relationship between speech sounds and meaning within a specific language.
Phonemes are language-specific — there are 44 phonemes in the English language (20 vowel and 24 consonant sounds).
When transcribing phonemes, we use the English phonemic chart and place the transcription between two slashes (/ /).
The British author Adrian Underhill created the most widely used English phonemic chart based on British Received Pronunciation.

References

Fig. 1. Snow white1991, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Источник

This article is about the speech unit. For the JavaME library, see phoneME. For the collection of phenotypes, see phenome.

In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language.

For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-west of England,^[1] the sound patterns (sin) and (sing) are two separate words that are distinguished by the substitution of one phoneme, /n/, for another phoneme, /ŋ/. Two words like this that differ in meaning through the contrast of a single phoneme form a minimal pair. If, in another language, any two sequences differing only by pronunciation of the final sounds [n] or [ŋ] are perceived as being the same in meaning, then these two sounds are interpreted as phonetic variants of a single phoneme in that language.

Phonemes that are established by the use of minimal pairs, such as tap vs tab or pat vs bat, are written between slashes: /p/, /b/. To show pronunciation, linguists use square brackets: [pʰ] (indicating an aspirated p in pat).

There are differing views as to exactly what phonemes are and how a given language should be analyzed in phonemic (or phonematic) terms. However, a phoneme is generally regarded as an abstraction of a set (or equivalence class) of speech sounds (phones) that are perceived as equivalent to each other in a given language. For example, the English k sounds in the words kill and skill are not identical (as described below), but they are distributional variants of a single phoneme /k/. Speech sounds that differ but do not create a meaningful change in the word are known as allophones of the same phoneme. Allophonic variation may be conditioned, in which case a certain phoneme is realized as a certain allophone in particular phonological environments, or it may otherwise be free, and may vary by speaker or by dialect. Therefore, phonemes are often considered to constitute an abstract underlying representation for segments of words, while speech sounds make up the corresponding phonetic realization, or the surface form.

Notation[edit]

Phonemes are conventionally placed between slashes in transcription, whereas speech sounds (phones) are placed between square brackets. Thus, /pʊʃ/ represents a sequence of three phonemes, /p/, /ʊ/, /ʃ/ (the word push in Standard English), and [pʰʊʃ] represents the phonetic sequence of sounds [pʰ] (aspirated p), [ʊ], [ʃ] (the usual pronunciation of push). This should not be confused with the similar convention of the use of angle brackets to enclose the units of orthography, graphemes. For example, ⟨f⟩ represents the written letter (grapheme) f.

The symbols used for particular phonemes are often taken from the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), the same set of symbols most commonly used for phones. (For computer-typing purposes, systems such as X-SAMPA exist to represent IPA symbols using only ASCII characters.) However, descriptions of particular languages may use different conventional symbols to represent the phonemes of those languages. For languages whose writing systems employ the phonemic principle, ordinary letters may be used to denote phonemes, although this approach is often hampered by the complexity of the relationship between orthography and pronunciation (see § Correspondence between letters and phonemes below).

Assignment of speech sounds to phonemes[edit]

A simplified procedure for determining whether two sounds represent the same or different phonemes

A phoneme is a sound or a group of different sounds perceived to have the same function by speakers of the language or dialect in question. An example is the English phoneme /k/, which occurs in words such as cat, kit, scat, skit. Although most native speakers do not notice this, in most English dialects, the «c/k» sounds in these words are not identical: in kit (help·info) [kʰɪt], the sound is aspirated, but in skill (help·info) [skɪl], it is unaspirated. The words, therefore, contain different speech sounds, or phones, transcribed [kʰ] for the aspirated form and [k] for the unaspirated one. These different sounds are nonetheless considered to belong to the same phoneme, because if a speaker used one instead of the other, the meaning of the word would not change: using the aspirated form [kʰ] in skill might sound odd, but the word would still be recognized. By contrast, some other sounds would cause a change in meaning if substituted: for example, substitution of the sound [t] would produce the different word still, and that sound must therefore be considered to represent a different phoneme (the phoneme /t/).

The above shows that in English, [k] and [kʰ] are allophones of a single phoneme /k/. In some languages, however, [kʰ] and [k] are perceived by native speakers as different sounds, and substituting one for the other can change the meaning of a word. In those languages, therefore, the two sounds represent different phonemes. For example, in Icelandic, [kʰ] is the first sound of kátur, meaning «cheerful», but [k] is the first sound of gátur, meaning «riddles». Icelandic, therefore, has two separate phonemes /kʰ/ and /k/.

