Chapter 5Phonology: The Sounds Pattern of

LanguageP honem e, A llophones, M inim al P a irs, D istinctive

F eatures, S u p rasegm ental P honem es

1. Dimas Ario Nugroho2. Muhamad Faizal

3. Angga Pratama S.

Phonemes

• Phoneme is the smallest meaningful unit of sound in a language. A meaningful sound is one that will change one word into another word.

• Example : the words cat and fat are two different words, but there is only one sound that is different between the two words

• Allophone one of a set of multiple possible spoken sounds (or p hones) used to pronounce a single phoneme.

• Example allophones of /t/: The aspirated one [th] in “top”The unaspirated one [t] in “stop”The unreleased one [tº] in “coat”

Allophone

Minimal Pairs

• Minimal Pairs are words that vary by only a single sound, usually meaning sounds that students often get confused by, like the “th” and “t” in “thin” and “tin”.

• Example : Vowel sounds: /I/ and /i:/ (sit and seat)Consonant Sounds: /b/ and /v/ (berry and very)Initial Consonant Sound: /f/ and /p/ (fast and past)Final Consonant Sound: /k/ and /g/ (back and bag)

Distinctive Features

• Distinctive feature is the most basic unit of phonological structure that may be analyzed in phonological theory.

• Uses for Distinctive Features:To specify a phonemeTo specify a class of phonemesTo describe the set of speech sounds used in a particular language or dialectTo write concise rules of phonetic changeTo characterize a speech disorder

Suprasegmental Phonemes

• In addition to finding the consonant and vowel segments (the segmental phoneme), the linguist must also identify the Suprasegmental Phonemes used in a language system. They include things like pitch, stress, intonation, and juncture.

1. Pitch

• Differences of meaning at the word levelIn the tone language like Thai and Chinese, In Chinese, for example, there are four tones which can distinguish words. If you say /tʃu/ with a high level pitch it means “pig” but if you say /tʃu/ with falling and rising pitch it means “lord”.

2. Stress

• The degree of loudness given to same syllables in relation to others.

Transcription Noun Verb/insens/ incenseincense

/p mit/ɘ permit permit/ins lt/ʌ insult insult/rid ekt/ʒ reject reject

3. Intonation

• Intonation consists of pitch contours peaking on the stressed syllable of the last content word in each phrase. Example

4. Juncture

• The type of connection or pause we get between syllables or words.

• Example :1. an aim / n + eim /ɘ1. a name / + neim /ɘ

2. that’s though / ðæts + t f/ʌ2. that stuff / ðæt + st f/ʌ