English phonetics and phonology (Peter Roach)

5 The phoneme

When we speak, we produce a continuous stream of sounds. In studying speech we divide this stream into small pieces that we call segments.

There is an abstract set of units as the basis of our speech. These units are called phonemes, and the complete set of these units is phonemic system of the language.

The b at the beginning of a word such as ‘bad’ will usually be pronounced with practically no voicing. Sometimes, a speaker may produce the b with full voicing, in speaking emphatically.

If this is done, the sound is still identified as the phoneme b, even though we can hear that it is different in some way. We have in this example two Different ways of making b – two different realizations of the phoneme. One can be substituted for the other without changing the meaning.

When we find this strict separation of places where particular realizations can occur, we say that the realisations are in complementary distribution.

When we talk about different realisations of phonemes, we sometimes call these realisations allophones.

Basically the symbols are for one of two puposes: either they are symbols for phonemes (phonemic or phoneme symbols) or they are phonetic symbols.One of the traditional exercises in pronunciation teaching by phonetic methods is that of Phonemic transcription, where every speech sound must be indentified as one of the phonemes and written with the appropriate symbol. There are two different kinds of transcription exercise:

in one, transcription from dictation, the student must listen to a person – or a tape – recording – and write down what they hear; in the other, transcription from a written text.

The student is given a passage of dialogue written in orthography and must use phonemic symbols to represent how she or he thinks it would be pronounced by a speaker of a particular accent.

Diacritics, marks which modify the symbol in some way; for example, the symbol for cardinal vowel no. 4 [a] may be modified by putting two dots above it.

Such a transcription would be called a phonetic transcription; a phonetic transcription containing a lot of information about the exact quality of the sounds would be called a narrow phonetic transcription,

While one which only included a little more information than a phonemic transcription would be called a broad phonetic transcription.

When, we study the abstract side of the sounds of language we are studying a related but different subject that we call phonology.