Minimal pairs[edit]

A pair of words like kátur and gátur (above) that differ only in one phone is called a minimal pair for the two alternative phones in question (in this case, [kʰ] and [k]). The existence of minimal pairs is a common test to decide whether two phones represent different phonemes or are allophones of the same phoneme.

To take another example, the minimal pair tip and dip illustrates that in English, [t] and [d] belong to separate phonemes, /t/ and /d/; since both words have different meanings, English-speakers must be conscious of the distinction between the two sounds.

Signed languages, such as American Sign Language (ASL), also have minimal pairs, differing only in (exactly) one of the signs’ parameters: handshape, movement, location, palm orientation, and nonmanual signal or marker. A minimal pair may exist in the signed language if the basic sign stays the same, but one of the parameters changes.^[2]

However, the absence of minimal pairs for a given pair of phones does not always mean that they belong to the same phoneme: they may be so dissimilar phonetically that it is unlikely for speakers to perceive them as the same sound. For example, English has no minimal pair for the sounds [h] (as in hat) and [ŋ] (as in bang), and the fact that they can be shown to be in complementary distribution could be used to argue for their being allophones of the same phoneme. However, they are so dissimilar phonetically that they are considered separate phonemes.^[3]

Phonologists have sometimes had recourse to «near minimal pairs» to show that speakers of the language perceive two sounds as significantly different even if no exact minimal pair exists in the lexicon. It is virtually impossible to find a minimal pair to distinguish English from , yet it seems uncontroversial to claim that the two consonants are distinct phonemes. The two words ‘pressure’ and ‘pleasure’ can serve as a near minimal pair.^[4]

Suprasegmental phonemes[edit]

Besides segmental phonemes such as vowels and consonants, there are also suprasegmental features of pronunciation (such as tone and stress, syllable boundaries and other forms of juncture, nasalization and vowel harmony), which, in many languages, change the meaning of words and so are phonemic.

Phonemic stress is encountered in languages such as English. For example, there are two words spelled invite, one is a verb and is stressed on the second syllable, the other is a noun and stressed on the first syllable (without changing any of the individual sounds). The position of the stress distinguishes the words and so a full phonemic specification would include indication of the position of the stress: /ɪnˈvaɪt/ for the verb, /ˈɪnvaɪt/ for the noun. In other languages, such as French, word stress cannot have this function (its position is generally predictable) and so it is not phonemic (and therefore not usually indicated in dictionaries).

Phonemic tones are found in languages such as Mandarin Chinese in which a given syllable can have five different tonal pronunciations:

Minimal set for phonemic tone in Mandarin Chinese

Tone number	1	2	3	4	5
Hanzi	媽	麻	馬	罵	嗎
Pinyin	mā	má	mǎ	mà	ma
IPA	[má]	[mǎ]	[mà]^[a]	[mâ]	[ma]
Gloss	mother	hemp	horse	scold	question particle

The tone «phonemes» in such languages are sometimes called tonemes. Languages such as English do not have phonemic tone, but they use intonation for functions such as emphasis and attitude.

Distribution of allophones[edit]

When a phoneme has more than one allophone, the one actually heard at a given occurrence of that phoneme may be dependent on the phonetic environment (surrounding sounds). Allophones that normally cannot appear in the same environment are said to be in complementary distribution. In other cases, the choice of allophone may be dependent on the individual speaker or other unpredictable factors. Such allophones are said to be in free variation, but allophones are still selected in a specific phonetic context, not the other way around.

Background and related ideas[edit]

The term phonème (from Ancient Greek: φώνημα, romanized: phōnēma, «sound made, utterance, thing spoken, speech, language»^[5]) was reportedly first used by A. Dufriche-Desgenettes in 1873, but it referred only to a speech sound. The term phoneme as an abstraction was developed by the Polish linguist Jan Baudouin de Courtenay and his student Mikołaj Kruszewski during 1875–1895.^[6] The term used by these two was fonema, the basic unit of what they called psychophonetics. Daniel Jones became the first linguist in the western world to use the term phoneme in its current sense, employing the word in his article «The phonetic structure of the Sechuana Language».^[7] The concept of the phoneme was then elaborated in the works of Nikolai Trubetzkoy and others of the Prague School (during the years 1926–1935), and in those of structuralists like Ferdinand de Saussure, Edward Sapir, and Leonard Bloomfield. Some structuralists (though not Sapir) rejected the idea of a cognitive or psycholinguistic function for the phoneme.^[8]^[9]

