Phoneme

This article is about the speech unit. For the JavaME library, seephoneME.For the collection of phenotypes, seephenome.

Aphoneme(/ˈfoʊniːm/) is any set of similarspeech soundsthat is perceptually regarded by the speakers of a language as a single basic sound—a smallest possiblephoneticunit—that helps distinguish onewordfrom another.All languages contain phonemes (or the spatial-gestural equivalent insign languages), and all spoken languages include bothconsonantandvowelphonemes. Phonemes are primarily studied under the branch oflinguisticsknown asphonology.

Examples and notation

The English wordscellandsethave the exact same sequence of sounds, except for being different in their final consonant sounds: thus,/sɛl/versus/sɛt/in theInternational Phonetic Alphabet(IPA), a writing system that can be used to represent phonemes. Since/l/and/t/alone distinguish certain words from others, they are each examples of phonemes of the English language. Specifically they are consonant phonemes, along with/s/,while/ɛ/is a vowel phoneme. The spelling of English does not strictly conform to its phonemes, so that the wordsknot,nut,andgnat,regardless of spelling, all share the consonant phonemes/n/and/t/,differing only by their internal vowel phonemes:/ɒ/,/ʌ/,and/æ/,respectively. Similarly,/pʊʃt/is the notation for a sequence of four phonemes,/p/,/ʊ/,/ʃ/,and/t/,that together constitute the wordpushed.

Sounds that are perceived as phonemes vary by languages and dialects, so that[n]^ⓘand[ŋ]^ⓘare separate phonemes in English since they distinguish words likesinfromsing(/sɪn/versus/sɪŋ/), yet they comprise a single phoneme in some other languages, such as Spanish, in which[pan]and[paŋ]for instance are merely interpreted by Spanish speakers as regional or dialect-specific ways of pronouncing the same word (pan:the Spanish word for "bread" ). Such spoken variations of a single phoneme are known by linguists asallophones.Linguists useslashesin the IPA to transcribe phonemes butsquare bracketsto transcribe more precise pronunciation details, including allophones; they describe this basic distinction asphonemicversusphonetic.Thus, the pronunciation patterns oftapversustab,orpatversusbat,can be represented phonemically and are written between slashes (including/p/,/b/,etc.), while nuances of exactly how a speaker pronounces/p/are phonetic and written between brackets, like[p]for thepinspitversus[pʰ]for thepinpit,which in English is anaspiratedallophone of /p/ (i.e., pronounced with an extra burst of air).

There are many views as to exactly what phonemes are and how a given language should be analyzed in phonemic terms. Generally, a phoneme is regarded as anabstractionof a set (orequivalence class) of spoken sound variations that are nevertheless perceived as a single basic unit of sound by the ordinary native speakers of a given language. While phonemes are considered an abstractunderlying representationfor sound segments within words, the correspondingphoneticrealizations of those phonemes—each phoneme with its various allophones—constitute the surface form that is actually uttered and heard. Allophones each have technically different articulations inside particular words or particularenvironments within words,yet these differences do not create anymeaningfuldistinctions. Alternatively, at least one of those articulations could be feasibly used in all such words with these words still being recognized as such by users of the language. An example inAmerican Englishis that the sound spelled with the symboltis usuallyarticulatedwith aglottal stop[ʔ](or a similar glottalized sound) in the wordcat,analveolar flap[ɾ]indating,analveolar plosive[t]instick,and anaspiratedalveolar plosive[tʰ]intie;however, American speakers perceive or "hear" all of these sounds (usually with no conscious effort) as merely being allophones of a single phoneme: the one traditionally represented in the IPA as/t/.

For computer-typing purposes,systemssuch asX-SAMPAexist to represent IPA symbols using onlyASCIIcharacters. However, descriptions of particular languages may use different conventional symbols to represent the phonemes of those languages. For languages whose writing systems employ thephonemic principle,ordinary letters may be used to denote phonemes, although this approach is often imperfect, as pronunciations naturally shift in a language over time, rendering previous spelling systems outdated or no longer closely representative of the sounds of the language (see§ Correspondence between letters and phonemesbelow).

