VI.

Phoneme
Considering the enormous number of sounds which are technially called phones, the speaker, and
the hearer both, need to reduce into a definite number of speech sound which are called phonems.
Phoneme is a bund of distinctive (!"# features which make up a speech sound unit.
($%!& $'&(%!& "!")&#
Phoneme is the smallest meaningless sound unit. *here are sertain features that are used for
phonemes eentificaton and although are called distinctive features.
+ll those features can be used for all the phonemes by giving them characteristics, such as
strong, weak, labial, plosive, bilabial, dorsal...
+ll this features need to be consider complitely, seriously, because each phoneme can be easily
replaced and therefor easily loose meaning. ,o we have to make up words. -f we make words, we
allways follow the contest.
Phonetic features can appears as non.distinctive or there are also called allophonic
.palatalaised /0 . two
.valaraised /, 1 only one
-n general distinctive features can be separated as2
3. +rticulatory (which means that the attantion is paid on articulator, or articulation, or their
phisiological aspect during the speech production.
4. +custic (which meants that the attention is paid to the behavior of the sound waves during
the mouvement of the air#.
Parametres which are relevant to the first point, whithin the speech system of the 5nglish language
are2
3. 6istinctive type of articulation
4. 6istinctive manner of articulation
7. 6istinctive height of the tongue
8. 6istinctive articulation
9. 6istinctive force of articulation
:. 6istinctive degree of length
;. 6istinctive composition
,ometimes two different phonemes can represent two sound types, or two separate words. *hey are
called contrastive minimal pairs. (*wo words closely prononciate# <beg< = beg <b-g< = big
>ree phonemic variations, when we have two same words but different pronouns,
+ = alphabet <?lf@b-t< <?lf@bet< (Aecause of the dialect#