CHAPTER 5.

PHONEMES

1. The phoneme 1. Phonemems is the smallest meaning-distinguishing sound

unit in a language and the complete set of these units Is called
the phonemic system of language. (The phonemes themselves
are abstract)

bus buzz

/bʌs/ /bʌz/

/s/ voiceless /z/ voiced alveolar

alveaolar fricative fricative

- Substituting one letter for another will change the meaning.

- segments: a stream of sounds which are divided into small

pieces.

e.g:

man

m æ N

first second third

- Do we consider the vowel /aI/ as one sound or two?

The use of minimal pairs to identify the phonemes of a

language is the mechanism usually adopted.

20 vowels

bad bed bud bid

 /bʌd/

/bæd/ /bed/ /bId/

- However, the number of vowel letter is different (a, e, I, o, u)

+ Phonemes are units of speech.

+ Letters are units of writing.

The change from one letter to another will also change the
meaning ( e.g: pull – bull)

Relationship between letters and sounds ( A,a, e, ɒ)

e.g: Aunt Lily is so kind…………… Lily is my aunt.

(not change meaning)

- The alphabet is something that its users know; they also know
that it has 26 letters. However, when the alphabet is used to
write with, these letter appear on the page in a practically
infinite number of different shapes and sizes.

e.g: back the sound /b/ pronounced without voicing, but some
speakers pronounce it with full voicing.

It affects meaning:

+ Realizations of the same phoneme

+ We can change the pronunciation without changing the

meaning

Complementary Free distribution

distribution

- Dark and light /l/ in the - kill and hill is a case of

word (kill) is case of free distribution
complementary distribution + When we change the first
 + When we change dark
into light /l/, meaningis still
the same.
Yet, the pronounciation will
sound strange to native
speakers.
sound /k/ with /h/ meaning is
changed.
+ The setting is free as they
can substitute one another
freely

+ When the darl /l/ its, the

light /l/ does not fit.

+ Each one of them has its

own settin, and they cannot
substitute one another.

- Different realizations of the same phoneme are called

allophones

e.g:

tea eat

/ti:/ /i:t/

pea tap

/pi/ /tæp/

aspirated unaspirated

2. Symbols and - The symbols are for one of two purposes:

transcription - phonemic symbols

- phonetic symbols

- The number of phonemic symbols must be exactly the same

as the number of phonemes we decide exist in the language.
e.g:

d - /d/; dog - /dɒg/

- However, some of our phonemic symbols consist of two

characters.

e.g: tʃ (/t/ and/ʃ/); ʤ (/d/ and /ʒ/) – (a symbol of two characters)

Phonemic transcription: is to write utterances in symbol.

Every sound should be indentified as a distinct phoneme and
written with the correct symbol.

There are two kinds of transcription exercise:

Transcription from Transcription from a

dictation written text

The student must listen to a The student is given a

person, or a recording, and
write down what they hear
passage written in
orthography and must use
phonemic symbols to
represent how she or he
thinks it would be
pronounced by a speaker of
a particular accent

Advantages - comparative quickly

- easy to learn to use it

Disadvantages - to hear a lot of sound differences that you

were not aware of before

- Student find it frustrating not to be able to

write down more detailed information.
There are two types of transcription.

Phonemic transcription Phonetic transcription

- To transcribe without - To transcribe with details

details (broad) (narrow)

- We don’t use diacritics - We need to use diacritics

( marks which modify the - We use square brackets [ ]
symbol in some way or
- It is more difficult and slow
another, they are placed
to perform compared to
above and below the symbol
phonemic transcription
to give more details about the
features of the sound being
described).

- It is easier and quicker to

do compareed to the other
type.

e.g: Tom likes mutton e.g: Tom likes mutton

/tom laIks mʌtǝn/ /thom laIks mʌtǝn/

or /tom laIks mʌtn/ or /thom laIks mʌtn/

The best-known set of symbols is that of the International

Phonetic Association’s alphabet (IPA) (picture 1)
3. Phonology 1. Phonology:

- How phonemes function in language anf the relationships

among the different phonemes

- We study the abstract side of the sounds of language, we are

studying a related but different subject.

Study of the We have a more or less fixed set of

phonemic system “pieces” (phonemes) with which to
play the game of speaking English.
There may be many slightly
realisations of the various phonemes,
but the most important thing for
communication is that we should be
able to make use of the full set of
phonemes.

Phoneme sequences There are restrictions on the

and syllable sequences of the phonemes that are
structure used.

e.g:

- no English word begins with the

consonant sequence zbf

- no word ends with the sequence æh

In phonology, we try to analyse what

the restrictions and regularities are
in a particular langugae, and it is
usually found helpful to do this by
 studying the syllables of the
language.

Suprasegmental Many significant sound contrasts are

phonology not the result of differences between
phonemes.

- stress is important

e.g: ‘import (n); im‘port (v)

- intonation is also important

e.g: right (voice rising): a question

or an invitation to a speaker to
continue

right (falling pitch): confirmation

or agreement

- These examples show sound

contrasts that extend over several
segments (phonemes), and such
contrasts are called suprasegmental.
(1)