The Linguistic Use of Speech Sounds

Phonetic Variation: Phonemes and Allophones

. phonetic distinctions contrasting meaning – distinct phonemes

[sIp] sip [fajn] fine [pæt] pat [zIp] zip [vajn] vine [bæt] bat

in English: /s/ /z/ /f/ /v/ /p/ /b/  make different words different phonemes

[dId] did [mId] mid [dIn] din [dæd] dad [mæd] mad [dæn] Dan

in English: /d/ /m/ /n/ /æ/  make different English words different phonemes

phoneme  a class of speech sounds that are judged by a native speaker to be the same sound  a unit of linguistic structure  an abstract element defined by a set of phonetic features  can have alternative realizations (allophones) in particular phonological environments

. non-contrastive phonetic variation different phones of the same phoneme - allophones

cop keep

/k/   [kh] [ķh]

1 o in English: [k] & [ķh] are a single unit of the English sound system – they are variants of the same phoneme o in other languages – Basque, Malay, Vietnamese – these two sounds function as distinct sounds – they are different phonemes

a second example:

spot pot spoke poke spill pill sprint print

/p/   [p] [ph]

aspirated [ph]  beginning of words unaspirated [p]  after [s]

allophones  phonetic realizations of a phoneme - correspond to an actual phonetic segment produced by a speaker  non-contrastive - don’t contrast meanings, don’t create different words  members of a phoneme class

Notations  phonemic transcriptions of words (the representation of their pronunciation in the dictionary) is set off by slashes - /…/  phonetic transcriptions (representations of their actual pronunciation) are indicated by square brackets - [...]