The Linguistic Use of Speech Sounds
Phonetic Variation: Phonemes and Allophones
 phonetic distinctions contrasting meaning – distinct phonemes
[sIp] sip
[zIp] zip
[fajn] fine
[vajn] vine
[pæt]
[bæt]
pat
bat
in English: /s/ /z/ /f/ /v/ /p/ /b/  make different words
different phonemes
[dId] did [mId]
[dæd] dad [mæd]
mid
mad
[dIn] din
[dæn] Dan
in English: /d/ /m/ /n/ /æ/  make different English words
different phonemes
phoneme
 a class of speech sounds that are judged by a native speaker to
be the same sound
 a unit of linguistic structure
 an abstract element defined by a set of phonetic features
 can have alternative realizations (allophones) in particular
phonological environments
 non-contrastive phonetic variation
different phones of the same phoneme - allophones
cop
keep
/k/
 
[kh] [ķh]
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o in English: [k] & [ķh] are a single unit of the English sound
system – they are variants of the same phoneme
o in other languages – Basque, Malay, Vietnamese – these two sounds
function as distinct sounds – they are different phonemes
a second example:
spot pot
spill pill
spoke poke
sprint print
/p/
 
[p] [ph]
aspirated
[ph]  beginning of words
unaspirated [p]  after [s]
allophones
 phonetic realizations of a phoneme - correspond to an actual
phonetic segment produced by a speaker
 non-contrastive - don’t contrast meanings, don’t create
different words
 members of a phoneme class
Notations
 phonemic transcriptions of words (the representation of their
pronunciation in the dictionary) is set off by slashes - /…/
 phonetic transcriptions (representations of their actual pronunciation)
are indicated by square brackets - [...]
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