The notion of the phoneme. Phoneme theory.

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 699.

The theoretical importance of phonetics.

Phonetics is a fundamental branch of linguistics and no language description is complete without phonetics.

For those who work in speech therapy, which handles pathological conditions of

speech, phonetics forms an essential part of the professional training syllabus. Phonetics also enters into the training of teachers of the deaf and dumb people and can be of relevance to a number of medical and dental problems. An understanding of phonetics has proved extremely useful in such varied spheres as the following: investigations in the historical aspects of languages, and in the field of ialectology; designing or improving systems of writing or spelling (orthographies for unwritten languages, shorthand, spelling reform), in questions involving the spelling or pronunciation of personal or place names or of words borrowed from other languages.

The phoneme can be defined as the smallest further indivisible language unit which is capable of distinguishing one word from another on the same language.

Boudain de Coustenay sonsidered a phoneme as a complex perception of articulatory movements and muscular sensations connecting them to resulting acoustic impressions.

Scherba was first who suggested the idea of sense-differentiating function of the phoneme.