Phonology: Terminology
Phonology
studies the sound system of the language; the module of grammar that
includes:
1. inventory of phonemes (phonetic and phonemic units), and
2. rules for their combination and pronunciation (free and
allophonic variation)
Phoneme
the basic, distinctive (contrastive) structural unit in the sound system
of a language that can have alternative realizations (allophones) in
particular phonological environments
Minimal pair
two words distinguished from one another by a single phonetic
contrast, i.e., identical except for one phoneme that occurs in the
same position in each word: pain /pen/, bane /ben/, main /men/
Free variation
Alternative pronunciations of a word in which one sound is
substituted for another without changing the word’s meaning: English
word-final stops – bottle [batәl] or [baDәl]
Free variants of phonemes
variants of phonemes that replace one another (overlap) freely in
identical environments: released and non-released word-final stops in
English
Complementary distribution
a pattern of distribution of two or more sounds that do not occur in the
same position within words in a given language, that is, they occur in
mutually exclusive environments (never overlap: in English [ph] does
not occur where [p] occurs (and vice versa)
Allophones (allophonic variants) of phonemes
a phonetic realization of a phoneme in a particular phonological
environment: in English, unaspirated [p] and aspitaed [ph] are
allophones of the phoneme /p/, and they occur in complementary
distribution (i.e., never overlap)
Phonological analysis
1. Minimal pairs test
if positive, the two sounds are two different phonemes: replacing
them with one another makes a difference in meaning
2. Free variation test
if positive, the two sounds are free variants of one and the same
phoneme: replacing them with one another makes no difference in
meaning
3. Complementary distribution test
if positive, the two sounds are allophonic variants (allophones) of
one and the same phoneme: they can never replace one another, or
overlap; they can never make minimal pairs