Later, it was used and redefined in generative linguistics, most famously by Noam Chomsky and Morris Halle,^[10] and remains central to many accounts of the development of modern phonology. As a theoretical concept or model, though, it has been supplemented and even replaced by others.^[11]

Some linguists (such as Roman Jakobson and Morris Halle) proposed that phonemes may be further decomposable into features, such features being the true minimal constituents of language.^[12] Features overlap each other in time, as do suprasegmental phonemes in oral language and many phonemes in sign languages. Features could be characterized in different ways: Jakobson and colleagues defined them in acoustic terms,^[13] Chomsky and Halle used a predominantly articulatory basis, though retaining some acoustic features, while Ladefoged’s system^[14] is a purely articulatory system apart from the use of the acoustic term ‘sibilant’.

In the description of some languages, the term chroneme has been used to indicate contrastive length or duration of phonemes. In languages in which tones are phonemic, the tone phonemes may be called tonemes. Though not all scholars working on such languages use these terms, they are by no means obsolete.

By analogy with the phoneme, linguists have proposed other sorts of underlying objects, giving them names with the suffix -eme, such as morpheme and grapheme. These are sometimes called emic units. The latter term was first used by Kenneth Pike, who also generalized the concepts of emic and etic description (from phonemic and phonetic respectively) to applications outside linguistics.^[15]

Restrictions on occurrence[edit]

Languages do not generally allow words or syllables to be built of any arbitrary sequences of phonemes. There are phonotactic restrictions on which sequences of phonemes are possible and in which environments certain phonemes can occur. Phonemes that are significantly limited by such restrictions may be called restricted phonemes.

In English, examples of such restrictions include the following:

/ŋ/, as in sing, occurs only at the end of a syllable, never at the beginning (in many other languages, such as Māori, Swahili, Tagalog, and Thai, /ŋ/ can appear word-initially).
/h/ occurs only at the beginning of a syllable, never at the end (a few languages, such as Arabic and Romanian, allow /h/ syllable-finally).
In non-rhotic dialects, /ɹ/ can occur immediately only before a vowel, never before a consonant.
/w/ and /j/ occur only before a vowel, never at the end of a syllable (except in interpretations in which a word like boy is analyzed as /bɔj/).

Some phonotactic restrictions can alternatively be analyzed as cases of neutralization. See Neutralization and archiphonemes below, particularly the example of the occurrence of the three English nasals before stops.

Biuniqueness[edit]

Biuniqueness is a requirement of classic structuralist phonemics. It means that a given phone, wherever it occurs, must unambiguously be assigned to one and only one phoneme. In other words, the mapping between phones and phonemes is required to be many-to-one rather than many-to-many. The notion of biuniqueness was controversial among some pre-generative linguists and was prominently challenged by Morris Halle and Noam Chomsky in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

An example of the problems arising from the biuniqueness requirement is provided by the phenomenon of flapping in North American English. This may cause either /t/ or /d/ (in the appropriate environments) to be realized with the phone [ɾ] (an alveolar flap). For example, the same flap sound may be heard in the words hitting and bidding, although it is intended to realize the phoneme /t/ in the first word and /d/ in the second. This appears to contradict biuniqueness.

For further discussion of such cases, see the next section.

Neutralization and archiphonemes[edit]

Phonemes that are contrastive in certain environments may not be contrastive in all environments. In the environments where they do not contrast, the contrast is said to be neutralized. In these positions it may become less clear which phoneme a given phone represents. Absolute neutralization is a phenomenon in which a segment of the underlying representation is not realized in any of its phonetic representations (surface forms). The term was introduced by Paul Kiparsky (1968), and contrasts with contextual neutralization where some phonemes are not contrastive in certain environments.^[16] Some phonologists prefer not to specify a unique phoneme in such cases, since to do so would mean providing redundant or even arbitrary information – instead they use the technique of underspecification. An archiphoneme is an object sometimes used to represent an underspecified phoneme.

