Phonetics: Allophones and Phonemes PDF
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Uploaded by MesmerizedMoldavite7389
ANTH/LING
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Summary
This document discusses the concepts of allophones and phonemes in linguistics, including the different realizations and representations of sounds in a language. It explores how native speakers perceive language sounds and how different pronunciations (allophones) relate to a single mental representation (phoneme).
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Review: [S] AND [ʃ] English and Japanese have both [s] and [ʃ] in their phonetic inventories, but the sounds pattern differently in each language. The two sounds do not behave predictably in English, but we can predict the occurrence of [ʃ] in Japanese. In Japanese, [ʃ] always occurs preceding...
Review: [S] AND [ʃ] English and Japanese have both [s] and [ʃ] in their phonetic inventories, but the sounds pattern differently in each language. The two sounds do not behave predictably in English, but we can predict the occurrence of [ʃ] in Japanese. In Japanese, [ʃ] always occurs preceding an [i], and [s] never does. This tells us that [s] and [ʃ] are allophones of the same phoneme in Japanese—they are like two different versions of the same sound. 4 So What Is an Allophone? ¢ Allophones are the sounds in a given language that are considered to be “the same” by native speakers. ¢ Some allophones in English poke spoke ¢ What is your intuition about these—are they “the same” sound? ¢ Native speakers generally perceive them to be “the same.” [p] phoneme/p/ [ph] allophones 5 Allophones Allophones are the sounds that actually get pronounced. Each allophone must differ from all other allophones with respect to at least one feature: [p] is different from [ph] because [ph] is apirated and [p] is not. Allophones are represented by putting an IPA symbols between brackets; i.e., [p], [ph] Allophones are different realizations (pronunciations) of the same phoneme. When there are multiple allophones for one phoneme, we can (typically) predict which sound will be produced based on the environment ([ph] in initial position and [p] elsewhere). 6 Allophones vs. Phonemes Phonemes are the mental representations of a sound that every speaker of a language creates. Phonemes cannot be pronounced or heard; they exist only in the minds of speakers. One phoneme may have multiple allophones associated with it. When multiple allophones belong to the same phoneme, these allophones are interpreted as “the same sound” by speakers. Phonemes are represented by putting an IPA symbol between slashes: /p/ 7
