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lietuvių latviešu malagasy македонски മലയാളം bahasa melayu plattdüütsch नेपाल भाषा nederlands norsk nynorsk norsk bokmål novial occitan ирон ਪੰਜਾਬੀ polski piemontèis پنجابی پښتو português română русский русиньскый саха тыла sicilianu scots سنڌي srpskohrvatski српскохрватски simple english slovenčina slovenščina shqip српски srpski seeltersk svenska kiswahili தமிழ் ไทย tagalog toki pona türkçe татарча tatarça українська اردو oʻzbekcha ўзбекча vèneto tiếng việt walon winaray 吴语 ייִדיש ⵜⴰⵎⴰⵣⵉⵖⵜ ⵜⴰⵏⴰⵡⴰⵢⵜ 閩南語 bân lâm gí 粵語 中文 edit links article talk english read edit view history tools tools move to sidebar hide actions read edit view history general what links here related changes upload file permanent link page information cite this page get shortened url switch to legacy parser print export download as pdf printable version in other projects wikimedia commons wikidata item appearance move to sidebar hide from wikipedia the free encyclopedia basic unit of phonology this article is about the speech unit for the javame library see phoneme for the collection of phenotypes see phenome this article contains phonetic transcriptions in the international phonetic alphabet ipa for an introductory guide on ipa symbols see help ipa for the distinction between and see ipa brackets and transcription delimiters a phoneme ˈ f oʊ n iː m foh neem is a set of similar speech sounds that are perceptually regarded by the speakers of a language as a single basic sound the smallest possible phonetic unit that helps distinguish one word from another 1 all languages contain phonemes or the spatial gestural equivalent in sign languages and all spoken languages include both consonant and vowel phonemes phonemes are studied under phonology a branch of linguistics a discipline encompassing the scientific study of language writing speech and related matters phonemes are traditionally represented when written as a glyph a character enclosed within two forward sloping slashes for example ɒ indicates the vowel phoneme or set of possible sounds used in the middle of the english word pot the exact phonetic reality of this phoneme varies by accent with the pronunciation ɔ ⓘ in many british and australian accents ɑ ⓘ in many us and irish accents a ⓘ in great lakes accents of the us etc still ɒ counts as one phoneme because it contrasts with say the ʊ of put or ɪ of pit overview edit phonemic transcription redirects here not to be confused with phonemic orthography further information phonetic transcription degrees of abstraction the words cell and set have the same sequence of sounds except for the final consonant thus sɛl versus sɛt in the international phonetic alphabet ipa which is a writing system that can be used to represent phonemes since l and t alone distinguish the spoken words cell and set l and t are examples of phonemes of the english language specifically they are consonant phonemes along with the s while ɛ is a vowel phoneme english spelling does not always closely align with its phonemes for example the english words knot nut and gnat all share the consonant phonemes n and t differing only by their vowel phonemes ɒ ʌ and æ respectively another example of phonemic transcription is pʊʃt the notation for a sequence of four phonemes p ʊ ʃ and t that constitutes the pronunciation of the word pushed phonemes or word distinguishing sounds or sets of sounds are perceived differently by users of one language versus another for example n ⓘ and ŋ ⓘ are separate phonemes in english as they distinguish words like sin from words like sing sɪn versus sɪŋ but they constitute a single phoneme in other languages such as spanish in which pan and paŋ for instance are interpreted by spanish speakers as merely regional or dialect specific pronunciations of the same word pan the spanish word for bread such spoken variations of a single phoneme are known by linguists as allophones on the other hand y ⓘ and u ⓘ are usually heard as variations on one phoneme in english though they are completely separate phonemes in other languages like french which distinguishes words such as rue street ʁy from roue wheel ʁu linguists use slashes in the ipa to transcribe phonemes and square brackets to transcribe more precise pronunciation details including allophones they describe this distinction as phonemic a versus phonetic thus the pronunciations of tap versus tab or pat versus bat can be represented phonemically and are written between slashes p b etc while nuances of exactly how speakers pronounce p are phonetic and written between brackets such as p for the p in spit versus pʰ for the p in pit which in english is an aspirated allophone of p i e pronounced with an extra burst of air conceptual basis theory of the definition of phonemes edit there are many views as to exactly what phonemes are and how a given language should be analyzed in phonemic terms generally a phoneme is regarded as an abstraction of a set or equivalence class of spoken