Allophones and phonemes Phon- of Phoneme means sound.

All languages have a sound inventory, an alphabet of sounds, and some of those sounds have variations called allophones (See Allophone below). refuse, r[i]fuse (verb) to decline to accept refuse, r[]fuse (noun) trash, garbage 1. The sounds represented by the letter <e>, above, are articulated differently: one is pronounced [i], the other is pronounced [ ]. They represent different sounds. 2. They occur in the same environment: after <r> and before <f>, which tells us they are not variations (allophones), that they are distinct sounds and part of the language's sound inventory. 3. Change the [i] sound of refuse to [] and the meaning of the word changes to that of a noun r[]fuse meaning trash, garbage. 1. Phonemes are not predictable. They can occur in any environment and in any position, initial, internal, final: tan (sun-exposed skin) ant (insect)

Allophones are predictable: they occur in obvious phonetic environments. For example, Banff (place in Canada) has two pronunciations, Ba[n]ff and Ba[m]ff. If you were a linguist hearing this language for the first time, how would you write down the word, with an <n> or an <m>? That is, which phoneme would you choose, /n/ or /m/? The answer is in the phonetic environment, predictability: both [m] and [f] are pronounced with the lips. The two sounds [m] and [f] share articulatory features. That's the 'obvious phonetic environment' I mentioned above. The word is Banff, with an /n/. The phonetic rule: /n/ is pronounced as [m] before /f/ in the word <Banff>. We can't predict phonemes that way as they are unpredictable and "free", and when they change because of their phonetic environment, and they will and do, they become allophones, predictable variations.

Allo- of Allophone means variation. cat[s] dog[z]

1. Plural -s is articulated differently according to its environment. When Plural -s occurs after a voiceless sound (as in cats), it is pronounced [s], voiceless cat[s], and when -s occurs after a voiced sound (as in dogs), it is pronounced [z], voiced dog[z].

2. Plural [s] never occurs after a voiced sound. It is always occurs after a voiceless sound. When it occurs after a voiced sound it changed to [z], voiced. Plural [s] always occurs in the same environment; Plural [z] always occurs in the same environment. 3. Plural -s ([s] and [z]) means plural no matter how many sound variations it has. The change in sound doesn't change its meaning because speakers know that Plural -s always occurs in the same environment: after a plural noun. (Note that, because Plural -s is a morpheme, its variations [s] and [z] are called allomorphs, not allophones; nevertheless, they are allo-, variations.) Phonemes, on the other hand, can occur anywhere, which is why meaning changes when the phoneme changes (e.g., fu[s], fu[z]; bu[s], bu[z])

Complementary distribution and free variation

omplementary distribution and Free variation

Not all sounds of a language are necessarily distinctive sounds. Compare the English and American pronunciations of "dance". Although there are different sounds in the pair, the meaning does not change. Thus, [a as in barn] and [a as in pat] are not phonemes in this case. We call this phenomenon free variation. The two sounds can be referred to as allophones. These sounds are merely variations in pronunciation of the same phoneme and do not change the meaning of the word. Free variation can be found in various dialects of the same language. In this case, the different pronunciations of words throughout a country do not change the meaning of those words. Another example of sounds which are not phonemes are those which occur in complementary distribution. This means that where one sound of the pair occurs, the other does not. Consider the following words with respect to the plosive sounds p,t, and k. Put your hand in front of your mouth and pronounce the words. Do you feel a difference? pill spill till still kill skill Did you realize, that there is a burst or puff of air after the /p/ in pill, till, and kill, that is absent inspill, still, and skill? The feature that makes the difference between the plosive sounds in pill, till, kill and spill, still, skill is called aspiration (the period between the release of the closure of a consonant and the start of the vocal cord activity for the vowel that comes after it. This period is usually felt as a puff of air.) Aspirated and unaspirated allophones are one example of complementary distribution: where the one (e.g. the aspirated p) occurs, the other cannot occur. Aspirated [aspirated p], as you can see in this example, occurs only at the beginning of words. [aspirated p] and [p as in pit] are only allophones of the same phoneme /p/. The word complementary actually refers to the fact that the contexts in which the allophones of a phoneme appear can never be the same and they cover the whole range of possible environments in which the sound can occur (for an analogous situation think of complementary angles in geometry). In other words, in a given context X only a certain allophone will occur, while in another context Y, another allophone is expected to occur and X and Y are the only contexts in which the allophones can occur. It follows from this that the occurrence of allophones is always predictable since in a certain context we can only expect one and only one realization of the phoneme. In the context of the word pill for example the voiceless plosive /p/ is followed by a stressed vowel and is in syllableinitial position we can safely say that the aspirated allophone [ph] will come up. If, on the other

hand, p is not syllable-initial and is preceded by s as in spill, we can safely predict that the unaspirated variant of p will occur. The occurrence of different phonemes is, on the contrary, totally unpredictable since it is the very fundamental characteristic of phonemes that they are contrasted in one and the same context. There is no way in which we can predict therefore that in the context -il we will have pill, nil, chill, fill, gill, Jill, sill, kill, mill, hill, dill or till (the list can continue). Any two words such aspill and bill, mentioned above, or kill and hill, etc. that help us discover which sounds have a contrastive value in a given language are said to form, just to remind you, a minimal pair. The following criteria must be met by the two words in order that they form a minimal pair: they should have the same number of sounds, and these sounds should be identical, with the only exception of the contrasting sound that should be distributed in the same context in both words; the words must also have different meanings.

Contrastive distribution and complementary distribution Pdf Phonetics and phonology

Phonetics and phonology

Phonetics: In order to produce sound humans use various body parts including the lips, tongue, teeth, pharynx and lungs. Phonetics is the term for the description and classification of speech sounds, particularly how sounds are produced, transmitted and received. A phoneme is the smallest unit in the sound system of a language; for example, the t sound in the word top. Various phonetic alphabets have been developed to represent the speech sounds in writing through the use of symbols. Some of these symbols are identical to the Roman letters used in many language alphabets; for example:p and b. Other symbols are based on the Greek alphabet, such as to represent the th- sound in thin and thought. Still others have been specially invented; e.g. for the th- sound in the and then. The most widely used phonetic script is the International Phonetic Alphabet. There is an excellent article on this in Wikipedia. Phonology: Phonology is the term used for the study of the speech sounds used in a particular language. The distinctive accents that many learners of English have are due to differences between the phonological system of their language and that of English. From birth, and possibly before, we learn to recognize and produce the distinctive sounds of our own language. We do not need to give any thought to how to have the lips, tongue, teeth, etc. working together to produce the desired sounds. The physical structures of parts of the sound system are adapted to produce native-language sounds.

English has some speech sounds (phonemes) that do not exist in other languages. It is no surprise, therefore, that native speakers of those languages have difficulties producing or even perceiving such sounds. This is particularly true for speakers from language families other than the Germanic one to which English belongs.
Rouded and unrounded vowel