Assignment of speech sounds to phonemes

A simplified procedure for determining whether two sounds represent the same or different phonemes

A phoneme is a sound or a group of different sounds perceived to have the same function by speakers of the language or dialect in question. An example is theEnglishphoneme/k/,which occurs in words such ascat,kit,scat,skit.Although most native speakers do not notice this, in most English dialects, the "c/k" sounds in these words are not identical: inkit^ⓘ[kʰɪt],the sound is aspirated, but inskill^ⓘ[skɪl],it is unaspirated. The words, therefore, contain differentspeech sounds,orphones,transcribed[kʰ]for the aspirated form and[k]for the unaspirated one. These different sounds are nonetheless considered to belong to the same phoneme, because if a speaker used one instead of the other, the meaning of the word would not change: using the aspirated form[kʰ]inskillmight sound odd, but the word would still be recognized. By contrast, some other sounds would cause a change in meaning if substituted: for example, substitution of the sound[t]would produce the different wordstill,and that sound must therefore be considered to represent a different phoneme (the phoneme/t/).

The above shows that in English,[k]and[kʰ]areallophonesof a single phoneme/k/.In some languages, however,[kʰ]and[k]are perceived by native speakers as significantly different sounds, and substituting one for the other can change the meaning of a word. In those languages, therefore, the two sounds represent different phonemes. For example, inIcelandic,[kʰ]is the first sound ofkátur,meaning "cheerful", but[k]is the first sound ofgátur,meaning "riddles". Icelandic, therefore, has two separate phonemes/kʰ/and/k/.

Minimal pairs

A pair of words likekáturandgátur(above) that differ only in one phone is called aminimal pairfor the two alternative phones in question (in this case,[kʰ]and[k]). The existence of minimal pairs is a common test to decide whether two phones represent different phonemes or are allophones of the same phoneme.

To take another example, the minimal pairtipanddipillustrates that in English,[t]and[d]belong to separate phonemes,/t/and/d/;since the words have different meanings, English-speakers must be conscious of the distinction between the two sounds.

Signed languages, such asAmerican Sign Language(ASL), also have minimal pairs, differing only in (exactly) one of the signs' parameters: handshape, movement, location, palm orientation, andnonmanual signalor marker. A minimal pair may exist in the signed language if the basic sign stays the same, but one of the parameters changes.

However, the absence of minimal pairs for a given pair of phones does not always mean that they belong to the same phoneme: they may be so dissimilar phonetically that it is unlikely for speakers to perceive them as the same sound. For example, English has no minimal pair for the sounds[h](as inhat) and[ŋ](as inbang), and the fact that they can be shown to be incomplementary distributioncould be used to argue for their being allophones of the same phoneme. However, they are so dissimilar phonetically that they are considered separate phonemes.A case like this shows that sometimes it is the systemic distinctions and not the lexical context which are decisive in establishing phonemes. This implies that the phoneme should be defined as the smallest phonological unit which is contrastive at a lexical level or distinctive at a systemic level.

Phonologists have sometimes had recourse to "near minimal pairs" to show that speakers of the language perceive two sounds as significantly different even if no exact minimal pair exists in the lexicon. It is challenging to find a minimal pair to distinguish English/ʃ/from/ʒ/,yet it seems uncontroversial to claim that the two consonants are distinct phonemes. The two words 'pressure'/ˈprɛʃər/and 'pleasure'/ˈplɛʒər/can serve as a near minimal pair.The reason why this is still acceptable proof of phonemehood is that there is nothing about the additional difference (/r/ vs. /l/) that can be expected to somehow condition a voicing difference for a single underlying postalveolar fricative. One can, however, find true minimal pairs for /ʃ/ and /ʒ/ if less common words are considered. For example, 'Confucian' and 'confusion' are a valid minimal pair.

Suprasegmental phonemes

Besidessegmentalphonemes such as vowels and consonants, there are alsosuprasegmentalfeatures of pronunciation (such astoneandstress,syllable boundaries and other forms ofjuncture,nasalization andvowel harmony), which, in many languages, change the meaning of words and so are phonemic.

Phonemic stressis encountered in languages such as English. For example, there are two words spelledinvite,one is a verb and is stressed on the second syllable, the other is a noun and stressed on the first syllable (without changing any of the individual sounds). The position of the stress distinguishes the words and so a full phonemic specification would include indication of the position of the stress:/ɪnˈvaɪt/for the verb,/ˈɪnvaɪt/for the noun. In other languages, such asFrench,word stress cannot have this function (its position is generally predictable) and so it is not phonemic (and therefore not usually indicated in dictionaries).