sound variations that are nevertheless perceived as a single basic unit of sound by the ordinary native speakers of a given language while phonemes are considered abstracted underlying representations for sound segments within words the corresponding phonetic realizations of those phonemes each phoneme with its various allophones constitute the surface form that is actually uttered and heard allophones each have technically different articulations inside particular words or particular environments within words yet these differences do not create any meaningful distinctions alternatively at least one of those articulations could be feasibly used in all such words with these words still being recognized as such by users of the language an example in american english is that the sound spelled with the symbol t is usually articulated with a glottal stop ʔ or a similar glottalized sound in the word cat an alveolar flap ɾ in dating an alveolar plosive t in stick and an aspirated alveolar plosive tʰ in tie however american english speakers perceive or hear all of these sounds usually with no conscious effort as merely being allophones of a single phoneme the one traditionally represented in the ipa as t for computer typing purposes systems such as x sampa exist to represent ipa symbols using only ascii characters however descriptions of particular languages may use different conventional symbols to represent the phonemes of those languages for languages whose writing systems employ the phonemic principle ordinary letters may be used to denote phonemes although this approach is often imperfect as pronunciations naturally shift in a language over time rendering previous spelling systems outdated or no longer closely representative of the sounds of the language see further the section headed correspondence between letters and phonemes below assignment of speech sounds to phonemes edit a simplified procedure for determining whether two sounds represent the same or different phonemes a phoneme is a sound or a group of different sounds perceived to have the same function by speakers of the language or dialect in question an example is the english phoneme k which occurs in words such as c at k it s c at s k it although most native speakers do not notice this in most english dialects the c k sounds in these words are not identical in kit ⓘ kʰɪt the sound is aspirated but in skill ⓘ skɪl it is unaspirated the words therefore contain different speech sounds or phones transcribed kʰ for the aspirated form and k for the unaspirated one these different sounds are nonetheless considered to belong to the same phoneme because if a speaker used one instead of the other the meaning of the word would not change using the aspirated form kʰ in skill might sound odd but the word would still be recognized by contrast some other sounds would cause a change in meaning if substituted for example substitution of the sound t would produce the different word s t ill and that sound must therefore be considered to represent a different phoneme the phoneme t the above shows that in english k and kʰ are allophones of a single phoneme k in some languages however kʰ and k are perceived by native speakers as significantly different sounds and substituting one for the other can change the meaning of a word in those languages therefore the two sounds represent different phonemes for example in icelandic kʰ is the first sound of kátur meaning cheerful but k is the first sound of gátur meaning riddles icelandic therefore has two separate phonemes kʰ and k minimal pairs edit a pair of words like kátur and gátur above that differ only in one phone is called a minimal pair for the two alternative phones in question in this case kʰ and k the existence of minimal pairs is a common test to decide whether two phones represent different phonemes or are allophones of the same phoneme to take another example the minimal pair t ip and d ip illustrates that in english tʰ and d belong to separate phonemes t and d since the words have different meanings english speakers must be conscious of the distinction between the two sounds signed languages such as american sign language asl also have minimal pairs differing only in exactly one of the signs parameters handshape movement location palm orientation and nonmanual signal or marker a minimal pair may exist in the signed language if the basic sign stays the same but one of the parameters changes 4 however the absence of minimal pairs for a given pair of phones does not always mean that they belong to the same phoneme they may be so dissimilar phonetically that it is unlikely for speakers to perceive them as the same sound for example english has no minimal pair for the sounds h as in h at and ŋ as in ba ng and the fact that they can be shown to be in complementary distribution could be used to argue for their being allophones of the same phoneme however they are so dissimilar phonetically that they are considered separate phonemes 5 a case like