Sounds and phonemes

Key words and expressions:

phonemes, language community, a change of meaning, a functional unit, phonetic context, the material form, allоphones, articulatory features, distinctive, a language unit

Speech sounds are grouped into language units called phonemes. A phoneme may be thought of as the smallest contrastive language unit which exists in the speech of all people be­longing to the same language community in the form of speech sounds and may bring about a change of meaning.

The phoneme is a functional unit. That means that being opposed to other phonemes in the same phonetic context it is ca­pable of differentiating the meaning, e. g:

pie — tie Are you fond of this c u t?

or

lot — lit Are you fond of this c ar t?

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 allоphones. The difference be­tween the allophones of the same phoneme is due to their posi­tion in various phonetic contexts.

The articulatory features which are com­mon to all the allophones of the same phoneme and are capable of differentiating the meaning are called distinctive.

Allophones of the same phoneme never occur in the same phonetic context. They cannot differentiate the meaning since there is no mutual opposition possible in this case. Such speech sounds are grouped into a phoneme and function as a language unit opposed to other language units.

VOWELS AND CONSONANTS

Key words and expressions:

uttering, vowels, consonants, obstruction, the supra-glottal cavities, noise component, monophthongs, diphthongoids, diphthongs

Phoneme is the smallest unit of the language. There are 44 phonemes in English. The organs of speech are capable of uttering many different kinds of sounds. From the practical point of view it is convenient to distinguish two types of speech sounds: vowels and consonants.

Vowels are voiced sounds produced without any obstruction in the supra-glottal cavities and consequently have no noise component. In the articulation of consonants a kind of noise producing obstruction is formed in the supra-glottal cavities. Such sounds may be pronounced with or without vocal cords vibration.

Vowel phonemes are divided into monophthongs (vowel sounds with firm articulation), diphthongoids (their quality is different in the beginning and in the end of pronunciation) and diphthongs (vowel sounds consisting of two different elements).

Дата добавления: 2015-09-05