39! The phoneme theory

A phoneme is a basic unit of a language's phonology, which is combined with other phonemes to form meaningful units such as words or morphemes. The phoneme can be described as "The smallest contrastive linguistic unit which may bring about a change of meaning".^[1] In this way the difference in meaning between the English words kill and kiss is a result of the exchange of the phoneme /l/ for the phoneme /s/. Two words that differ in meaning through a contrast of a single phoneme are called minimal pairs.

Within linguistics there are differing views as to exactly what phonemes are and how a given language should be analyzed in phonemic terms. However, a phoneme is generally regarded as anabstraction of a set (or equivalence class) of speech sounds (phones) which are perceived as equivalent to each other in a given language. For example, in English, the "k" sounds in the words kitand skill are not identical (as described below), but they are distributional variants of a single phoneme, /k/. Different speech sounds representing the same phoneme are known as allophones, and such variation may be conditioned, in which case a certain phoneme is realized as a certain allophone in particular phonological environments, or it may be free in which case it may vary randomly. In this way, phonemes are often considered to constitute an abstract underlying representation for words, while speech sounds make up the corresponding phonetic realization, or surface form.

1. General characteristics of the phoneme

The phoneme is a dialectical unity of its three aspects:

1)    material, real and objective

2)    abstractional and generalized

3)    functional

 

1) The phoneme has a material aspect, for it exists in the form of a number of articulatorily and acoustically definite speech sounds (its allophones), which constitute the material invariant of the phoneme. What is material is at the same time real. What is material is at the same time objective; for it exists independently of the will of individual persons.

2) This is reflected in the definition of the phoneme as a language unit. Each unit of language (the phoneme, morpheme ect.) is an abstraction from a generalization of actual utterances. Language is an abstraction from speech, while speech is the reality of language.

3) This 3 aspect of the phoneme is reflected in the definition of the phoneme as the smallest language unit capable of differentiating words and their grammatical forms. The distinctive function is the principal function of the phoneme as such.

For example: The vowel sounds [æ] and [e] are capable to differentiate the grammatical forms of one and the same word (man - men).

 This can prove that [æ] and [e] represent different phonemes.

 The actual speech sounds pronounced by the speaker are variants, or allophones of phonemes. For example, in the words [eIt] (eight - восемь) and [eItӨ] (eighth - восьмой) the [t] consonants are similar, but at the same time they are slightly different: [t] in [eIt] is pronounced with the tip of the tongue pressed against the alveoli and is therefore an alveolar consonant, whereas the [t] in [eItӨ] is pronounced with the blade of the tongue pressed against the upper teeth and is therefore a dental consonant.

40! Schools in phonology(нужно заранее спросить у Ботагоз апай что нужно рассказать в этом вопросе а то я не поняла/ да и инет тоже не понял((()

Phonology is a branch of linguistics concerned with the systematic organization of sounds in languages. It has traditionally focused largely on study of thesystems of phonemes in particular languages, but it may also cover any linguistic analysis either at a level beneath the word (including syllable, onset andrhyme, articulatory gestures, articulatory features, mora, etc.) or at all levels of language where sound is considered to be structured for conveying linguistic meaning. Phonology also includes the study of equivalent organizational systems in sign languages.

The word phonology (as in the phonology of English) can also refer to the phonological system (sound system) of a given language. This is one of the fundamental systems which a language is considered to comprise, like its syntax and its vocabulary.

Phonology is often distinguished from phonetics. While phonetics concerns the physical production, acoustic transmission and perception of the sounds of speech,^[1][2] phonology describes the way sounds function within a given language or across languages to encode meaning. For many linguists, phonetics belongs to descriptive linguistics, and phonology to theoretical linguistics, although establishing the phonological system of a language is necessarily an application of theoretical principles to analysis of phonetic evidence. Note that this distinction was not always made, particularly before the development of the modern concept of phoneme in the mid 20th century. Some subfields of modern phonology have a crossover with phonetics in descriptive disciplines such aspsycholinguistics and speech perception, resulting in specific areas like articulatory phonology or laboratory phonology.