The Same Sounds, Two Questions
Phonetics studies speech sounds as physical events. It examines how sounds are produced, transmitted, and perceived. It is entirely language-independent.
Phonology studies how a particular language organises sounds into a system. It is language-specific. It asks which sound differences convey meaning.
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Phone | Any speech sound, as produced |
| Phoneme | A contrastive unit of a particular language |
| Allophone | A predictable variant of a phoneme |
The Test: Meaning
Two sounds belong to different phonemes if swapping them changes the word. This is a minimal pair.
Pat and bat differ in one sound and meaning. This proves /p/ and /b/ are distinct phonemes in English.
Allophones never distinguish words. They show two main patterns:
- Complementary distribution: Sounds occur in mutually exclusive environments, like aspirated /p/ in pin versus unaspirated /p/ in spin.
- Free variation: Sounds interchange in the same position without changing meaning, like a released or unreleased /t/ in cat.
Systems and Inventories
A phonetic difference can be allophonic in one language and contrastive in another. Aspiration is predictable in English, but it distinguishes words in Thai.
Received Pronunciation contains 44 phonemes:
- 24 consonants (a total of 24)
- 20 vowels (a total of 20, comprising 12 monophthongs and 8 diphthongs)
Notation
Transcription reflects the phonetics-phonology divide:
- Broad (phonemic) transcription uses slant brackets / / to record only phonemes.
- Narrow (phonetic) transcription uses square brackets [ ] to capture fine acoustic detail.
Common pitfall: Thinking a phoneme is a concrete sound. A phoneme is an abstract category of sounds treated as identical by a language.