this shows that sometimes it is the systemic distinctions and not the lexical context which are decisive in establishing phonemes this implies that the phoneme should be defined as the smallest phonological unit which is contrastive at a lexical level or distinctive at a systemic level b phonologists have sometimes had recourse to near minimal pairs to show that speakers of the language perceive two sounds as significantly different even if no exact minimal pair exists in the lexicon it is challenging to find a minimal pair to distinguish english ʃ from ʒ yet it seems uncontroversial to claim that the two consonants are distinct phonemes the two words pressure ˈ p r ɛ ʃ ər and pleasure ˈ p l ɛ ʒ ər can serve as a near minimal pair 6 the reason why this is still acceptable proof of phonemehood is that there is nothing about the additional difference r vs l that can be expected to somehow condition a voicing difference for a single underlying postalveolar fricative one can however find true minimal pairs for ʃ and ʒ if less common words are considered for example confucian and confusion are a valid minimal pair suprasegmental phonemes edit besides segmental phonemes such as vowels and consonants there are also suprasegmental features of pronunciation such as tone and stress syllable boundaries and other forms of juncture nasalization and vowel harmony which in many languages change the meaning of words and so are phonemic phonemic stress is encountered in languages such as english for example there are two words spelled invite one is a verb and is stressed on the second syllable the other is a noun and stressed on the first syllable without changing any of the individual sounds the position of the stress distinguishes the words and so a full phonemic specification would include indication of the position of the stress ɪnˈvaɪt for the verb ˈɪnvaɪt for the noun in other languages such as french word stress cannot have this function its position is generally predictable and so it is not phonemic and therefore not usually indicated in dictionaries phonemic tones are found in languages such as mandarin chinese in which a given syllable can have five different tonal pronunciations the syllable ma with each of the primary tones in standard mandarin chinese minimal set for phonemic tone in mandarin chinese tone number 1 2 3 4 5 hanzi 媽 麻 馬 罵 嗎 pinyin mā má mǎ mà ma ipa ma ́ ma ̌ ma ̀ c ma ̂ ma gloss mother hemp horse scold question particle the tone phonemes in such languages are sometimes called tonemes languages such as english do not have phonemic tone but they use intonation for functions such as emphasis and attitude distribution of allophones edit when a phoneme has more than one allophone the one actually heard at a given occurrence of that phoneme may be dependent on the phonetic environment surrounding sounds allophones that normally cannot appear in the same environment are said to be in complementary distribution in other cases the choice of allophone may be dependent on the individual speaker or other unpredictable factors such allophones are said to be in free variation but allophones are still selected in a specific phonetic context not the other way around background and related ideas edit the term phonème from ancient greek φώνημα romanized phōnēma sound made utterance thing spoken speech language 7 was reportedly first used by a dufriche desgenettes in 1873 but it referred only to a speech sound the term phoneme as an abstraction was developed by the polish linguist jan baudouin de courtenay and his student mikołaj kruszewski during 1875 1895 8 the term used by these two was fonema the basic unit of what they called psychophonetics daniel jones became the first linguist in the western world to use the term phoneme in its current sense employing the word in his article the phonetic structure of the sechuana language 9 the concept of the phoneme was then elaborated in the works of nikolai trubetzkoy and others of the prague school during the years 1926 1935 and in those of structuralists like ferdinand de saussure edward sapir and leonard bloomfield some structuralists though not sapir rejected the idea of a cognitive or psycholinguistic function for the phoneme 10 11 later the term was used and redefined in generative linguistics most famously by noam chomsky and morris halle 12 and remains central to many accounts of the development of modern phonology as a theoretical concept or model though it has been supplemented and even replaced by others 13 some linguists such as roman jakobson and morris halle proposed that phonemes may be further decomposable into features such features being the true minimal constituents of language 14 features overlap each other in time as do suprasegmental phonemes in oral language and many phonemes in sign languages features could be characterized in different ways jakobson and colleagues defined them in acoustic terms 15 chomsky and halle used a 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