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This article is about the speech unit. For the JavaME library, see phoneME (software).

In human language, a phoneme is the smallest posited structural unit that distinguishes meaning. A language is a dynamic set of visual auditory or tactile Symbols of Communication and the elements used to manipulate them Phonemes are not the physical segments themselves, but, in theoretical terms, cognitive abstractions or categorizations of them. In Linguistics (specifically Phonetics and Phonology) the term segment may be defined as "any discrete unit that can be identified either --> Abstraction is the process or result of generalization by reducing the information

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. That is, a phoneme may encompass several recognizably different speech sounds, called phones. Within Phonetics, a phone is a speech sound or gesture considered a physical event without regard to its place in the Phonology of a Language In our example, the /t/ in tip is aspirated, [tʰ], while the /t/ in stand is not, [t]. Description Voiceless consonants are produced with the Vocal cords open and voiced consonants are produced when the vocal folds are fractionally closed (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". This article is mainly about the spoken Korean language See Hangul for details on the native Korean writing system 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. In Phonetics, an allophone is one of several similar speech sounds ( Phones that belong to the same Phoneme. 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. In Phonology, minimal pairs are pairs of Words or phrases in a particular Language, which differ in only one phonological element such as a Phone 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. A sign language (also signed language) is a Language which instead of acoustically conveyed Sound patterns uses visually transmitted sign patterns The chereme (from χείρ "hand" is a term for the basic unit of signed communication Tonic phonemes are sometimes called tonemes, and timing phonemes chronemes. Tone is the use of pitch in Language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning—that is to distinguish or inflect words

Some linguists (such as Roman Jakobson) consider phonemes to be further decomposable into features, such features being the true minimal constituents of language. Roman Osipovich Jakobson, (Russian Роман Осипович Якобсон) ( 11 October 1896 – 18 July 1982) was a Russian In Linguistics, a distinctive feature is the most basic unit of phonological structure that may be analyzed in phonological theory Features overlap each other in time, as do suprasegmental phonemes in oral language and many phonemes in sign languages. In Linguistics, prosody (from Greek προσωδία) is the Rhythm, stress, and intonation of speech

Contents

Background and related ideas

In ancient India, the Sanskrit grammarian Pāṇini (c. This article is about the history of South Asia prior to the Partition of British India in 1947 Sanskrit (sa संस्कृता वाक् saṃskṛtā vāk, for short sa संस्कृतम् saṃskṛtam) is a historical Grammar is the field of Linguistics that covers the Rules governing the use of any given natural language. Pāṇini ( IAST: Pāṇini Dēvanāgarī: sa पाणिनि a Patronymic meaning "descendant of {{IAST|Paṇi}} " was an ancient 520–460 BC), in his text of Sanskrit grammar, the Shiva Sutras, originated the concepts of the phoneme, the morpheme and the root. The Shiva Sutras ( Sanskrit: Maheśvara sūtra sa महेश्वर सूत्र contain the system of phonemic notation which was used to organize In Morpheme-based morphology, a morpheme is the smallest linguistic unit that has semantic meaning. The root is the primary lexical unit of a Word, which carries the most significant aspects of semantic content and cannot be reduced into smaller constituents The Shiva Sutras, traditionally prefaced to the Aṣṭādhyāyī, presents a system of phonemic notation in fourteen terse aphorisms. Pāṇini ( IAST: Pāṇini Dēvanāgarī: sa पाणिनि a Patronymic meaning "descendant of {{IAST|Paṇi}} " was an ancient This notational system introduces different clusters of phonemes that serve special roles in the morphology of Sanskrit, and are referred to throughout the text. Morphology is the field of Linguistics that studies the internal structure of words

Around the 1st century CE, the definitions of phoneme (oliyam) and alphabet (ezuththu) were discussed in the Tolkāppiyam concerning the Tamil language. The Tolkāppiyam (தொல்காப்பியம் is a work on the Grammar of the Tamil language and the earliest extant work of Tamil Tamil (ta தமிழ்; t̪əmɨɻ is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by Tamil people of the Indian subcontinent.