Phonemic tonesare found in languages such asMandarin Chinesein which a given syllable can have five different tonal pronunciations:

The syllablemawith each of the primary tones in Standard Chinese

Minimal set for phonemic tone in Mandarin Chinese

Tone number	1	2	3	4	5
Hanzi	Mụ	Ma	Mã	Mạ	Mạ
Pinyin	mā	má	mǎ	mà	ma
IPA	[má]	[mǎ]	[mà]	[mâ]	[ma]
Gloss	mother	hemp	horse	scold	question particle

The tone "phonemes" in such languages are sometimes calledtonemes.Languages such as English do not have phonemic tone, but they useintonationfor functions such as emphasis and attitude.

Distribution of allophones

When a phoneme has more than oneallophone,the one actually heard at a given occurrence of that phoneme may be dependent on the phonetic environment (surrounding sounds). Allophones that normally cannot appear in the same environment are said to be incomplementary distribution.In other cases, the choice of allophone may be dependent on the individual speaker or other unpredictable factors. Such allophones are said to be infree variation,but allophones are still selected in a specific phonetic context, not the other way around.

Background and related ideas

The termphonème(fromAncient Greek:φώνημα,romanized:phōnēma,"sound made, utterance, thing spoken, speech, language") was reportedly first used byA. Dufriche-Desgenettesin 1873, but it referred only to a speech sound. The termphonemeas anabstractionwas developed by the Polish linguistJan Baudouin de Courtenayand his studentMikołaj Kruszewskiduring 1875–1895.The term used by these two wasfonema,the basic unit of what they calledpsychophonetics.Daniel Jonesbecame the first linguist in the western world to use the termphonemein its current sense, employing the word in his article "The phonetic structure of the Sechuana Language".The concept of the phoneme was then elaborated in the works ofNikolai Trubetzkoyand others of thePrague School(during the years 1926–1935), and in those ofstructuralistslikeFerdinand de Saussure,Edward Sapir,andLeonard Bloomfield.Some structuralists (though not Sapir) rejected the idea of a cognitive or psycholinguistic function for the phoneme.

Later, it was used and redefined ingenerative linguistics,most famously byNoam ChomskyandMorris Halle,and remains central to many accounts of the development of modernphonology.As a theoretical concept or model, though, it has been supplemented and even replaced by others.

Some linguists (such asRoman JakobsonandMorris Halle) proposed that phonemes may be further decomposable intofeatures,such features being the true minimal constituents of language.Features overlap each other in time, as dosuprasegmentalphonemes in oral language and many phonemes in sign languages. Features could be characterized in different ways: Jakobson and colleagues defined them inacousticterms,Chomsky and Halle used a predominantlyarticulatorybasis, though retaining some acoustic features, whileLadefoged's systemis a purely articulatory system apart from the use of the acoustic term 'sibilant'.

In the description of some languages, the termchronemehas been used to indicate contrastive length ordurationof phonemes. In languages in whichtonesare phonemic, the tone phonemes may be calledtonemes.Though not all scholars working on such languages use these terms, they are by no means obsolete.

By analogy with the phoneme, linguists have proposed other sorts of underlying objects, giving them names with the suffix-eme,such asmorphemeandgrapheme.These are sometimes calledemic units.The latter term was first used byKenneth Pike,who also generalized the concepts ofemic and eticdescription (fromphonemicandphoneticrespectively) to applications outside linguistics.

Restrictions on occurrence

Main article:Phonotactics

Languages do not generally allow words orsyllablesto be built of any arbitrary sequences of phonemes. There arephonotacticrestrictions on which sequences of phonemes are possible and in which environments certain phonemes can occur. Phonemes that are significantly limited by such restrictions may be calledrestricted phonemes.

In English, examples of such restrictions include the following:

• /ŋ/,as insing,occurs only at the end of a syllable, never at the beginning (in many other languages, such asMāori,Swahili,Tagalog,Thai,andSetswana,/ŋ/can appear word-initially).
• /h/occurs only at the beginning of a syllable, never at the end (a few languages, such asArabicandRomanian,allow/h/syllable-finally).
• Innon-rhotic dialects,/ɹ/can occur immediately only before a vowel, never before a consonant.
• /w/and/j/occur only before a vowel, never at the end of a syllable (except in interpretations in which a word likeboyis analyzed as/bɔj/).

