THE SOUNDS OF SPEECH

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 624.

SOUNDS AND PHONEMES

Speech sounds are grouped into language units called phonemes. A phoneme is the smallest language unit existing as such a speech sound which is capable of distinguishing one word from another or one grammatical form of a word from another form of the same word. Thus the phoneme is a functional unit. It should be mentioned that speech sounds can perform this distinctive function only when they are opposed to each other in one and the same position (phonetic context), e.g.

mad – mæd bead – bi:d man - mæn

mat – mæt bid – bid men – men

map – mæp bed – bed asks – a:sks

mass – mæs bud – bΛd asked – a:skt

The underlined speech sounds that bring about a change of meaning of the words, and the grammatical forms of the words "man" and "ask" represent different phonemes.

The phoneme is realized in speech in the material form of speech sounds of different type. Various speech realizations of the phoneme are called its variants or allophones . For example, in the words " eight " , " eighth " , " try " the /t/ consonants are similar , but at the same time they are slightly different: the /t/ in

" eight " is alveolar , whereas the /t/ in " eighth " is dental , the /t/ in " try " is post-alveolar and they all are considered to be the allophones of one and the same phoneme /t/. The difference between the allophones of the same phoneme is due to their position in various phonetic contexts. Each of these speech sounds occurs in a definite position in which no other of these sounds can ever occur. They cannot differentiate the meaning of words or their grammatical forms since there is no mutual opposition possible in this case.