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. --> Abstraction is the process or result of generalization by reducing the information Jan Niecisław Ignacy Baudouin de Courtenay ( March 13, 1845 - November 3, 1929) was a Polish linguist and Slavist Mikołaj Habdank Kruszewski, ( Russianized, Nikolay Vyacheslavovich Krushevsky Николай Вячеславович Крушевский) (1851–1887 was a The term used by these two was fonema, the basic unit of what they called psychophonetics. The concept of the phoneme was elaborated in the works of Nikolai Trubetzkoi and other 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. Prince Nikolai Sergeyevich Trubetzkoy (also Trubetskoy) ( Russian: Николай Сергеевич Трубецкой ( Moscow, April 15, The Prague Linguistic Circle or " Prague school " ( French Cercle linguistique de Prague, Czech Pražský lingvistický kroužek For the use of structuralism in biology see Structuralism (biology Structuralism is an approach to the human sciences that attempts to analyze Ferdinand de Saussure (fɛʁdinɑ̃ də soˈsyːʁ ( November 26, 1857 – February 22, 1913) was a Swiss linguist Edward Sapir (səˈpɪər ( January 26 1884 &ndash February 4 1939) was a Jewish German - American Leonard Bloomfield ( April 1, 1887 – April 18, 1949) was an American linguist, whose influence dominated the development 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. Generative linguistics is a school of thought within Linguistics that makes use of the concept of a Generative grammar. Avram Noam Chomsky (noʊm ˈtʃɑmski born December 7 1928 is an American linguist, Philosopher, cognitive scientist, Political Morris Halle, né Pinkowitz is a Latvian-American Jewish linguist and an Institute Professor and professor Emeritus of linguistics Phonology ( Greek φωνή (phōnē voice sound + λόγος (lógos word speech subject of discussion is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning 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. Tone is the use of pitch in Language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning—that is to distinguish or inflect words In this case, the tones used are called tonemes. Tone is the use of pitch in Language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning—that is to distinguish or inflect words Some languages distinguish words made up of the same phonemes (and tonemes) by using different durations of some elements, which are called chronemes. In linguistics a chroneme is a basic theoretical unit of sound that can distinguish words by duration only of a vowel or consonant 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 Phonetics, a vowel is a Sound in spoken Language, such as English ah! or oh!, pronounced with an open Vocal tract In Articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a Speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the upper Vocal tract, the upper vocal

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/. In Typography, a grapheme is the fundamental unit in written language. 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 (/ /). In Phonetics, an allophone is one of several similar speech sounds ( Phones that belong to the same Phoneme. The conventions of orthography are then kept separate from both phonemes and allophones by the use of angle brackets < > to enclose the spelling. The orthography of a language specifies the correct way of using a specific Writing system to write the language

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. The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA is a system of phonetic notation based on the Latin alphabet, devised by the International Phonetic 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. The Extended Speech Assessment Methods Phonetic Alphabet (X-SAMPA is a variant of SAMPA developed in 1995 by John C 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. A web browser is a software application which enables a user to display and interact with text images videos music games and other information typically located on a An operating system (commonly abbreviated OS and O/S) is the software component of a Computer system that is responsible for the management and coordination

There are 2 published set of phonemic symbols for sign language: SignWriting and Stokoe notation. SignWriting is a system of writing Sign languages It is highly featural and visually iconic both in the shapes The Stokoe notation for American Sign Language (ASL was the first writing system designed for a Sign language. 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. American Sign Language (or ASL Ameslan is the dominant Sign language of the Deaf community in the United States, in the English-speaking parts Stokoe notation has since been applied to British Sign Language by Kyle and Woll, and to Australian Aboriginal sign languages by Adam Kendon. British Sign Language ( BSL) is the Sign language used in the United Kingdom (UK and is the first or preferred language of Deaf people in the Many Australian Aboriginal cultures have or traditionally had a Sign language counterpart to their spoken language

Examples

Examples of phonemes in the English language would include sounds from the set of English consonants, like /p/ and /b/. English is a West Germanic language originating in England and is the First language for most people in the United Kingdom, the United States 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/). A digraph, bigraph, or digram is a pair of characters used to write one Phoneme (distinct sound or a sequence of phonemes that does not correspond

To see a list of the phonemes in the English language, see IPA for English. This concise chart shows the most common applications of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA to represent English language pronunciations

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. is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities 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. Italian ( or lingua italiana) is a Romance language spoken by about 63 million people as a First language, primarily in Italy.

An important phoneme is the chroneme, a phonemically-relevant extension of the duration a consonant or vowel. In linguistics a chroneme is a basic theoretical unit of sound that can distinguish words by duration only of a vowel or consonant Some languages or dialects such as Finnish or Japanese allow chronemes after both consonants and vowels. Finnish ( or suomen kieli) is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland (92% As of 2006) and by ethnic Finns outside is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities Others, like Italian or Australian English use it after only one (in the case of Italian, consonants; in the case of Australian, vowels). Italian ( or lingua italiana) is a Romance language spoken by about 63 million people as a First language, primarily in Italy. Australian English is a non-rhotic variety of English spoken by most native-born Australians

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:

Neutralization, archiphoneme, underspecification

Main article: Underspecification

Phonemes that are contrastive in certain environments may not be contrastive in all environments. In Theoretical linguistics, underspecification is a phenomenon where certain features are omitted in Underlying representations Restricted underspecification 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. In Morpheme-based morphology, a morpheme is the smallest linguistic unit that has semantic meaning. 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/:

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. Prince Nikolai Sergeyevich Trubetzkoy (also Trubetskoy) ( Russian: Николай Сергеевич Трубецкой ( Moscow, April 15, The Prague Linguistic Circle or " Prague school " ( French Cercle linguistique de Prague, Czech Pražský lingvistický kroužek ). 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. The alveolar tap or flap is a type of Consonantal sound used in some spoken Languages The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that This can be heard by comparing writer with rider (for the sake of simplicity, Canadian raising is not taken into account). Canadian raising is a phonetic phenomenon that occurs in varieties of the English language, especially Canadian English, in which Diphthongs are "raised"

