Phonetics Lecture 5 : The Phoneme and The Syllable
(Reading : Roach, Ch. 5, 8)
Phonemes
What are phonemes? Give some examples of phonemes
you have practiced in this course.
 the smallest units of sound in a language which can
distinguish two words.
e.g /p/ and /b/
words.
ban vs pan, => 2 different
The Phonemic System
The phonemic system is the complete set of phonemes in a
language.
Allophones
 different realizations of a phoneme are the allophones of
that phoneme. e.g. the clear "l" and the dark "l" are the
allophones of the phoneme /l/. In much the same way
that we have different ways of writing a letter e.g., l, l,l,
l, etc.
 Different allophones of the same phoneme are in
complementary distribution, in that one realization will
never be found in the place where another realization is
appropriate.
Can you give any such examples of ‘complementary
distribution’?
Phonemic Transcription and Phonetic Transcription
 In a phonemic transcription, every speech sound is
identified as one phoneme and written with the
appropriate phonemic symbol.
e.g.
the word pen and stand are transcribed
phonemically as /pen/ and /stænd/
respectively. Phonemic symbols are enclosed within
slant brackets / /.
1. But is it enough to use just phonemic symbols to
represent sounds? Why or why not?
2. How would you differentiate the two allophones of /p/ in
the following words?
/pen/
/spel/
 Diacritics are used to modify the symbols to give more
detailed phonetic values (i.e. information about the exact
manners of realizing the sound a the specific context).
e.g. [phen] (meaning???)
[fIl]
 Phonetic symbols, which represent precise phonetic
values and not just phonemes, are always enclosed in
square brackets [ ].
Not the focus of this course though you need to be aware of
the different realizations of an apparently
unproblematic (i.e., undifferentiated phoneme)
The Syllable
How many syllables are there in the following words?
 How
 Many
 Syllables
What is a syllable?
Start here Week 7




A minimum syllable contains just a single vowel in
isolation, which is called the center.
e.g. the word are / : /.
Some syllables have an onset (i.e., the initial part).
e.g. the word bar /b: / and the word key /ki:/.
Some syllables may have no onset but a coda. e.g.
the word ease /i:z/.
Some syllables have both an onset and a coda. e.g.
the word sat /sæt/.
The description of onset, coda and center presented here is
much simplified. There are problems inherent to this
description. For more details, read Roach’s book
Consonant clusters:
When there are two or more consonants clustered together
forming the onset or coda of a syallble, the cluster is
called a consonant cluster.
e.g.,
Speak
Cluster
Context
Thrust
/sp…/
/kl…/
/…kst/
/r…/
Roach’s book, pp.75-76
Do Unit 8, Ex. 1-8
Do consonant clusters make up one difficult area for
Cantonese speakers? Why or why not?
If yes, some examples?
Pronunciation of Tense and Plural Markers
The pronunciation of tense and plural markers depends on
the ending of the verb stem (the linguistic /sound
environment). Most past tense markers are signaled
by the spelling: ‘~ed’, e.g., started, jumped, banned,
When the base form ends with
a /t, d/
e.g. started
 takes the form /Id/ after /t, d/  /stA:+tId/
a voiceless consonant except /t/
e.g. jumped
 the form /t/  /dZÃmp+t/
a voiced consonant except /d/
e.g. banned
 the form /d/  /bæn+d/.
The major plural marker and the third person singualar
present tense marker in the English language is ‘s’.
The pronunciation of a plural marker also depends on
the ending of the base form of the noun, e.g., oranges,
matches, buses, cakes, etc.
When the base form ends with
/s, z, S , Z , t S , dZ /,
e.g. washes

takes the form /Iz/ => /w•SIz/
a voiceless consonants other than those in the above list
e.g. cats

the form /s/ => /kæts/
a vowel
e.g., eyes, sees

and the form /z/ => e.g.
/z/ & /si:z/
Can you come up with some general rules here? What did
we discuss as the last topic in Week 5?
Why do Cantonese speakers have problems with the
realizations of the past-form or number markers (suffixes
that denote the past tense of a verb or the plural form of a
noun?)