What is a Phoneme?

Definition

A phoneme is the smallest unit of speech sound that distinguishes one word from another word in a particular language. Each phoneme represents the smallest contrastive sound unit which may bring about a change in the word meaning. Traditionally, the linguists put the phonemes between slash marks. For instance: the words “mat” and “hat” are separated from each other based on the initial sound, that is /m/ and /h/ respectively.

Etymology

The English word phoneme was first used in the late 19^th century. It came via the French word phonème, which was borrowed from Greek phōnēma meaning “speech sound or utterance”, from phōnein meaning “to make sounds, speak”, from phōnē, meaning “sound, voice”.

Discussion

The phonemes encompass the possible small subsets of sounds that humans can produce through the speech organs. However, not all of the producible speech sounds are categorized as distinct phonemes since a particular sound may be pronounced in many different ways. Hence, the number of distinct phonemes is always lesser than perceptively different sounds. The phoneme sets may vary depending on the language system. But the five vowel sounds /i/, /e/, /a/, /o/, /u/ are present in most languages. Likewise, the consonants /p/, /t/, /k/, /m/, /n/ are found nearly in all languages.

We should keep in mind that the phonemes are not letters; rather they simply refer to the sounds of a spoken utterance. Different phonemic symbols are employed to represent each phoneme. The one-part sounds are represented by a single letter, for instance, /p/ in “mop” and /t/ in “mat”. On the other hand, the two-part sounds are represented by a combination of letters, for example, /ʧ/ in “cherry” and /ʤ/ in “judge”.

The Functions of the Phonemes

The phonemes have the following three functions:

• Distinctive Function: It is the principle function of the phonemes. The phonemes can distinguish one morpheme from others, one word from others. This function could be subcategorized  in the following vein:

1. Morpheme distinctive: season-seasonal
2. Word or form distinctive: /bad/-/lad/
3. Sentence distinctive: Where is the hat? Where is the hut?

• Constitutive Function: The phonemes in isolation do not convey any meaning, but when they are combined they constitute meaningful words and morphemes. For example, the English phonemes /t/, /æ/and /b/ may constitute the words /tæb/ “tab” and /bæt/ “bat”.
• Recognitive (Identificatory) Function: We can separately recognize individual words due to the ordered cluster of their phonemes. Therefore, using the right phoneme in the right place is necessary to facilitate identifying different words.

Tools to identify a phoneme

Based on the phonological variation, the phonemes can be identified through the undermentioned tools:

1. Contrastive Sounds:

If two sounds are separate phonemes, then they are considered to be contrastive. Such sounds can be identified through the following principle:

Contrastive Distribution

In contrastive distribution when two sounds are placed in the same phonetic positions, they produce two different words.

Based on the contrastive distribution, different types of contrastive pairs could be taken into account to determine the phonemes of a language:

i. Minimal Pairs

Minimal pairs are two identical sounding words containing the same number of sounds that can be distinguished by a single phoneme appearing in the same position in both words. The criteria for determining a minimal pair are:

• Both words will have the same number of sounds.
• The adjacent sounds must be identical except for the contrastive sound.
• The contrastive sound must be distributed in the same position in both words.
• The words must be semantically different.

For example, “rice” and “lice” are different from each other in meaning as they have different initial phonemes, that is,  /r/ and /l/ respectively. 

ii. Minimal Sets

Minimal sets are more than two identical sounding words that can be differentiated by a single phoneme occurring in the same position in all the words. The following are the criteria for determining minimal sets:

• A group of words.
• The adjoining sounds must be identical except for one sound.
• The contrasting sound must occur in the same place in the string.
• All of the words must have different meanings.

For example, feat, fit, fat, fought, foot (vowel phonemes) and big, rig, fig, dig, wig (consonant phonemes).

iii. Near-minimal Pair

Where minimal pairs are not available, contrasts are illustrated through near-minimal pair. Near-minimal pair is a roughly identical pair of words having the dissimilar number of sounds that are distinguished by a few or more than one phoneme. Whereas minimal pairs are very limited in number, near minimal pairs are very easy to find. Therefore, the latter is the most dependable procedure for identifying phonemes.

Some examples of near-minimal pairs include:

get – guest

knees – sneeze

shoe – show

soup – snoop

tote – toast

feet – feast

2. Non-contrastive Sounds:

The sounds that do not make a difference in meaning are called non-contrastive sounds. Non-contrastive variants of a phoneme are referred to allophones. To be specific, when a phoneme is pronounced in two or more different ways then each variation is called the allophone of the same phoneme. They usually occur in different positions (i.e., environments or contexts) in the words.  However, these variations are not separate phonemes as they cannot contrast with each other, nor be employed to make meaningful distinctions.

The articulatory and acoustic distinctions of allophones are conditioned by:

• The position of the sound.
• The surrounding phonemes in the word or sentence.
• The dialectal variations in pronunciation.
• Language difference.
• Social factors.
• The pitch, tempo and stress of speech.

In contrast to phonemes, the allophones are written between square brackets. For example, in English, the phoneme /p/ has three variants:

Sl.	Allophones	Determining Factor	Distribution	Example
	[pʰ]	Strongly Aspirated	Word-initially	pot
	[p]	Weakly Aspirated	After “s”	spot
	[p¬]	Unaspirated	Word-finally	stop

There are different principles for discovering allophones:

i. Complementary Distribution

It is a distribution of a pair of speech sounds where the two sounds never occur in the same phonetic position. This simply means that only one sound of the pair will be found in a certain position, while the other sound will be found in everywhere else. They are generally the allophones of the same phoneme as they do not contrast with each other.

