7. The phoneme as the unit of phonology. Its properties and functions.

To know how sounds are produced by speech organs is not enough to describe and classify them as language units. To be able to characterize sounds from the linguistic point of view we should analyze the functional aspect of speech sounds.

It means that we should study phonemes (which mean sounds in their contrastive sense, as well as allophones as variants of phonemes, and strictly differentiate between them)

For instance: let-pet-met / Let-tell

We should also bear in mind that allophones usually occur in different environments, and can neither contrast with each other, nor make meaningful distinctions. So, to put it otherwise in a more laconic way we should say that phonemes are mutually distinctive speech sounds, while allophones are variants of one and the same phoneme which can never occur in one and the same position.

The phoneme is known to have its own properties and functions though they may differ from school to school even from scholar to scholar.

The Russian scholar Sherba was the first to defined phoneme as a function, material and abstract unit.

The official view of Russian phonological school propagates the following properties:

1. The phoneme is considered to be material, real and objective;

2. Abstractional

3. Functional

1. Firstly, the phoneme is characterized as material, real and objective, which means that it is realized in speech of all English speaking people in the form of speech sounds, its allophones. Traditionally scholars distinguish principles which don’t undergo any changes in speech.

For instance: sounds in isolation, or in the position like in words. ( door done down)

And subsidiary allophones (which undergo quite predictable changes in articulation, which occur under the Influence of the neighboring sounds in different phonetic environments.

For instance: di:l, did ju: ( produced palatalized variant of d)

Bed time, bad pain (d is pronounced without plosion till another stop)

Subsidiary, allophones can be either positional, or combinatory. There are two positional allophones in the English phonological system. They are clear and dark l. (ex. Lit – til)

All the other allophones are combinatory.

Consequently those allophones of the same phoneme posses similar articulatory features; they may frequently show considerable phonetic differences and it is mainly through these phonetic distinctions that the listener may pick up a great variety of information about the speaker; concerning the locality he lives, his education and social status, his age peculiarities and even his mood. So we may conclude that phonetic evidence is important for lexical and grammatical meaning, phonetic information created a more detailed description of the speaker.

2. Abstractional property.

Allophones of the same phoneme, no matter how different the articulation could be, function as the same linguistic unit, as a type of sound all the allophones represent. Phonemes appear to be abstractions from the particular representation of phonemes on speech. We should differentiate between phonetic and phonological mistakes. Phonetic mistakes occur if an allophone of some particular phoneme is replaced by another allophone of the same phoneme. &

3. The phoneme is a functional unit because it serves to distinguish one morpheme from another, one utterance from another.

The positions of phonemes in the same phonetic environment differentiate the meaning of morphemes, words and utterances.

For instance: sad – says /Sleeper – sleepy/ Like-light

Sounds can function as phonemes only if they differ from one another – this is the way for the phoneme to fulfill the distinctive function and the other two functions : constitutive and recognitive.

For instance: He was heard badly. He was hurt badly.