Complete the vocabulary of the two disciplines.
Any speech sound as produced is a ______. A contrastive unit of a particular language is a ______. A predictable variant of one is an ______. Two sounds that occur only where the other cannot are in ______ distribution.
Word bank: phone · phoneme · allophone · complementary · free · minimal
Hints
- The three units run from the most concrete to the most abstract.
- The last blank names the pattern that holds for the p of pin and the p of spin.
Show the answer
Any speech sound as produced is a phone. A contrastive unit of a particular language is a phoneme. A predictable variant of one is an allophone. Two sounds that occur only where the other cannot are in complementary distribution.
The three-term hierarchy is worth memorising exactly: a phone is a thing that happened, a phoneme is a category the language maintains, and an allophone is a phone considered as a member of a category. Most confusion in this unit comes from collapsing the second and third.
Practise Phonetics and Phonology
The app has 4 more questions on this lesson, and keeps your place in the course. Languages I is free to start.
More questions on Phonetics and Phonology
- Aspiration is predictable in English and distinguishes words in Thai. What does this show about the phoneme?
- A minimal pair proves that two sounds belong to different phonemes in that language.
- Phonetics examines physical sound, whilst phonology examines linguistic systems. What follows from this…
- How many consonant phonemes are conventionally recognised in Received Pronunciation?
- Sort each statement by whether it belongs to PHONETICS or PHONOLOGY.
- Which are true of a narrow phonetic transcription?
- Match each notation or term to what it does.
- General American is usually analysed with the same number of vowel phonemes as Received Pronunciation.