Relationship between the phoneme and its allophones.

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 448.

The phoneme is a minimal abstract linguistic unit realized in speech in the form of speech sounds opposable to other phonemes of the same language to distinguish the meaning of morphemes and words.

Vassilyev states that the phoneme matter is a functional unit because it makes one word or grammatical form distinct from the other: e.g. said – says, bath – path, light – like.

Secondly, the phoneme is material, real and objectivebecause it exists independently of our will or intention and is realized of all English speaking people in the form of speech sounds, its allophones.

Thirdly, the phoneme is an abstraction because we make it abstract from its concrete realization– allophones for classificatory purposes. The native speaker is quite aware of the phonemes of his language but less aware of the allophones. He will not hear the difference between two allophones like the alveolar and dental consonants [d] in the words bread and breadth. In other words, native speakers abstract themselves from the difference between allophones of the same phoneme because it has no functional value.

Let us consider the English phoneme [d], at least those of its allophones which are known to everybody who studies English pronunciation. As you know from the practical course of English phonetics, [d] when not affected by the articulation of the preceding or following sounds is a plosive, forelingual, apical, alveolar, lenis, voiced. This is how it sounds in isolation or in such words as door, down, dart etc., when it retains its typical articulatory characteristics. In this case the consonant [d] is called a principle allophone.