An example of neutralization is provided by the Russian vowels /a/ and /o/. These phonemes are contrasting in stressed syllables, but in unstressed syllables the contrast is lost, since both are reduced to the same sound, usually [ə] (for details, see vowel reduction in Russian). In order to assign such an instance of [ə] to one of the phonemes /a/ and /o/, it is necessary to consider morphological factors (such as which of the vowels occurs in other forms of the words, or which inflectional pattern is followed). In some cases even this may not provide an unambiguous answer. A description using the approach of underspecification would not attempt to assign [ə] to a specific phoneme in some or all of these cases, although it might be assigned to an archiphoneme, written something like //A//, which reflects the two neutralized phonemes in this position, or {a}, reflecting its unmerged values.^[b]

A somewhat different example is found in English, with the three nasal phonemes /m, n, ŋ/. In word-final position these all contrast, as shown by the minimal triplet sum /sʌm/, sun /sʌn/, sung /sʌŋ/. However, before a stop such as /p, t, k/ (provided there is no morpheme boundary between them), only one of the nasals is possible in any given position: /m/ before /p/, /n/ before /t/ or /d/, and /ŋ/ before /k/, as in limp, lint, link (/lɪmp/, /lɪnt/, /lɪŋk/). The nasals are therefore not contrastive in these environments, and according to some theorists this makes it inappropriate to assign the nasal phones heard here to any one of the phonemes (even though, in this case, the phonetic evidence is unambiguous). Instead they may analyze these phones as belonging to a single archiphoneme, written something like //N//, and state the underlying representations of limp, lint, link to be //lɪNp//, //lɪNt//, //lɪNk//.

This latter type of analysis is often associated with Nikolai Trubetzkoy of the Prague school. Archiphonemes are often notated with a capital letter within double virgules or pipes, as with the examples //A// and //N// given above. Other ways the second of these has been notated include |m-n-ŋ|, {m, n, ŋ} and //n*//.

Another example from English, but this time involving complete phonetic convergence as in the Russian example, is the flapping of /t/ and /d/ in some American English (described above under Biuniqueness). Here the words betting and bedding might both be pronounced [ˈbɛɾɪŋ]. Under the generative grammar theory of linguistics, if a speaker applies such flapping consistently, morphological evidence (the pronunciation of the related forms bet and bed, for example) would reveal which phoneme the flap represents, once it is known which morpheme is being used.^[17] However, other theorists would prefer not to make such a determination, and simply assign the flap in both cases to a single archiphoneme, written (for example) //D//.

Further mergers in English are plosives after /s/, where /p, t, k/ conflate with /b, d, ɡ/, as suggested by the alternative spellings sketti and sghetti. That is, there is no particular reason to transcribe spin as /ˈspɪn/ rather than as /ˈsbɪn/, other than its historical development, and it might be less ambiguously transcribed //ˈsBɪn//.

Morphophonemes[edit]

A morphophoneme is a theoretical unit at a deeper level of abstraction than traditional phonemes, and is taken to be a unit from which morphemes are built up. A morphophoneme within a morpheme can be expressed in different ways in different allomorphs of that morpheme (according to morphophonological rules). For example, the English plural morpheme -s appearing in words such as cats and dogs can be considered to be a single morphophoneme, which might be transcribed (for example) //z// or |z|, and which is realized phonemically as /s/ after most voiceless consonants (as in cats) and as /z/ in other cases (as in dogs).

Numbers of phonemes in different languages[edit]

All known languages use only a small subset of the many possible sounds that the human speech organs can produce, and, because of allophony, the number of distinct phonemes will generally be smaller than the number of identifiably different sounds. Different languages vary considerably in the number of phonemes they have in their systems (although apparent variation may sometimes result from the different approaches taken by the linguists doing the analysis). The total phonemic inventory in languages varies from as few as 9–11 in Pirahã and 11 in Rotokas to as many as 141 in !Xũ.^[18]^[19]^[20]

The number of phonemically distinct vowels can be as low as two, as in Ubykh and Arrernte. At the other extreme, the Bantu language Ngwe has 14 vowel qualities, 12 of which may occur long or short, making 26 oral vowels, plus six nasalized vowels, long and short, making a total of 38 vowels; while !Xóõ achieves 31 pure vowels, not counting its additional variation by vowel length, by varying the phonation. As regards consonant phonemes, Puinave and the Papuan language Tauade each have just seven, and Rotokas has only six. !Xóõ, on the other hand, has somewhere around 77, and Ubykh 81. The English language uses a rather large set of 13 to 21 vowel phonemes, including diphthongs, although its 22 to 26 consonants are close to average. Across all languages, the average number of consonant phonemes per language is about 22, while the average number of vowel phonemes is about 8.^[21]

