LECTURE 3-4

THE THEORY OF A PHONEME.

 OUTLINE
1. Phonemes and Allophones.
2. Contrastive and Complementary
Distribution. Free variations of a Single
Phoneme.
3. Distinctive and Non-distinctive Features.
4. The Trends of the Theory of Phonemes.
5. The Phoneme Theory in Other Countries.
6. Distribution of Phonemes. The system of
English Phonemes.
 1. Phonemes and Allophones

Phoneme is the smallest unit of

sound of speech capable of
distinguishing one word frоm
another. Separate segments have
no meaning of their own, they
mean something only in
combinations, which are called
words.

E.x. Pan-ban, ban-bin.

 E.x. put, pair
spare, speak
For example, in English, when the phoneme /p/ occurs
at the beginning of words, like “put” and “pair” it is said
with a little puff of air (called aspiration). But when /p/
occurs in words like “span” and “spare” it is said without
the puff of air, it is unaspirated. Both the unaspirated /p/
in “put” in “span” and the aspirated /p/ in “put” have the
same phonemic function. They are both heard and
identified as /p/ and not as /b/. They are both
allophones.
Therefore, “p” and “b” are different phonemes in
English. If we replace aspirated “t” in the word “tip” by
non-aspirated, we won’t get different words. Therefore,
“t” and “t” are variants of one and the same phoneme
“t”, that is allophones.
Ex. Twice-eighth – try – written – little – stay.
To avoid this ambiguity, the linguists use 2
separate terms:
Phoneme – is used to mean “sound” in its
contrastive sense
Allophone – is used for sounds which are variants
of a phoneme, they usually occur in different
positions in the word and cannot contrast.
Allophones are the predictable realizations of
phonemes.
 2. Contrastive and Complementary
Distribution.

The range of positions in which a particular

unit of a language can occur is called its
distribution.
Two or more sounds in a language contrast if
they appear in the same position, in the
same frame. These sounds are said to be in
contrasted distribution.
E.x. pit-pot, tan-ban, seat-seed.
 Sounds in a language that never occur in the
same environment can never contrast.
They cannot appear in contrasted distribution.
They occur only in different environments,
They are said to be in complementary
distribution.
Sounds that are in contrasted distribution are
phonemes, and those in complementary
distribution are allophones.
Free Variations of a Single Phoneme.
E.x. The man who we saw.
The man whom we saw.
Шкаф-шкап, калоши-галоши.
either, neither, economics.
Such variations are often considered as social variations or
stylistic variations.
The suspension of phoneme contrast in isolated words is
called free variations or a temporary neutralization.
Although phonetic contrast is suspended some social linguists
have argued that free variations are often sociologically
significant. The choice between variants is often conditioned
by the social situation. One variety may be associated with a
particular social group or geographical area or may be of
higher or lower prestige.
 3. Distinctive and Non-distinctive
Features.

Some articulatory features are distinctive,

relevant, others – are not.
To extract relevant features of the sound we
have to oppose it to some other phoneme in the
same phonetic context.
This is the method of minimal pairs.
E.x. Buy-pie, bore-pour, big-pig, bear-pear.
If the opposed sounds differ in one articulatory
feature and this difference between them brings
about changes in the meaning, the contrasting
features are distinctive or relevant.
The articulatory features which do not serve to
distinguish meaning are called non-distinctive or
irrelevant.
The set of properties that are distinctive is not
constant throughout the world’s languages. It may
differ from language to language.
E.x. Aspiration is non-distinctive in English, Japan.
It is distinctive in languages such as Korean and Thai.
The distinction between voiced and voiceless
consonants is distinctive in English.
E.x. pin-bin, bat-bad, bag-back.
In Russian the voiced-voiceless feature is neutralized at
the end of the word.
E.x. prut= twig – прут
prud=pond - пруд
Palatalization is a distinctive feature in Russian.
E.x. “mat” (checkmate) / “mat ’ ” (mother).
ел-ель, мел-мель, брат-брать
 4. The trends of the Theory of Phonemes.
“phone” – «звук» - Ivan Baudoin de Courtenay (1845-1929).
“mentalist” view of the phoneme.
Phoneme is a psychic image of a sound. (1870s)
The role of sounds in the mechanism of language for
communication between people does not coincide with their
physical nature.
Daniel Jones – “The Phoneme: its nature, development and
origin” – Phoneme – a phonetic one.
B. de Courtenay’s concept can be viewed psychologically and
physically.
Psychophonetics is related to the pictured sounds.
Physiophonetics is related to concrete sounds actually uttered.
Immediate follower – L.V. Scherba (1880-1944) – “Russian
vowels in their qualitative and quantitative aspects”.
In actual speech there exists a certain number of sound types
which are capable of distinguishing the meaning and the form
of words.
He gave the notion of allophones.
The Phoneme may be viewed as a functional, material and
abstract element.
Phoneme- is the smallest general phonetic representation of the
given language which is able to associate with the meaning
representation and to differentiate words.
The definition is of a semantic character. There is a close
connection between phoneme and meaning.
 V.A. Vassilyev looked upon the phoneme “ as
a dialectical unity of these aspects because
they determine one another and are
independent”.
“The segmental phoneme is the smallest
language unit that exists in the speech of all
the members of a given language
community”.
The Phoneme is material, objective and real;
abstractional and generalized and
functional.
It’s a truly materialistic point of view.
 The Phoneme and its 3 aspects.
V.A. Vassilyev “English Phonetics. A Theoretical Course”.
Functional aspect – the opposition of phonemes in the same
phonetic environment differentiates the meaning of
morphemes, words or phrases.
E.x. He was hurt badly. He was heard badly.
It was a sin. It was a scene.
Said – says, bath – path.
Phoneme – material and objective. It is realized in speech of
all English-speaking people in the form of speech
sounds.
Phoneme – abstract and generalized. Native speakers
abstract themselves from the difference between the
allophones of the same phoneme.
V.A. Vassilyev: “Phoneme is an objective
reality, existing independently from our will or
intention.
It is an abstraction because we make it
abstract from concrete realizations for
classificatory purposes; it functions to make
one word or its grammatical form distinct from
the other, it constitutes words and helps to
recognize them.
 M.A. Sokolova: “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”.
 5. The Phoneme Theory in Other
Countries.
The abstractional conception of the
phoneme was originated by F. de
Saussure. He considered phonemes not
as some material matter but some
disembodied units of the language formed
by the differences separating its acoustic
image from the rest of the units.
In his opinion language contains nothing
but differences between different sounds.
In his words “language is a system of
signs expressing ideas”.
F. de Saussure’s interpretation of the
Phonemic Theory was shared by American
structuralists Leonard Bloomfield and
Edward Sapir.
Phonemes are declared by them as
“abstractional fictions”. They are only
structural elements of the language. The
“abstract” view regards the phoneme
independent of the phonetic properties. It
was advocated by their pupils in the
Copenhagen Linguistic Circle.
The American linguist Ch. Hockett states
that one of the main functions of speech
sounds is to keep utterances apart. He
says that the phonological system of any
language is not so much a system of
sounds, but it is a network of differences
in them.
His definition of a phoneme is as follows:
“the phonemes are the elements which
stand in contrast with each other in the
phonological system of a language”.
During the late 1920s the study of the phoneme was
started by the group of Eastern European scholars, who
on the initiative of the Czech linguist V. Mathesius
formed themselves in 1926 into the Circle Linguistique
de Prague.