Some phonotactic restrictions can alternatively be analyzed as cases of neutralization. SeeNeutralization and archiphonemesbelow, particularly the example of the occurrence of the three English nasals before stops.

Biuniqueness

Biuniquenessis a requirement of classicstructuralistphonemics. It means that a givenphone,wherever it occurs, must unambiguously be assigned to one and only one phoneme. In other words, the mapping between phones and phonemes is required to be many-to-one rather thanmany-to-many.The notion of biuniqueness was controversial among some pre-generativelinguists and was prominently challenged byMorris HalleandNoam Chomskyin the late 1950s and early 1960s.

An example of the problems arising from the biuniqueness requirement is provided by the phenomenon offlappinginNorth American English.This may cause either/t/or/d/(in the appropriate environments) to be realized with the phone[ɾ](analveolar flap). For example, the same flap sound may be heard in the wordshittingandbidding,although it is intended to realize the phoneme/t/in the first word and/d/in the second. This appears to contradict biuniqueness.

For further discussion of such cases, see the next section.

Neutralization and archiphonemes

Phonemes that are contrastive in certain environments may not be contrastive in all environments. In the environments where they do not contrast, the contrast is said to beneutralized.In these positions it may become less clear which phoneme a given phone represents.Absolute neutralizationis a phenomenon in which a segment of theunderlying representationis not realized in any of itsphoneticrepresentations (surface forms). The term was introduced byPaul Kiparsky(1968), and contrasts withcontextual neutralizationwhere some phonemes are not contrastive in certain environments.Some phonologists prefer not to specify a unique phoneme in such cases, since to do so would mean providing redundant or even arbitrary information – instead they use the technique ofunderspecification.Anarchiphonemeis an object sometimes used to represent an underspecified phoneme.

An example of neutralization is provided by the Russian vowels/a/and/o/.These phonemes are contrasting instressedsyllables, but in unstressed syllables the contrast is lost, since both arereducedto the same sound, usually[ə](for details, seevowel reduction in Russian). In order to assign such an instance of[ə]to one of the phonemes/a/and/o/,it is necessary to considermorphologicalfactors (such as which of the vowels occurs in other forms of the words, or whichinflectionalpattern is followed). In some cases even this may not provide an unambiguous answer. A description using the approach of underspecification would not attempt to assign[ə]to a specific phoneme in some or all of these cases, although it might be assigned to an archiphoneme, written something like//A//,which reflects the two neutralized phonemes in this position, or{a|o},reflecting its unmerged values.

A somewhat different example is found in English, with the threenasalphonemes/m,n,ŋ/.In word-final position these all contrast, as shown by the minimal tripletsum/sʌm/,sun/sʌn/,sung/sʌŋ/.However, before astopsuch as/p,t,k/(provided there is nomorphemeboundary between them), only one of the nasals is possible in any given position:/m/before/p/,/n/before/t/or/d/,and/ŋ/before/k/,as inlimp, lint, link(/lɪmp/,/lɪnt/,/lɪŋk/). The nasals are therefore not contrastive in these environments, and according to some theorists this makes it inappropriate to assign the nasal phones heard here to any one of the phonemes (even though, in this case, the phonetic evidence is unambiguous). Instead they may analyze these phonemes as belonging to a single archiphoneme, written something like//N//,and state theunderlying representationsoflimp, lint, linkto be//lɪNp//,//lɪNt//,//lɪNk//.

This latter type of analysis is often associated withNikolai Trubetzkoyof thePrague school.Archiphonemes are often notated with a capital letter within double virgules or pipes, as with the examples//A//and//N//given above. Other ways the second of these has been notated include|m-n-ŋ|,{m,n,ŋ}and//n*//.

Another example from English, but this time involving complete phonetic convergence as in the Russian example, is the flapping of/t/and/d/in some American English (described above underBiuniqueness). Here the wordsbettingandbeddingmight both be pronounced[ˈbɛɾɪŋ].Under thegenerative grammartheory of linguistics, if a speaker applies such flapping consistently, morphological evidence (the pronunciation of the related formsbetandbed,for example) would reveal which phoneme the flap represents, once it is known which morpheme is being used.However, other theorists would prefer not to make such a determination, and simply assign the flap in both cases to a single archiphoneme, written (for example)//D//.

