Difference between Phones, Allophones and Phonemes.

PHONETICS

“It is the scientific study of production, transmission and reception of human speech sound”. An example of phonetics is the International Phonetics Alphabet (IPA) which standardizes the pronunciation of words from any language so that anyone reading any word in any language can pronounce it properly.

           

PHONOLOGY

“It is the broader study of major speech sounds and their organization in a particular language. It studies the sound system of a language.” For example, English has some speech sounds (phonemes) that do not exist in other languages. It is therefore difficult for the native speakers of those languages to produce and perceive such sounds.

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN PHONETICS AND PHONOLOGY

1. The first major difference between phonetics and phonology is that former is descriptive while the latter is theoretical. Phonetics is a sub field of descriptive linguistics while phonology is an area of theoretical linguistics.

2. Phonetics deals with ‘phones’. Phonology deals with ‘phoneme’.

3. Phonetics is the production and perception of speech sound in any language. Phonology is language specific and deals with the interpretation of speech sounds in a particular language.

4. Phonetics discusses the physical characteristics of speech sounds and or signs, especially their physiological production, acoustic properties, auditory perception. Phonology is primarily concerned with the abstract, grammatical characterisation of systems of sounds or signs.

5. Phonetics is strictly about audible sounds and the things that happen in our mouth, throat, nasal and sinus cavities, and the lungs to make these sounds. It has nothing to do with the meaning, it is only description. Phonology is both physical as well as meaningful. It explores the differences between sounds in a language that change the meaning of an utterance.

6. Phonetics has a limited scope. It only asks, “Does this sound go here or not?”. Phonology on the other hand asks, Does the meaning change if this sound is put here instead of that one?”

7. Phonetics is concerned with the form, i.e. the physical properties of sounds. Phonology, on the other hand is concerned with the function, i.e. the difference and similarities of the sounds.

8. Phonetics deals with the universal phenomenon of of human speech sounds. Phonology on the other hand is language specific.

9. In phonetic transcription, square brackets are used to enclose transcribed symbols. In phonemic transcription, on the other hand, slashes are used for the same purpose.

10. The linguistic term ‘parole’ is the concern of phoneticians while ‘langue’ is studied by phonologists.

PHONES

Minimum unit of sound is called phone. OR

The speech sounds considered as units of phonetic analysis are called phones.

Phones are any sound of language that can be consistently and individually produced and recognised by the speaker of language. Phones are represented by enclosing the appropriate alphabet/symbol in square bracket. Thus, [p] will refer to p sound (which is described more technically as a voiceless, bilabial sound)

EXAMPLES:

There are different examples of phones such as:

[k], [p], [b], [u]

These are individual minimal units of sounds and are known as phones. On the other hand if we take the examples of complex phones they can be written as given below

[Pit]

In this word there are three phones [p],[i],[t] so a p sound followed by i sound followed by t sound.

[Ban]

In this word there are three phones of [b], [a], [n] so b followed by a sound followed by n sound.

[Fan]

In this word there are also three phones [f].[a],[n]

These are the examples of complex phones. Therefore, two phones belong to different phonemes.

PHONEME

Each one of these meaning-distinguishing sounds in a language is described as a phoneme. Slash marks are conventionally used to indicate a phoneme, e.g. /t/, an abstract segment, as opposed to the square brackets, as in [t], used for each phonetic or physically produced segment.

In the words fat and vat, or fine and vine, the basic contrast in meaning is /f/ and /v/. So these sound units are called phonemes. An essential property of a phoneme is that it functions contrastively.

ALLOPHONE

When we have a set of phones, all of which are versions of one phoneme, we add the prefix “allo-” (= one of a closely related set) and refer to them as allophones of that phoneme.

For example, in the distinction in the production of [t] sound in the words tar and star, tar is produced with a puff of air called aspiration. This aspiration is represented as [tʰ]. This is one allophone. The production of [t] in the word writer becomes [D]. This is called flap. In the word eighth, the influence of final dental sound [θ] results in the dental articulation of [t] sound represented as [t̪]. Both of these sounds are allophones.

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN PHONEMES AND ALLOPHONES

The crucial distinction between phonemes and allophones is that substituting one phoneme for another will result in a word with a different meaning (as well as a different pronunciation), but substituting allophones only results in a different (and perhaps unusual) pronunciation of the same word.

REFERENCES

Linguistics. (2016).In Encyclopedia Britannica, Retrieved from

https//www.britannica.com/science/linguistics/structure-linguistics

http://www.latestinfomix.com/25-difference-between-phonetics-and-phonology/

The study of language, George Yule, 4^th edition.