In human language,
a phoneme (from the Greek:
φώνημα,
phōnēma, "a sound uttered") is the smallest
posited structural unit that distinguishes meaning.
Phonemes are not the physical segments
themselves, but, in theoretical terms, cognitive abstractions
or categorizations of them.
An example of a phoneme is the /t/
sound in the words tip, stand, water,
and cat. (In transcription, phonemes are
placed between slashes, as here.) These instances of /t/
are considered to fall under the same sound category despite
the fact that in each word they are pronounced somewhat
differently. The difference may not even be audible to
native speakers, or the audible differences not perceived.
That is, a phoneme may encompass several recognizably
different speech sounds, called phones.
In our example, the /t/
in tip is aspirated,
[tʰ],
while the /t/
in stand is not, [t].
(In transcription, speech sounds that are not phonemes
are placed in brackets, as here.) In many languages, such
as Korean
and Spanish,
these phones are different phonemes: For example, /tol/
is "stone" in Korean, whereas /tʰol/
is "grain of rice". In Spanish, there is no aspirated
[tʰ],
but the phone in American English writer
is similar to the Spanish r /ɾ/
and contrasts with Spanish /t/.
Phones that belong to the same phoneme, such as [t]
and [tʰ]
for English /t/,
are called allophones.
A common test to determine whether two phones are allophones
or separate phonemes relies on finding minimal
pairs: words that differ by only the phones in question.
For example, the words tip and dip
illustrate that [t]
and [d]
are separate phonemes, /t/
and /d/,
in English, whereas the lack of such a contrast in Korean
(/tʰata/
is pronounced [tʰada],
for example) indicates that in this language they are
allophones of a phoneme /t/.
In sign
languages, the basic elements of gesture and location
were formerly called cheremes
(or cheiremes), but general usage changed to phoneme.
Tonic
phonemes are sometimes called tonemes, and timing
phonemes chronemes.
Some linguists (such as Roman
Jakobson, Morris
Halle, and Noam
Chomsky) consider phonemes to be further decomposable
into features,
such features being the true minimal constituents of language.
Features overlap each other in time, as do suprasegmental
phonemes in oral language and many phonemes in sign languages.
Features could be designated as acoustic
(Jakobson) or articulatory
(Halle & Chomsky) in nature.
Background and related ideas
The term phonème was reportedly first used
by Dufriche-Desgenettes in 1873, but it referred to only
a sound of speech. The term phoneme as an abstraction
was developed by the Polish linguist Jan
Niecisław Baudouin de Courtenay and his student Mikołaj
Kruszewski during 1875-1895. The term used by these
two was fonema, the basic unit of what they called
psychophonetics. Conceptions of the phoneme were
then elaborated in the works of Nikolai
Trubetzkoi and others of the Prague
School (during the years 1926-1935), as well as in
that of structuralists
like Ferdinand
de Saussure, Edward
Sapir, and Leonard
Bloomfield. Some structuralists wished to eliminate
a cognitive or psycholinguistic function for the phoneme.
Later, it was also used in generative
linguistics, most famously by Noam
Chomsky and Morris
Halle, and remains central to many accounts of the
development of modern of phonology.
As a theoretical concept or model, though, it has been
supplemented and even replaced by others.
Some languages make use of pitch
for phonemic distinction. In this case, the tones used
are called tonemes.
Some languages distinguish words made up of the same phonemes
(and tonemes) by using different durations of some
elements, which are called chronemes.
However, not all scholars working on languages with distinctive
duration use this term.
Usually, long vowels
and consonants
are represented either by a length indicator or doubling
of the symbol in question.
In sign languages, phonemes may be classified as Tab
(elements of location, from Latin tabula), Dez
(the hand shape, from designator), Sig (the
motion, from signation), and with some researchers,
Ori (orientation). Facial expressions and mouthing
are also phonemic.
Notation
A transcription that only indicates the different phonemes
of a language is said to be phonemic. Such transcriptions
are enclosed within virgules (slashes), / /; these
show that each enclosed symbol is claimed to be phonemically
meaningful. On the other hand, a transcription that indicates
finer detail, including allophonic variation like the
two English L's, is said to be phonetic, and is
enclosed in square brackets, [ ].
The common notation used in linguistics employs virgules
(slashes) (/ /) around the symbol that stands for the
phoneme. For example, the phoneme for the initial consonant
sound in the word "phoneme" would be written as /f/.
In other words, the graphemes
are <ph>, but this digraph represents one
sound /f/.
Allophones,
more phonetically specific descriptions of how a given
phoneme might be commonly instantiated, are often denoted
in linguistics by the use of diacritical or other marks
added to the phoneme symbols and then placed in square
brackets ([ ]) to differentiate them from the phoneme
in slant brackets (/ /). The conventions of orthography
are then kept separate from both phonemes and allophones
by the use of angle brackets < > to enclose the
spelling.
The symbols of the International
Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) and extended sets adapted
to a particular language are often used by linguists to
write phonemes of oral languages, with the principle being
one symbol equals one categorical sound. Due to problems
displaying some symbols in the early days of the Internet,
systems such as X-SAMPA
and Kirshenbaum
were developed to represent IPA symbols in plain text.