Further mergers in English areplosivesafter/s/,where/p,t,k/conflate with/b,d,ɡ/,as suggested by the alternative spellingsskettiandsghetti.That is, there is no particular reason to transcribespinas/ˈspɪn/rather than as/ˈsbɪn/,other than its historical development, and it might be less ambiguously transcribed//ˈsBɪn//.

Morphophonemes

Main article:Morphophonology

Amorphophonemeis a theoretical unit at a deeper level of abstraction than traditional phonemes, and is taken to be a unit from whichmorphemesare built up. A morphophoneme within a morpheme can be expressed in different ways in differentallomorphsof that morpheme (according tomorphophonologicalrules). For example, the English plural morpheme-sappearing in words such ascatsanddogscan be considered to be a single morphophoneme, which might be transcribed (for example)//z//or|z|,and which is realized phonemically as/s/after mostvoiceless consonants(as incats) and as/z/in other cases (as indogs).

Numbers of phonemes in different languages

All known languages use only a small subset of the many possiblesoundsthat the humanspeech organscan produce, and, because ofallophony,the number of distinct phonemes will generally be smaller than the number of identifiably different sounds. Different languages vary considerably in the number of phonemes they have in their systems (although apparent variation may sometimes result from the different approaches taken by the linguists doing the analysis). The total phonemic inventory in languages varies from as few as 9–11 inPirahãand 11 inRotokasto as many as 141 inǃXũ.

The number of phonemically distinctvowelscan be as low as two, as inUbykhandArrernte.At the other extreme, theBantulanguageNgwehas 14 vowel qualities, 12 of which may occur long or short, making 26 oral vowels, plus six nasalized vowels, long and short, making a total of 38 vowels; while!Xóõachieves 31 pure vowels, not counting its additional variation by vowel length, by varying thephonation.As regardsconsonantphonemes,Puinaveand the Papuan languageTauadeeach have just seven, andRotokashas only six.!Xóõ,on the other hand, has somewhere around 77, andUbykh81. TheEnglish languageuses a rather large set of 13 to 21 vowel phonemes, including diphthongs, although its 22 to 26consonantsare close to average. Across all languages, the average number of consonant phonemes per language is about 22, while the average number of vowel phonemes is about 8.

Some languages, such asFrench,have no phonemictoneorstress,whileCantoneseand several of theKam–Sui languageshave six to nine tones (depending on how they are counted), and the Kam-SuiDong languagehas nine to 15 tones by the same measure. One of theKru languages,Wobé,has been claimed to have 14,though this is disputed.

The most common vowel system consists of the five vowels/i/,/e/,/a/,/o/,/u/.The most common consonants are/p/,/t/,/k/,/m/,/n/.Relatively few languages lack any of these consonants, although it does happen: for example,Arabiclacks/p/,standard Hawaiianlacks/t/,MohawkandTlingitlack/p/and/m/,Hupalacks both/p/and a simple/k/,colloquialSamoanlacks/t/and/n/,whileRotokasandQuileutelack/m/and/n/.

The non-uniqueness of phonemic solutions

During the development of phoneme theory in the mid-20th century, phonologists were concerned not only with the procedures and principles involved in producing a phonemic analysis of the sounds of a given language, but also with the reality or uniqueness of the phonemic solution. These were central concerns ofphonology.Some writers took the position expressed byKenneth Pike:"There is only one accurate phonemic analysis for a given set of data",while others believed that different analyses, equally valid, could be made for the same data.Yuen Ren Chao(1934), in his article "The non-uniqueness of phonemic solutions of phonetic systems"stated "given the sounds of a language, there are usually more than one possible way of reducing them to a set of phonemes, and these different systems or solutions are not simply correct or incorrect, but may be regarded only as being good or bad for various purposes". The linguistF. W. Householderreferred to this argument within linguistics as "God's Truth" (i.e. the stance that a given language has an intrinsic structure to be discovered) vs. "hocus-pocus" (i.e. the stance that any proposed, coherent structure is as good as any other).

