Difference between revisions of "Phoneme (definition)"

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Is the smallest unit of sound which represent an orthographic symbol or a combination of orthographic symbols that may be combined to form a morpheme, or word. For example, in English the letters “T and H” form one sound, and the phoneme the two create is the interdental fricative that is represented in IPA as: /θ/(unvoiced)or /ð/ (voiced). So given the transcription,/ðə/ for "the", each symbol ð and ə is a '''phoneme''' which represents a sound.
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Phonemes are sounds that make a contrast in meaning. For example, in English <nowiki>/p/ and /b/</nowiki> are different phonemes, because they distinguish the words ''pat'' and ''bat''. Variant pronunciations of a sound are called [[Allophone (definition)|allophones]]. At the ends of words in English, [[Aspiration (definition)|aspirated]] [[Stop (definition)|stops]] such as <nowiki> such as [pʰ] </nowiki> and [[Unaspirated (definition)|unaspirated]] stops such as <nowiki>[p]</nowiki> are allophones of the same phoneme /p/, because words like top can be pronounced as either [tʰɑpʰ] or [tʰɑp]. Traditionally phonemes are written between slashes (/ /) and allophones are transcribed in square brackets <nowiki> [ ] </nowiki>.
 
 
  
 
==See Also==
 
==See Also==
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==External Links==
 
==External Links==
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*http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/WhatIsAPhoneme.htm
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The link below takes you away from the Gaelic Wiki to Wikipedia. Since wikipedia pages can be edited by anyone, they often contain inaccurate information. So be careful!
 
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoneme
 
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoneme
*http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/WhatIsAPhoneme.htm
 
  
 
==References==
 
==References==

Latest revision as of 21:03, 15 June 2012

Phonemes are sounds that make a contrast in meaning. For example, in English /p/ and /b/ are different phonemes, because they distinguish the words pat and bat. Variant pronunciations of a sound are called allophones. At the ends of words in English, aspirated stops such as such as [pʰ] and unaspirated stops such as [p] are allophones of the same phoneme /p/, because words like top can be pronounced as either [tʰɑpʰ] or [tʰɑp]. Traditionally phonemes are written between slashes (/ /) and allophones are transcribed in square brackets [ ] .

See Also

External Links

The link below takes you away from the Gaelic Wiki to Wikipedia. Since wikipedia pages can be edited by anyone, they often contain inaccurate information. So be careful!

References

  • Crystal, David (1997). Dictionary of linguistics and Phonetics. Malden: Blackwell