Introduction to Phonology: Phonemes and Allophones (Week 7)

phonology

Study of speech sound systems, in particular focussing on distinctive sounds.

minimal pair

A set of two words that differ in only one sound, and have different meaning; used to test for distinctiveness/phonemes.

distinctiveness

Sound differences that cause meaning differences.

phoneme

A distinctive speech sound segment.

allophone

A non-distinctive speech sound segment

phoneme

This speech segment is written between / /

allophone

This speech segment is written between [ ]

allophone

A variant of a phoneme that usually occurs in specific environments.

complementary distribution

Different allophones of the same phoneme occur in mutually exclusive environments (i.e. they cannot occur simultaneously; where one occurs, the other cannot). Can be predicted by a rule.

free variation

Two (or more) sounds or forms appearing in the same environment without a change in meaning and without being considered incorrect by native speakers.

minimal pairs

In phonology problems, you find phonemes by finding.....

complementary distribution or free variation

In phonology problems, you find allophones by finding...