Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
All languages have a sound inventory, an alphabet of sounds, and some of those sounds have variations called allophones (See Allophone below). refuse, r[i]fuse (verb) to decline to accept refuse, r[]fuse (noun) trash, garbage 1. The sounds represented by the letter <e>, above, are articulated differently: one is pronounced [i], the other is pronounced [ ]. They represent different sounds. 2. They occur in the same environment: after <r> and before <f>, which tells us they are not variations (allophones), that they are distinct sounds and part of the language's sound inventory. 3. Change the [i] sound of refuse to [] and the meaning of the word changes to that of a noun r[]fuse meaning trash, garbage. 1. Phonemes are not predictable. They can occur in any environment and in any position, initial, internal, final: tan (sun-exposed skin) ant (insect)
Allophones are predictable: they occur in obvious phonetic environments. For example, Banff (place in Canada) has two pronunciations, Ba[n]ff and Ba[m]ff. If you were a linguist hearing this language for the first time, how would you write down the word, with an <n> or an <m>? That is, which phoneme would you choose, /n/ or /m/? The answer is in the phonetic environment, predictability: both [m] and [f] are pronounced with the lips. The two sounds [m] and [f] share articulatory features. That's the 'obvious phonetic environment' I mentioned above. The word is Banff, with an /n/. The phonetic rule: /n/ is pronounced as [m] before /f/ in the word <Banff>. We can't predict phonemes that way as they are unpredictable and "free", and when they change because of their phonetic environment, and they will and do, they become allophones, predictable variations.
1. Plural -s is articulated differently according to its environment. When Plural -s occurs after a voiceless sound (as in cats), it is pronounced [s], voiceless cat[s], and when -s occurs after a voiced sound (as in dogs), it is pronounced [z], voiced dog[z].
2. Plural [s] never occurs after a voiced sound. It is always occurs after a voiceless sound. When it occurs after a voiced sound it changed to [z], voiced. Plural [s] always occurs in the same environment; Plural [z] always occurs in the same environment. 3. Plural -s ([s] and [z]) means plural no matter how many sound variations it has. The change in sound doesn't change its meaning because speakers know that Plural -s always occurs in the same environment: after a plural noun. (Note that, because Plural -s is a morpheme, its variations [s] and [z] are called allomorphs, not allophones; nevertheless, they are allo-, variations.) Phonemes, on the other hand, can occur anywhere, which is why meaning changes when the phoneme changes (e.g., fu[s], fu[z]; bu[s], bu[z])
hand, p is not syllable-initial and is preceded by s as in spill, we can safely predict that the unaspirated variant of p will occur. The occurrence of different phonemes is, on the contrary, totally unpredictable since it is the very fundamental characteristic of phonemes that they are contrasted in one and the same context. There is no way in which we can predict therefore that in the context -il we will have pill, nil, chill, fill, gill, Jill, sill, kill, mill, hill, dill or till (the list can continue). Any two words such aspill and bill, mentioned above, or kill and hill, etc. that help us discover which sounds have a contrastive value in a given language are said to form, just to remind you, a minimal pair. The following criteria must be met by the two words in order that they form a minimal pair: they should have the same number of sounds, and these sounds should be identical, with the only exception of the contrasting sound that should be distributed in the same context in both words; the words must also have different meanings.
English has some speech sounds (phonemes) that do not exist in other languages. It is no surprise, therefore, that native speakers of those languages have difficulties producing or even perceiving such sounds. This is particularly true for speakers from language families other than the Germanic one to which English belongs.
Rouded and unrounded vowel