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PHONEME, PHONOLOGY AND ALLOPHONES

Language is not merely randomly articulated human noise. It is patterned noise-sound with organization. Out of the total range of audibly distinct sounds a human can produce, only a limited number are used in any one language. Phonemics is a branch of linguistics which studies the kinds of sounds which occur in a given language. it also studies the pattern of relationships into which they fall as a sound system in that language.

The smallest unit at the level of sound is called a phoneme. phoneme are the significant sound is called a significant sounds in a specified language. Each language had its own set of phonemes which operates within the sound system of that language. Phonemes are described by some scholars as a "class of sounds".

ALLOPHONES

Allophones are positional variants of one phoneme. They are a set of sounds that are very similar to one another and occur in different phonetics contexts,

For example - At the beginning of the word, middle of the word, or end of the word.

For example:- /t/ sound in the following words:

take-  Aspirated

stake- Unaspirated

post-  Unexploded

/p/ sound in -

pot-  Aspirated

spot- Unaspirated

stop- Unexploded

In phonetics analysis the three are different where the plosive /p/ is aspirated in pot, unaspirated in spot and remains unexploded in the word stop. Thus thing are considered different in phonetics analysis. This difference is not important at the level of phonemics analysis. phonologically speaking they are the same or they are the allophones of the same phoneme.

CHARACTERSTICS OF ALLOPHONES


 * 1) Allophones are predictable variants of a phoneme.
 * 2) Allophones are a set of sounds that do not change the meaning of a word.
 * 3) A phoneme may have one or more allophone.
 * 4) Allophones may occur as a result of different phonetic contexts(beginning, middle or end of the word.)
 * 5) Allophones may be predictable in terms of stress, pitch, vowel in the preceding or following syllable etc.

For many scholars specially the scholars of the " Prague school" The phoneme was the smallest distinctive unit which kept words apart or made phonological oppositions. It helped in discovering new phonemes by " contrast" or " minimal pair".

CONTRAST- THE ENGLISH WORD

/pit/

/bit/

When were place the phoneme /p/ with the phoneme /b/ the meaning of the word changes this p and b are both phonemes of the English language. Contrast is established with the  help of the minimal pair test. This test is a standard technique used by linguist to find out the sound system of any language.