PHONOLOGY. PHONEMES

Phonological Mistakes.

of view.
Phonology studies their communicative purposes.
The unit of

phonetics is a speech sound, the unit of phonology is a phoneme.

of minimal pairs (commutation test, method of substitution). It consists

in finding pairs of words which differ in one phoneme.
E.g. bat – cat (minimal pair)
E.g. can – ran - man (minimal set)

identify 24 consonants and 20 vowels in English. They form

a system of opposition. If the substitution of one sound for another results in the change of meaning, the commuted sounds are different phonemes.

meaning are called distinctive (relevant) features: [t – d] (presence

or absence of voice).
The articulatory features that do not serve to distinguish meaning are called non-distinctive (irrelevant) features: [p – p] (presence or absence of aspiration).

Courtney: In speech we utter a much greater variety of

sounds than we are aware of. And these sounds are united in a number of sound types which are capable of distinguishing the meaning and the form of words, so they serve the purpose of social communication.

sum of acoustic impressions and articulatory movements of that which

is heard and of that which is pronounced, both being mutually dependent.
Trubetzkoy N.: The phoneme is the minimal sound unit by which meaning may be differentiated.
Trubetzkoy N. proclaimed a new science – phonology as distinct from phonetics. He separated language from speech.

of 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.
B. Bloch, G. Trager: The phoneme is a class of phonetically similar sounds, contrasting and mutually exclusive with all similar classes in the language.

real independent distinctive unit which manifests itself in the form

of allophones.
V. A. Vassilyev: The phoneme is a dialectical unity of 3 aspects:
1) material, real, objective;
2) abstract and generalized;
3) functional.

sounds).
Allophones are realized in concrete words. They show phonetic

similarity (their acoustic and articulatory features have much in common), but at the same time they differ in some degree and are incapable of differentiating words.
[t] in twice, eighth, trouble, written, little, stay.

the most representative and free from the influence of the

neighbouring phonemes.
Subsidiary allophones are variants of the phoneme in actual speech:
Positional allophones (let – hill)
Combinatory allophones (peak – speak).

phoneme is replaced by an allophone of a different phoneme,

the meaning of a word is changed.
cap - gap
Phonetic mistakes: if an allophone of some phoneme is replaced by another allophone of the same phoneme, the meaning of a word is not changed.
take - steak

What methods of phonology do you know?
What is the difference

between phonemes and allophones?
What types of allophones do you know?
What is the difference between phonetic and phonological mistakes?
What functions does the phoneme perform?