Phoneme
Introduction
A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language. Originating from the Greek words phōnē (voice) and -ēma (something established), the term was first introduced by the French linguist Ferdinand de Saussure in the early 20th century. Phonemes form the basis of phonetics and phonology, two sub-disciplines of linguistics that study the physical sounds of human speech and their function in a particular language, respectively.
Characteristics of Phonemes
Phonemes are abstract units of sound, meaning they are not physical sounds themselves, but rather categories of sounds that are perceived as equivalent by speakers of a particular language. For example, the English phoneme /p/ encompasses a variety of physical sounds, or allophones, that are all perceived as "p" by English speakers, despite slight differences in pronunciation.
Phonemes can be classified into several types based on their articulatory features, such as place of articulation, manner of articulation, and voicing. Place of articulation refers to where in the vocal tract the airflow is constricted or blocked, while manner of articulation refers to how the airflow is constricted or blocked. Voicing refers to whether the vocal cords vibrate during the articulation of a phoneme.
Phonemic Inventory
The set of phonemes used in a particular language is known as its phonemic inventory. Different languages have different phonemic inventories, meaning they use different sets of phonemes. For example, English has about 44 phonemes, while Spanish has about 24. The size of a language's phonemic inventory can vary greatly, with some languages having as few as 11 phonemes and others having over 100.
Phonemic Contrast
Phonemes function to distinguish words in a language. This is known as phonemic contrast. For example, in English, the words "bat" and "pat" are differentiated solely by the initial phoneme: /b/ in "bat" and /p/ in "pat". This demonstrates the contrastive function of phonemes.
Phoneme vs. Allophone
An important concept in phonology is the distinction between phonemes and allophones. As mentioned earlier, phonemes are abstract categories of sounds, while allophones are the actual physical sounds that are instances of those categories. For example, the English phoneme /p/ has two main allophones: the aspirated [pʰ] (as in "pin") and the unaspirated [p] (as in "spin"). These are perceived as the same sound by English speakers because they do not distinguish words; that is, there are no words in English that are differentiated solely by the presence or absence of aspiration in the initial /p/.
Phonemic Analysis
Phonemic analysis is the process of determining the phonemic inventory of a language, as well as the allophonic variations of each phoneme. This is typically done by collecting a large corpus of speech data and analyzing it for patterns of variation and contrast.
Phonemic Transcription
Phonemic transcription is the process of representing the phonemes of a language using written symbols. The most widely used system for phonemic transcription is the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), which provides a unique symbol for each phoneme found in human languages.