Phonetics: Allophones and Phonemes PDF

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