As of 2004, any modern web
browser can display IPA symbols (as long as the operating
system provides the appropriate fonts), and we use
this system in this article.
There are 2 published set of phonemic symbols for sign
language: SignWriting
and Stokoe
notation. SignWriting is capable of writing any sign
language and is currently used in over
38 countries. People in these countries use SignWriting
on a daily basis as a natural writing system for education
and recreation. Stokoe notation is used for linguistic
research and was originally developed for American
Sign Language. Stokoe notation has since been applied
to British
Sign Language by Kyle and Woll, and to Australian
Aboriginal sign languages by Adam Kendon.
Examples
Examples of phonemes in the English
language would include sounds from the set of English
consonants, like /p/
and /b/.
These two are most often written consistently with one
letter for each sound. However, phonemes might not be
so apparent in written English, such as when they are
typically represented with combined letters, called digraphs,
like <sh> (pronounced /ʃ/)
or <ch> (pronounced /tʃ/).
To see a list of the phonemes in the English language,
see IPA
for English.
Two sounds that may be allophones (sound variants belonging
to the same phoneme) in one language may belong to separate
phonemes in another language or dialect. In English, for
example, /p/
has aspirated and non-aspirated allophones:aspirated as
in /pɪn/,
and non-aspirated as in /spɪn/.
However, in many languages (e. g. Chinese),
aspirated /pʰ/
is a phoneme distinct from unaspirated /p/.
As another example, there is no distinction between [r]
and [l]
in Japanese;
there is only one /r/
phoneme, though it has various allophones that can sound
more like [l],
[ɾ],
or [r]
to English speakers. The sounds [z]
and [s]
are distinct phonemes in English, but allophones in Spanish.
The sounds [n]
(as in run) and [ŋ]
(as in rung) are phonemes in English, but allophones
in Italian
and Spanish.
An important phoneme is the chroneme,
a phonemically-relevant extension of the duration a consonant
or vowel. Some languages or dialects such as Finnish
or Japanese
allow chronemes after both consonants and vowels. Others,
like Italian
or Australian
English use it after only one (in the case of Italian,
consonants; in the case of Australian, vowels).
Restricted phonemes
A restricted phoneme is a phoneme that can only
occur in a certain environment: There are restrictions
as to where it can occur. English has several restricted
phonemes:
- /ŋ/,
as in sing, occurs only at the end of a syllable,
never at the beginning (in many other languages, such
as Swahili
or Thai, /ŋ/
can appear word-initially).
- /h/
occurs only before vowels and at the beginning of a
syllable, never at the end (a few languages, such as
Arabic,
or Romanian
allow /h/ syllable-finally).
- In many American dialects with the cot-caught
merger, /ɔ/
occurs only before /r/,
/l/,
and in the diphthong
/ɔɪ/.
- In non-rhotic
dialects, /r/
can only occur before a vowel, never at the end of a
word or before a consonant.
- Under most interpretations, /w/
and /j/
occur only before a vowel, never at the end of a syllable.
However, many phonologists interpret a word like boy
as either /bɔɪ/
or /bɔj/.
Biuniqueness
Biuniqueness is a criterial definition of the phoneme
in classic structuralist phonemics. The biuniqueness definition
states that every phonetic allophone must unambiguously
be assigned to one and only one phoneme. In other words,
there is a many-to-one allophone-to-phoneme mapping instead
of a many-to-many mapping.
The notion of biuniqueness was controversial among some
pre-generative linguists and was prominently challenged
by Morris Halle and Noam Chomsky in the late 1950s and
early 1960s.
The unworkable aspects of the concept soon become apparent
if you consider sound changes/alternations and assimilation/co-articulation.
Take English for its examples. If many vowels reduce to
a 'schwa', what is 'schwa' then? Its own phoneme? Or totally
unrelated allophones, only grouped under the phonemic
vowels? Or both?
Neutralization, archiphoneme,
underspecification
Phonemes that are contrastive in certain environments
may not be contrastive in all environments. In the environments
where they don't contrast, the contrast is said to be
neutralized.
In English there are three nasal phonemes, /m,
n, ŋ/, as shown by the minimal triplet,
| /sʌm/ |
sum |
| /sʌn/ |
sun |
| /sʌŋ/ |
sung |
However, with rare exceptions, these sounds are not contrastive
before plosives such as /p,
t, k/ within the same morpheme.
Although all three phones appear before plosives, for
example in limp, lint, link, only one of these
may appear before each of the plosives. That is, the /m,
n, ŋ/ distinction is neutralized before
each of the plosives /p,
t, k/:
- Only /m/
occurs before /p/,
- only /n/
before /t/,
and
- only /ŋ/
before /k/.
Thus these phonemes are not contrastive in these environments,
and according to some theorists, there is no evidence
as to what the underlying representation might be. If
we hypothesize that we are dealing with only a single
underlying nasal, there is no reason to pick one of the
three phonemes /m,
n, ŋ/ over the other two.