Some languages, such as French, have no phonemic tone or stress, while Cantonese and several of the Kam–Sui languages have six to nine tones (depending on how they’re counted), and the Kam-Sui Dong language has nine to 15 tones by the same measure. One of the Kru languages, Wobé, has been claimed to have 14,^[22] though this is disputed.^[23]

The most common vowel system consists of the five vowels /i/, /e/, /a/, /o/, /u/. The most common consonants are /p/, /t/, /k/, /m/, /n/.^[24] Relatively few languages lack any of these consonants, although it does happen: for example, Arabic lacks /p/, standard Hawaiian lacks /t/, Mohawk and Tlingit lack /p/ and /m/, Hupa lacks both /p/ and a simple /k/, colloquial Samoan lacks /t/ and /n/, while Rotokas and Quileute lack /m/ and /n/.

The non-uniqueness of phonemic solutions[edit]

During the development of phoneme theory in the mid-20th century phonologists were concerned not only with the procedures and principles involved in producing a phonemic analysis of the sounds of a given language, but also with the reality or uniqueness of the phonemic solution. These were central concerns of phonology. Some writers took the position expressed by Kenneth Pike: «There is only one accurate phonemic analysis for a given set of data»,^[25] while others believed that different analyses, equally valid, could be made for the same data. Yuen Ren Chao (1934), in his article «The non-uniqueness of phonemic solutions of phonetic systems»^[26] stated «given the sounds of a language, there are usually more than one possible way of reducing them to a set of phonemes, and these different systems or solutions are not simply correct or incorrect, but may be regarded only as being good or bad for various purposes». The linguist F. W. Householder referred to this argument within linguistics as «God’s Truth» (i.e. the stance that a given language has an intrinsic structure to be discovered) vs. «hocus-pocus» (i.e. the stance that any proposed, coherent structure is as good as any other).^[27]

Different analyses of the English vowel system may be used to illustrate this. The article English phonology states that «English has a particularly large number of vowel phonemes» and that «there are 20 vowel phonemes in Received Pronunciation, 14–16 in General American and 20–21 in Australian English». Although these figures are often quoted as fact, they actually reflect just one of many possible analyses, and later in the English Phonology article an alternative analysis is suggested in which some diphthongs and long vowels may be interpreted as comprising a short vowel linked to either /j/ or /w/. The fullest exposition of this approach is found in Trager and Smith (1951), where all long vowels and diphthongs («complex nuclei») are made up of a short vowel combined with either /j/, /w/ or /h/ (plus /r/ for rhotic accents), each comprising two phonemes.^[28] The transcription for the vowel normally transcribed /aɪ/ would instead be /aj/, /aʊ/ would be /aw/ and /ɑː/ would be /ah/, or /ar/ in a rhotic accent if there is an ⟨r⟩ in the spelling. It is also possible to treat English long vowels and diphthongs as combinations of two vowel phonemes, with long vowels treated as a sequence of two short vowels, so that ‘palm’ would be represented as /paam/. English can thus be said to have around seven vowel phonemes, or even six if schwa were treated as an allophone of /ʌ/ or of other short vowels.

In the same period there was disagreement about the correct basis for a phonemic analysis. The structuralist position was that the analysis should be made purely on the basis of the sound elements and their distribution, with no reference to extraneous factors such as grammar, morphology or the intuitions of the native speaker; this position is strongly associated with Leonard Bloomfield.^[29] Zellig Harris claimed that it is possible to discover the phonemes of a language purely by examining the distribution of phonetic segments.^[30] Referring to mentalistic definitions of the phoneme, Twaddell (1935) stated «Such a definition is invalid because (1) we have no right to guess about the linguistic workings of an inaccessible ‘mind’, and (2) we can secure no advantage from such guesses. The linguistic processes of the ‘mind’ as such are quite simply unobservable; and introspection about linguistic processes is notoriously a fire in a wooden stove.»^[8] This approach was opposed to that of Edward Sapir, who gave an important role to native speakers’ intuitions about where a particular sound or group of sounds fitted into a pattern. Using English [ŋ] as an example, Sapir argued that, despite the superficial appearance that this sound belongs to a group of three nasal consonant phonemes (/m/, /n/ and /ŋ/), native speakers feel that the velar nasal is really the sequence [ŋɡ]/.^[31] The theory of generative phonology which emerged in the 1960s explicitly rejected the Structuralist approach to phonology and favoured the mentalistic or cognitive view of Sapir.^[32]^[10]

These topics are discussed further in English phonology#Controversial issues.

