The phoneme

Speech sounds are the smallest units of which words are formed. They have no lexical meaning of their own. Their linguistic function begins only they fall into combinations with each other for the formation of words. We distinguish words of the same language by the differences in their sound framing.

Eg. Bed – bad – bid

Those speech sounds, which are capable to distinguish one word of the language from another, are called segmental phonemes.

Every language has a limited number of sound types, which are shared by all the speakers of the language and are linguistically important because they distinguish words in the language. In En­glish there are 20 vowel phonemes and 24 consonant phonemes.

Phoneme is a language unit, not of speech. In actual speech phonemes exist in the form of variants, in other words allophones. Depending on the position in the word and on the influence of neighboring sounds one of the same phoneme may have different varieties, in other words pronounced not quite alike. Allophones (or variants) of a certain phoneme are speech sounds, which are realizations of one and the same phoneme and which, therefore, cannot distinguish words. Their articulatory and acoustic distinctions are conditioned by their position and their phonetic environment. In connected speech sounds are modified. The result: every phoneme displays a vast range of variations. The number of allophones is unlimited. Analyzing them we see that some features of phonemes are constant (relevant) and some are incidental, irrelevant (not phonologically important).

Eg. Compare phoneme / p /: pill – slip – slippers

Acoustic and articulatory manners of pronunciation of the phoneme /p/ are different, if one of the various /p/ sounds is substituted for another, the meaning of the word will not change. Only the native speaker will notice it. This change doesn’t influence the process of understanding.

/p/ - bilabial, occlusive, fortis, plosive (relevant features)

The degree of aspiration varies. (aspiration is irrelevant feature).

Functions of Phoneme

1. Constitu­tive function of the phoneme.

Though the phonemes themselves, in isolation, have no meaning, they are linguistically important, since, in their material form (i.e. in the form of speech sounds) they constitute morphemes, words, all of which are meaningful.

2. Besides the constitutive function, the phoneme performs the distinctive function, because phonemes distinguish one word from another.

3. The identificatory (or recognotive) function of the phoneme. It appears that when identifying linguistic units the use of the right phoneme is not the only significal factor, the use of the right allophone is not much less important. Thus, in English it is the aspiration of /p/ rather than its voicelessness, and the non-aspirated character of /b/, that make clear the opposition of /p/ and /b/ in words like “pie” and “buy”. This is why an Englishman will often hear “bride” for “pride” when a foreigner uses a non-aspirated /p/.

We may now summarize by saying that the phoneme is a linguis­tically relevant unit that exists in speech in the material form of its allophones. The phoneme is therefore a phonological unit which is represented in speech by phonetic units (the speech sounds) In analyzing speech we constantly carry out a phonetic and phonological analysis. The analysis is primary phonetic when we describe articulatory and acoustic characteristics of particular sounds and their combinations; but when we determine the role of those sounds in communication, it is mainly phonological analysis. Thus both phonemes and sounds are simply two sides of one and the same phenomenon – the sound substance of language, which can be analyzed on either the phonemic (functional) level or the allophonic (variational) level.