(In some languages there is only one phonemic nasal anywhere,
and due to obligatory assimilation, it surfaces as [m,
n, ŋ] in just these environments, so this
idea is not as far-fetched as it might seem at first glance.)
In certain schools of phonology, such a neutralized distinction
is known as an archiphoneme (Nikolai
Trubetzkoy of the Prague
school is often associated with this analysis). Archiphonemes
are often notated with a capital letter. Following this
convention, the neutralization of /m,
n, ŋ/ before /p,
t, k/ could be notated as |N|, and limp, lint,
link would be represented as |lɪNp,
lɪNt, lɪNk|. (The |pipes| indicate underlying
representation.) Other ways this archiphoneme could be
notated are |m-n-ŋ|, {m,
n, ŋ}, or |n*|.
Another example from American English is the neutralization
of the plosives /t,
d/ following a stressed syllable. Phonetically,
both are realized in this position as [ɾ],
a voiced alveolar
flap. This can be heard by comparing writer
with rider (for the sake of simplicity, Canadian
raising is not taken into account).
| [ɻaɪˀt] |
write |
| [ɻaɪd] |
ride |
with the suffix
-er:
| [ˈɻaɪɾɚ] |
writer |
| [ˈɻaɪɾɚ] |
rider |
Thus, one cannot say whether the underlying
representation of the intervocalic consonant in either
word is /t/
or /d/
without looking at the unsuffixed form. This neutralization
can be represented as an archiphoneme |D|, in which case
the underlying representation of writer or rider
would be |'ɻaɪDɚ|.
Another way to talk about archiphonemes involves the
concept of underspecification:
phonemes can be considered fully specified segments while
archiphonemes are underspecified segments. In Tuvan,
phonemic vowels are specified with the articulatory features
of tongue height, backness, and lip rounding. The archiphoneme
|U| is an underspecified high vowel where only the tongue
height is specified.
phoneme/
archiphoneme |
height |
backness |
roundedness |
| /i/ |
high |
front |
unrounded |
| /ɯ/ |
high |
back |
unrounded |
| /u/ |
high |
back |
rounded |
| |U| |
high |
Whether |U| is pronounced as front or back and whether
rounded or unrounded depends on vowel
harmony. If |U| occurs following a front unrounded
vowel, it will be pronounced as the phoneme /i/;
if following a back unrounded vowel, it will be as an
/ɯ/;
and if following a back rounded vowel, it will be an /u/.
This can been seen in the following words:
| -|Um| |
|
|
'my' |
(the vowel of this suffix is underspecified) |
| |idikUm| |
→ |
[idikim] |
'my boot' |
(/i/ is front & unrounded) |
| |xarUm| |
→ |
[xarɯm] |
'my snow' |
(/a/ is back & unrounded) |
| |nomUm| |
→ |
[nomum] |
'my book' |
(/o/ is back & rounded) |
Not all phonologists accept the concept of archiphonemes.
Many doubt that it reflects how people process language
or control speech, and some argue that archiphonemes add
unnecessary complexity.
Phonological extremes
Of all the sounds that a human vocal tract can create,
different languages vary considerably in the number of
these sounds that are considered to be distinctive phonemes
in the speech of that language. Ubyx
and Arrernte
have only two phonemic vowels, while at the other extreme,
the Bantu
language Ngwe
has fourteen vowel qualities, twelve of which may occur
long or short, for twenty-six oral vowels, plus six nasalized
vowels, long and short, for thirty-eight vowels; while
!Xóõ
achieves thirty-one pure vowels—not counting vowel length,
which it also has—by varying the phonation. Rotokas
has only six consonants, while !Xóõ has
somewhere in the neighborhood of seventy-seven, and Ubyx
eighty-one. French
has no phonemic tone or stress, while several of the Kam-Sui
languages have nine tones, and one of the Kru
languages, Wobe,
has been claimed to have fourteen, though this is disputed.
The total phonemic inventory in languages varies from
as few as eleven in Rotokas to as many as 112 in !Xóõ
(including four tones). These may range from familiar
sounds like [t],
[s],
or [m]
to very unusual ones produced in extraordinary ways (see:
Click
consonant, phonation,
airstream
mechanism). The English
language itself uses a rather large set of thirteen
to twenty-two vowels, including diphthongs, though its
twenty-two to twenty-six consonants are close to average.
(There are twenty-one consonant and five vowel letters
in the English alphabet, but this does not correspond
to the number of consonant and vowel sounds.)
The most common vowel system consists of the five vowels
/i/,
/e/, /a/, /o/, /u/. The most common consonants
are /p/,
/t/, /k/, /m/, /n/. Very few languages lack one
of these: Arabic
lacks /p/,
standard
Hawaiian lacks /t/,
Mohawk
and Tlingit
lack /p/
and /m/,
Hupa
lacks both /p/
and a simple /k/,
colloquial Samoan
lacks /t/
and /n/,
while Rotokas
and Quileute
lack /m/
and /n/.
See also
External links