[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. In Grammar, a suffix (also postfix, ending) is an Affix which is placed at the end of a word In Morphophonology, the underlying representation (UR or underlying form (UF of a Morpheme is the abstract form the morpheme is postulated to have before 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 Theoretical linguistics, underspecification is a phenomenon where certain features are omitted in Underlying representations Restricted underspecification In Tuvan, phonemic vowels are specified with the features of tongue height, backness, and lip rounding. Tuvan (Tuvan Тыва дыл Tyva dyl) also known as Tuvinian, Tyvan, or Tuvin, is one of the Turkic languages. 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. Vowel harmony is a type of long-distance ( see below) assimilatory phonological process involving Vowels in some languages 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. Ubykh or Ubyx is a Language of the Northwestern Caucasian group, spoken by the Ubykh people up until the early 1990s Arrernte (or Aranda) is a language or group of closely related languages spoken in and around Alice Springs ( Mparntwe in Arrernte in the Northern The Bantu languages (technically Narrow Bantu languages) constitute a grouping belonging to the Niger-Congo family Rotokas has only six consonants, while !Xóõ has somewhere in the neighborhood of seventy-seven, and Ubyx eighty-one. Rotokas is a Language (part of the East Papuan language phylum) spoken by some 4000 people in Bougainville, an island to the east of 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. French ( français,) is a Romance language spoken around the world by 118 million people as a native language and by about 180 to 260 million people The Tai-Kadai languages, also known as Kadai, Kradai, or Kra-Dai languages and in China as Zhuang-Dong languages are a tonal The Kru Languages belong to the Niger-Congo language family and are spoken in the area ranging from the south-east of Liberia to the east of Côte 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). Clicks are speech sounds such as English tsk! tsk! used to express disapproval or the tchick! used to spur on a horse Phonation has slightly different meanings depending on the subfield of Phonetics. In Phonetics, the airstream mechanism is the method by which airflow is created in the vocal tract 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. English is a West Germanic language originating in England and is the First language for most people in the United Kingdom, the United States (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 lacks /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/. Arabic (ar الْعَرَبيّة (informally ar عَرَبيْ) in terms of the number of speakers is the largest living member of the Semitic language The Hawaiian language (Hawaiian ‘Ōlelo Hawai‘i) is an Austronesian language that takes its name from Hawai'i, the largest island in the tropical This article is about the language spoken by the Mohawk people for other uses see Mohawk. Hupa ( native name: Natinixwe Mixinewhe) is an Athabaskan language (of Na-Dené stock spoken in the Trinity valley in California by the The Sāmoan or Samoan language is the traditional language of Samoa and American Samoa and is an official language &mdash alongside English Rotokas is a Language (part of the East Papuan language phylum) spoken by some 4000 people in Bougainville, an island to the east of The Quileute is a Native American people in western Washington state in the United States, currently numbering approximately 750 While most of languages missing sounds have very small inventories, Arabic, Quileute, and Hupa have quite complex consonant systems.

See also

External links

In Linguistics, an alternation is the phenomenon of a Phoneme or Morpheme exhibiting variation in its phonological realization Complementary distribution in Linguistics is the relationship between two different elements where one element is found in a particular environment and the other element is In Phonology, minimal pairs are pairs of Words or phrases in a particular Language, which differ in only one phonological element such as a Phone Within Phonetics, a phone is a speech sound or gesture considered a physical event without regard to its place in the Phonology of a Language Phonology ( Greek φωνή (phōnē voice sound + λόγος (lógos word speech subject of discussion is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning Phonemic differentiation is the phenomenon of a Language maximizing the acoustic distance between its Phonemes presumably to minimize the possibility of misunderstanding A phonemic orthography is a Writing system where the written Graphemes correspond to Phonemes the spoken sounds of the language Emic and etic are terms used by some in the Social sciences and the Behavioral sciences to refer to two different kinds of Data concerning human Tone is the use of pitch in Language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning—that is to distinguish or inflect words Morphophonology (also morphophonemics, morphonology) is a branch of Linguistics which studies The phonological structure A Acoustic phonetics Active articulator Affricate Airstream mechanism Initial-stress derivation is a phonological process in English, wherein Verbs become Nouns or Adjectives when the stress is A viseme is a supposed basic unit of speech in the visual domain Free variation in Linguistics is the phenomenon of two (or more sounds or forms appearing in the same environment without a change in meaning and without being considered incorrect Triphone, an elementary linguistic unit that represents a sequence of three phonemes is a context-dependent Phoneme.

Dictionary

phoneme

-noun

  1. (linguistics) An indivisible unit of sound in a given language. A phoneme is an abstraction of the physical speech sounds (phones) and may encompass several different phones.
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