PHonetics
1. Phonetics and Phonology
1.4. Phonemes
A good way to think about a phoneme is as a group of phonetically similar sounds that are treated as members of the same sound category. Because the members of a sound category are treated as “the same sound” in a language, they cannot be used for communicating differences in meaning. English speakers treat [t h ] and [t] as belonging to the same sound category, so they cannot be used to distinguish one word from another. Different phonemes are different categories of sounds and the differences among these categories can signal differences in meaning. English speakers treat [t] and [d] as belonging to different sound categories—/t/ and /d/, respectively—and so 111 Phonetics and Phonology these can be used to differentiate one word from another. Sound categories are abstractions. We can only perceive them when one of their members is pronounced. The sounds that make up the category are called the allophones of that phoneme. Thus [t] and [t h ] are allophones of the English phoneme /t/. Notice that the individual sound symbols are the same as those we used for phonetics, but to distinguish phonology from phonetics, we enclose phonemes in slanted brackets / / and use square brackets [ ] for phonetic notation.
Perhaps the following diagram will help. It represents the phoneme /u/ and two of its allophones:
/u/
[u] [u:]
That is, the phoneme /u/ is pronounced in (at least) two ways, [u] and [u:], depending upon its context. Table 8 lists the phonemes of English. Consonants: /p, t, k, b, d, g, m, n, N/ /f, T, s, S, h, v, ð, z, Z/ /tS, dZ/ /r, l, w, j/ , A, O, o, U, u, (@)/{Vowels: /i, I, e, E, Diphthongs: /OI, aU, aI/ table 8: english phonemes As you have no doubt noticed, there are nearly 40 phonemes of English (the number varies somewhat from dialect to dialect), while there are only 26 letters in the English alphabet. This is one of the reasons why the alphabet appears to fit the language so poorly