Correspondence between letters and phonemes[edit]

Phonemes are considered to be the basis for alphabetic writing systems. In such systems the written symbols (graphemes) represent, in principle, the phonemes of the language being written. This is most obviously the case when the alphabet was invented with a particular language in mind; for example, the Latin alphabet was devised for Classical Latin, and therefore the Latin of that period enjoyed a near one-to-one correspondence between phonemes and graphemes in most cases, though the devisers of the alphabet chose not to represent the phonemic effect of vowel length. However, because changes in the spoken language are often not accompanied by changes in the established orthography (as well as other reasons, including dialect differences, the effects of morphophonology on orthography, and the use of foreign spellings for some loanwords), the correspondence between spelling and pronunciation in a given language may be highly distorted; this is the case with English, for example.

The correspondence between symbols and phonemes in alphabetic writing systems is not necessarily a one-to-one correspondence. A phoneme might be represented by a combination of two or more letters (digraph, trigraph, etc.), like ⟨sh⟩ in English or ⟨sch⟩ in German (both representing phonemes /ʃ/). Also a single letter may represent two phonemes, as in English ⟨x⟩ representing /gz/ or /ks/. There may also exist spelling/pronunciation rules (such as those for the pronunciation of ⟨c⟩ in Italian) that further complicate the correspondence of letters to phonemes, although they need not affect the ability to predict the pronunciation from the spelling and vice versa, provided the rules are known.

In sign languages[edit]

Sign language phonemes are bundles of articulation features. Stokoe was the first scholar to describe the phonemic system of ASL. He identified the bundles tab (elements of location, from Latin tabula), dez (the handshape, from designator), sig (the motion, from signation). Some researchers also discern ori (orientation), facial expression or mouthing. Just as with spoken languages, when features are combined, they create phonemes. As in spoken languages, sign languages have minimal pairs which differ in only one phoneme. For instance, the ASL signs for father and mother differ minimally with respect to location while handshape and movement are identical; location is thus contrastive.

Stokoe’s terminology and notation system are no longer used by researchers to describe the phonemes of sign languages; William Stokoe’s research, while still considered seminal, has been found not to characterize American Sign Language or other sign languages sufficiently.^[33] For instance, non-manual features are not included in Stokoe’s classification. More sophisticated models of sign language phonology have since been proposed by Brentari,^[34] Sandler,^[35] and Van der Kooij.^[36]

Chereme[edit]

Cherology and chereme (from Ancient Greek: χείρ «hand») are synonyms of phonology and phoneme previously used in the study of sign languages. A chereme, as the basic unit of signed communication, is functionally and psychologically equivalent to the phonemes of oral languages, and has been replaced by that term in the academic literature. Cherology, as the study of cheremes in language, is thus equivalent to phonology. The terms are not in use anymore. Instead, the terms phonology and phoneme (or distinctive feature) are used to stress the linguistic similarities between signed and spoken languages.^[37]

The terms were coined in 1960 by William Stokoe^[38] at Gallaudet University to describe sign languages as true and full languages. Once a controversial idea, the position is now universally accepted in linguistics. Stokoe’s terminology, however, has been largely abandoned.^[39]

Notes[edit]

^ There is allophonic variation of this tone. It may be realized in different ways, depending on context.
^ Depending on the ability of the typesetter, this may be written vertically, an o over an a with a horizontal line (like a fraction) without the braces.