For example, in English, the aspirated [pʰ] can only be found at the beginning of a stressed syllable as in “pot”, while the unaspirated [p] is never found at the beginning of a syllable but can be found in other positions as in “spot”.

ii. Free Variation

When two different sounds occur in the same phonetic position without causing any change of meaning are said to be in free variation. That means, this principle does not try to contrast meanings in two different words, rather it simply to shows that there are two different ways of pronouncing the same word. Such allophones of a phoneme may arise due to different dialects, sociolinguistic or geographical factors.

For example, the word “either” may be pronounced as [aɪðər] or [iːðər].

Types of Phonemes

1. Vowels	Features			Examples
	Closeness	Frontness	Lip Rounding
Long Vowels	Close	Front	Unrounded	/i:/ as in sheep
	Close	Back	Rounded	/u:/ as in food
	Open-mid	Central	Unrounded	/ɜ:/ as in fern
	Open-mid	Back	Rounded	/ɔ:/ as in board
	Open	Back	Unrounded	/ɑ:/ as in car
Short Vowels	Near-close	Near-front	Unrounded	/ɪ/ as in ship
	Near-close	Near-back	Rounded	/ʊ/ as in put
	Open-mid	Front	Unrounded	/e/ as in pet
	Near-open	Front	Unrounded	/æ/ as in cat
	Open-mid	Back	Unrounded	/ʌ/ as in cup
	Open	Back	Rounded	/ɒ/ as in dog
	Mid	Central	Neutral	/ə/ as in garden

2. Diphthongs	Features			Examples
	Starting  Point  of Glide	Finishing Point	Lip Rounding
Centring Diphthongs	/ɪ/	/ə/	The lips are neutral throughout, with a slight movement from spread to open	/ɪə / as in ear
	/e/		The lips remain neutrally open throughout	/eə/ as in fare
	/ʊ/		The lips are loosely rounded, becoming neutrally spread	/ʊə/ sure
Closing Diphthongs	/e/	/ɪ/	The lips are spread	/eɪ/ as in aid
	/a/		The lips move from neutral to loosely spread	/aɪ/ as in isle
	/ɔ/		Lips start open rounded and change to neutral	/ɔɪ/ as in oil
	/ə/	/ʊ/	The lips are neutral but change to loosely rounded	/əʊ/ as in old
	/a/		The lips start neutral with a movement to loosely rounded	/aʊ/ as in owl

3. Semi-vowels	Features				Examples
	Place	Manner	Voicing	Lip Rounding
	labio-velar	Glide	Voiced	Unrounded	/w/ as in west
	Palatal	Glide	Voiced	Rounded	/j/as in yard

4. Consonants	Features			Examples
Plosives	Place	Manner	Voicing
	Bilabial	Stop	Voiceless	/p/ as in pin
		Stop	Voiced	/b/ as in bin
	Alveolar	Stop	Voiceless	/t/ as in tin
		Stop	Voiced	d/ as in dog
	Velar	Stop	Voiceless	/k/ as in coffee
		Stop	Voiced	/g/ as in gun
Nasals	Bilabial	Nasal	Voiced	/m/ as in mat
	Alveolar	Nasal	Voiced	/n/ as in native
	Velar	Nasal	Voiced	/ŋ/ as in bring
Affricates	Palato-alveolar	Affricate	Voiced	/ʧ/ as in cheap
		Affricate	Voiceless	/dz/as in jam
Fricatives	Labio-dental	Fricative	Voiceless	/f/ as in fast
		Fricative	Voiced	/v/ as in void
	Dental	Fricative	Voiceless	/θ/ as in theme
		Fricative	Voiced	/ð/ as in thus
	Alveolar	Fricative	Voiceless	/s/ as in sit
		Fricative	Voiced	/z/ as in zoo
	Palato-alveolar	Fricative	Voiceless	/ʃ/ as in ship
		Fricative	Voiced	/ʒ/ as in pleasure
	Glottal	Fricative	Voiceless	/h/ as in hen
Lateral	Alveolar	Liquid	Voiced	/l/ as in lee
	Alveolar	Liquid	Voiced	/ɫ / as in pool
Frictionless Continuant	Alveolar /Post-alveolar	Liquid	Voiced	/r/ as in rain

References

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<http://www.ello.uos.de/field.php/PhoneticsandPhonology/ComplementaryDistributionAndFreeVariation>.

 

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<https://www.britannica.com/topic/phoneme>.

 

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<https://glossary.sil.org/term/phoneme>.

 

“Proverbs with diphthongs.” studfiles. 2020. studfiles. 14 November 2020

<https://studfile.net/preview/5650607/page:5/>.

 

Roach, Peter. English Phonetics and Phonology: A self-contained, comprehensive pronunciation course.

3^rd ed. Cambridge: CUP, 2000.

 

Varshney, Dr. R.L.  An Introduction of Linguistics & Phonetics. Dhaka: BOC, n.d. 76-77.

 

Yule, George. The Study of Language. 2^nd ed. Cambridge: CUP, 1996. 54-61.

 

 “What Is a Phoneme? .” ThoughtCo. 2020. dash. 14 December 2020

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