1. The notion of the phoneme. The phoneme and its main aspects.

2. Relationship between the phoneme and its allophones.

3. The main trends in phoneme theory.

1.The notion of the phoneme. The phoneme and its allophones.

When we talk about the sounds of a language, the term “sound” can be interpreted in two rather different ways. In the first place we can say that [t] and [d] are two different sounds in English : [t] being fortis and [d] being lenis. We can illustrate this by showing how they contrast with each other to make a difference of the meaning in a large number of pairs, such as die – tie, seat – seed, etc. But on the other hand, if we listen carefully, in speech we pronounce not the sound type [t] which is aspirated, alveolar, forelingual, apical, occlusive, plosive, voiceless, fortis – according to the classificatory definition, but – one of its variants, e.g. labialized in the word twice, post-alveolar in try, exploded nasally in written, exploded laterally in little, pronounced without aspiration in stay, etc. In both examples the sounds differ in one articulatory feature only: in the second case the difference between the sounds has functionally no significance. It is perfectly clear that the sense of “sound” in these two cases is different. To avoid this ambiguity linguists use two separate terms: a “phoneme” is used to mean a “sound” in its contrastive sense and “allophone” is used for sounds which are variants of a phoneme: they usually occur in different positions in a word and cannot contrast with each other, nor be used to make meaningful distinctions.

So the only important differences for a language are those which are associated with the meaning. We can differentiate and consequently distinguish and recognize the shape of words opposing one sound to another or even to many of them: e.g. in the words bead-bid, bad-bed, bird-board, bud-bard the sounds [b] and [d] are identical while a vowel sound differs. The meaning differentiation of the above given words is based upon the quality differentiation of the vowels. We can see that they are used as independent units for the purpose of word differentiation.

Not only vowels can be opposed. In the following words: line, pine, fine the consonants are opposed. The above examples show that when the sound shape of words is changed, consequently their meaning changes if we replace one sound to another. So in opposing forms of words we discover a close connection between sounding and meaning of the same words. We must understand that this connection is conventional, traditional because it was formed and consolidated by the given language community in the course of ages. There are some examples when in the course of time the sound shape of a word was changed without effecting the meaning:

O.E. Mid.E.

Ic I

tima time

writan write

We can see that the traditional connection between the sound shape and the meaning is not absolute and within certain meaning limits the sound changes do not effect the meaning of the word. If the limits are broken we can get either a new meaning or a sound shape without any meaning at all.

From the above mentioned consideration we can make a conclusion that there exist speech sounds on which the sense differentiation is based. The Russian scientist L.V.Scherba called such sounds phonemes. In his book “French Phonetics” he writes:” In actual speech we utter a much greater variety of sounds than we are actually aware of; in any language these sounds are united into a comparatively small number of sound types which are capable of distinguishing the meaning and the form of words, that is them that serve the purposes of social intercourse. It is these sound types that we have in mind when discussing speech sounds. Such sound types should be called “phonemes”.

Academician L.V.Scherba was not the first to use the term ‘phoneme’. For the first time it was used in 1858 by the French linguist Ave who used it to distinguish speech sounds from any other sounds produced in nature.

After him the Russian scientist of Polish origin I.A.Baudouin de Courteney developed it into the phoneme theory. During the first stage of the development of his theory he considered a phoneme to be a component of the morpheme and tried to analyze phonemes according to their function in the morphemes. He came to the conclusion that the phoneme is represented in speech in the form of numeral acoustic variants. He centered his attention on the historical alternations but his phoneme conception was obscure because he did not take into consideration the sense differentiating function of the phoneme.

Later Baudouin de Courteney changed his views under the influence of the psychological approach to linguistics. He abandoned his morphological conception of the phoneme and tried to investigate it in the sphere of sociology. According to his opinion a phoneme is an idea of the sound which arises in the mind of a speaker before he utters a word. In other words, he considered a phoneme as a complex perception of the articulatory movements and muscular sensations connected between each other and resulting acoustic impressions, all of which react on the individual’s mind simultaneously.

His theory of phoneme was developed and perfected by L.V.Scherba – the head of the Leningrad linguistic school, who overcame the psychological approach and created a scientifically grounded phoneme theory. He was the first to attach importance to sense differentiating function of the phoneme and also focus his attention on the variations of the phoneme – allophones. According to L.V.Scherba the phoneme can be viewed as a functional, material and abstract unit. These three aspects of the phoneme are concentrated in the definition of the phoneme suggested by V.A.Vassilyev: ”The segmental phoneme is the smallest language unit that exists in speech of all the members of a given language community as such speech sounds which are capable of distinguishing one word of the same language or one grammatical form of a word from another grammatical form of the same word”.

The only drawback of this definition is that it is too long and complicated for practical use. The concise form of it could be:

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 objective because 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.