Among them were the Russian scientists Nikolay

Trubetzkoy and Roman Jakobson.

They were not the pupils of B. de Courtenay, but they

were familiar with his work and influenced by it.

L. Scherba disapproved of the concepts of the Prague

School contributors and his efforts were continued by
the linguists who regarded a phoneme as the smallest
unit of speech.
Following the theory of Ferdinand de Saussure,
N. Trubetzkoy distinguishes the sounds of language
and phonemes.
He viewed the phoneme as the minimal sound unit by
which meanings may be differentiated.
He developed F. de Saussure’s principle of the separation
of speech from language by proclaiming a new science –
phonology.

According to Trubetzkoy, phonology is a linguistic science

and should concern itself with the distinctive features of
a language.

Phonetics is a biological science and should concern itself

with the sounds of a language as they are pronounced
and are heard.
The London School of Phonology was headed by professor Daniel
Jones and is considered to represent the physical conception of the
phoneme:

“A Phoneme may be described roughly as a family of sounds

consisting of an important sound of the language with other related
sounds”.
The members of the family show phonetic similarity. No member of
the family can occur in the same phonetic context as any other
member.

D. Jones’ conceptions show the influence of N.S. Trubetzkoy.

According to D. Jones, the problem of phonemes is connected with
philosophy. He considers that it’s impossible to give an adequate
definition of the phoneme, since the term “language” is vague.
 6. Distribution of Phonemes.
The System of English Phonemes.

Hawaiian – poor in phonemes. The only consonants are:

/ h, k, l, m, n, p, w /.
None of them may be used without a following vowel.
“Merry Christmas” = “Mele Kalikimaka”.

Arabic has the greatest variety of guttural sounds.

The languages of the Caucasus are considered to have
the richest assortment of consonant sounds.
The Hottentot-Bushman languages of southwest Africa
use grunts and clicks as normal parts of their speech
sounds.
Some European languages get along without vowels.
The Yugoslav name for Trieste is Trst.
In Czech “a hill full of fog” is “vrch pln mlh”.
The r and l in these words serve as vowels.

The name of the former capital of Kirgistan Frunze usually

sounds/purunze/.
There is no the distribution of /fr/ at the beginning of the
words in the Kirgiz language.

In Tatar and English there is no phoneme /ц/ = /ts/ as in

Russian words tsar, koltso, tsentr and the learners will face
additional difficulties acquiring this phoneme.
R. Jacobson and his associates report that they have found
no language where the syllable cannot begin with a
consonant or end with a vowel, but there are many
where the syllable cannot begin with a vowel or end
with a consonant.
42 phonemes – in Russian
44 phonemes – in English
20 phonemes – in Polynesian languages
75 phonemes– in certain Caucasian dialects
32 phonemes- in French
40 phonemes – in German.
The variant of the phoneme which is described as
the most representative and free from the
influence of the neighbouring phonemes is
called principal.
The variants used in actual speech are called
subsidiary.
E.x. light, let – clear in the initial position.
hill, mill – dark in the terminal position.
In Russian – вопль, рубль – the terminal [l]
is devoiced after the voiceless [п], [б].
The distinction between consonants and vowels is
based mainly on auditory effect.

Consonants – voice+ noise

Vowels – voice

From the articulatory point of view the difference is

due to the work of speech organs.
Consonants – obstruction is made.
Vowels – no obstruction is made.
Consonants are characterized by the so-called “close
articulation”. The air stream is blocked, hindered or
restricted.
Vowels are articulated when a voiced air-stream is
shaped using the tongue and the lips.
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