References[edit]

^ Wells 1982, p. 179.
^ Handspeak. «Minimal pairs in sign language phonology». handspeak.com. Archived from the original on 14 February 2017. Retrieved 13 February 2017.
^ Wells 1982, p. 44.
^ Wells 1982, p. 48.
^ Liddell, H.G. & Scott, R. (1940). A Greek-English Lexicon. revised and augmented throughout by Sir Henry Stuart Jones. with the assistance of. Roderick McKenzie. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
^ Jones 1957.
^ Jones, D. (1917), The phonetic structure of the Sechuana language, Transactions of the Philological Society 1917-20, pp. 99–106
^ ^a ^b Twaddell 1935.
^ Harris 1951.
^ ^a ^b Chomsky & Halle 1968.
^ Clark & Yallop 1995, chpt. 11.
^ Jakobson & Halle 1968.
^ Jakobson, Fant & Halle 1952.
^ Ladefoged 2006, pp. 268–276.
^ Pike 1967.
^ Kiparsky, P., Linguistic universals and linguistic change. In: E. Bach & R.T. Harms (eds.), Universals in linguistic theory, 1968, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston (pp. 170–202)
^ Dinnsen, Daniel (1985). «A Re-Examination of Phonological Neutralization». Journal of Linguistics. 21 (2): 265–79. doi:10.1017/s0022226700010276. JSTOR 4175789. S2CID 145227467.
^ Crystal 2010, p. 173.
^ Everett, Daniel L. (1 July 1986). «Pirahã». Handbook of Amazonian Languages. Vol. 1. Berlin, Germany: De Gruyter Mouton. pp. 315–317. doi:10.1515/9783110850819.200. ISBN 9783110102574.
^ Everett, Daniel L. (2008). Don’t Sleep, there are Snakes. Pantheon Books. pp. 178–179. ISBN 978-0-375-42502-8.
^ «UPSID Nr. of segments». www.phonetik.uni-frankfurt.de. Retrieved 22 January 2022.
^ Bearth, Thomas; Link, Christa (1980). «The tone puzzle of Wobe». Studies in African Linguistics. 11 (2): 147–207. Archived from the original on 24 February 2021. Retrieved 5 January 2019.
^ Singler, John Victor (1984). «On the underlying representation of contour tones in Wobe». Studies in African Linguistics. 15 (1): 59–75. doi:10.32473/sal.v15i1.107520. S2CID 170335215.
^ Moran, Steven; McCloy, Daniel; Wright, Richard, eds. (2014). «PHOIBLE Online». Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Retrieved 5 January 2019.
^ Pike, K.L. (1947) Phonemics, University of Michigan Press, p. 64
^ Chao, Yuen Ren (1934). «The non-uniqueness of phonemic solutions of phonetic systems». Academia Sinica. IV.4: 363–97.
^ Householder, F.W. (1952). «Review of Methods in structural linguistics by Zellig S. Harris». International Journal of American Linguistics. 18: 260–8. doi:10.1086/464181.
^ Trager, G.; Smith, H. (1951). An Outline of English Structure. American Council of Learned Societies. p. 20. Retrieved 30 December 2017.
^ Bloomfield, Leonard (1933). Language. Henry Holt.
^ Harris 1951, p. 5.
^ Sapir, Edward (1925). «Sound patterns in language». Language. 1 (37): 37–51. doi:10.2307/409004. JSTOR 409004.
^ Chomsky, Noam (1964). Current Issues in Linguistic Theory. Mouton.
^ Clayton, Valli; Lucas, Ceil (2000). Linguistics of American Sign Language : an introduction (3rd ed.). Washington, D.C.: Gallaudet University Press. ISBN 9781563680977. OCLC 57352333.
^ Brentari, Diane (1998). A prosodic model of sign language phonology. MIT Press.
^ Sandler, Wendy (1989). Phonological representation of the sign: linearity and nonlinearity in American Sign Language. Foris.
^ Kooij, Els van der (2002). Phonological categories in Sign Language of the Netherlands. The role of phonetic implementation and iconicity. PhD dissertation, Leiden University.
^ Bross, Fabian. 2015. «Chereme», in In: Hall, T. A. Pompino-Marschall, B. (ed.): Dictionaries of Linguistics and Communication Science (Wörterbücher zur Sprach- und Kommunikationswissenschaft, WSK). Volume: Phonetics and Phonology. Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
^ Stokoe, William C. 1960. Sign Language Structure: An Outline of the Visual Communication Systems of the American Deaf Archived 2 December 2013 at the Wayback Machine, Studies in linguistics: Occasional papers (No. . Buffalo: Dept. of Anthropology and Linguistics, University of Buffalo.
^ Seegmiller, 2006. «Stokoe, William (1919–2000)», in Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 2nd ed.