Different analyses of the English vowel system may be used to illustrate this. The articleEnglish phonologystates that "English has a particularly large number of vowel phonemes" and that "there are 20 vowel phonemes in Received Pronunciation, 14–16 in General American and 20–21 in Australian English". Although these figures are often quoted as fact, they actually reflect just one of many possible analyses, and later in the English Phonology article an alternative analysis is suggested in which some diphthongs and long vowels may be interpreted as comprising a short vowel linked to either/j/or/w/.The fullest exposition of this approach is found inTragerand Smith (1951), where all long vowels and diphthongs ( "complex nuclei" ) are made up of a short vowel combined with either/j/,/w/or/h/(plus/r/for rhotic accents), each comprising two phonemes.The transcription for the vowel normally transcribed/aɪ/would instead be/aj/,/aʊ/would be/aw/and/ɑː/would be/ah/,or /ar/ in a rhotic accent if there is an⟨r⟩in the spelling. It is also possible to treat English long vowels and diphthongs as combinations of two vowel phonemes, with long vowels treated as a sequence of two short vowels, so that 'palm' would be represented as /paam/. English can thus be said to have around seven vowel phonemes, or even six if schwa were treated as an allophone of/ʌ/or of other short vowels.

In the same period there was disagreement about the correct basis for a phonemic analysis. Thestructuralistposition was that the analysis should be made purely on the basis of the sound elements and their distribution, with no reference to extraneous factors such as grammar, morphology or the intuitions of the native speaker; this position is strongly associated withLeonard Bloomfield.Zellig Harrisclaimed that it is possible to discover the phonemes of a language purely by examining the distribution of phonetic segments.Referring tomentalisticdefinitions of the phoneme,Twaddell(1935) stated "Such a definition is invalid because (1) we have no right to guess about the linguistic workings of an inaccessible 'mind', and (2) we can secure no advantage from such guesses. The linguistic processes of the 'mind' as such are quite simply unobservable; and introspection about linguistic processes is notoriously a fire in a wooden stove."This approach was opposed to that ofEdward Sapir,who gave an important role to native speakers' intuitions about where a particular sound or group of sounds fitted into a pattern. Using English[ŋ]as an example, Sapir argued that, despite the superficial appearance that this sound belongs to a group of three nasal consonant phonemes (/m/, /n/ and /ŋ/), native speakers feel that the velar nasal is really the sequence [ŋɡ]/.The theory ofgenerative phonologywhich emerged in the 1960s explicitly rejected the structuralist approach to phonology and favoured the mentalistic or cognitive view of Sapir.

These topics are discussed further inEnglish phonology#Controversial issues.

Correspondence between letters and phonemes

Main article:Phonemic orthography

Phonemes are considered to be the basis foralphabeticwriting systems. In such systems the written symbols (graphemes) represent, in principle, the phonemes of the language being written. This is most obviously the case when the alphabet was invented with a particular language in mind; for example, the Latin alphabet was devised for Classical Latin, and therefore the Latin of that period enjoyed a near one-to-one correspondence between phonemes and graphemes in most cases, though the devisers of the alphabet chose not to represent the phonemic effect of vowel length. However, because changes in the spoken language are often not accompanied by changes in the establishedorthography(as well as other reasons, includingdialectdifferences, the effects ofmorphophonologyon orthography, and the use of foreign spellings for someloanwords), the correspondence between spelling and pronunciation in a given language may be highly distorted; this is the case with English, for example.

The correspondence between symbols and phonemes in alphabetic writing systems is not necessarily aone-to-one correspondence.A phoneme might be represented by a combination of two or more letters (digraph,trigraph,etc.), like⟨sh⟩in English or⟨sch⟩inGerman(both representing the phoneme/ʃ/). Also a single letter may represent two phonemes, as in English⟨x⟩representing/gz/or/ks/.There may also exist spelling/pronunciation rules (such as those for the pronunciation of⟨c⟩inItalian) that further complicate the correspondence of letters to phonemes, although they need not affect the ability to predict the pronunciation from the spelling and vice versa, provided the rules are consistent.

In sign languages

Sign language phonemes are bundles of articulation features.Stokoewas the first scholar to describe the phonemic system ofASL.He identified the bundlestab(elements of location, from Latintabula),dez(the handshape, fromdesignator), andsig(the motion, fromsignation). Some researchers also discernori(orientation), facialexpressionormouthing.Just as with spoken languages, when features are combined, they create phonemes. As in spoken languages, sign languages have minimal pairs which differ in only one phoneme. For instance, the ASL signs forfatherandmotherdiffer minimally with respect to location while handshape and movement are identical; location is thus contrastive.

Stokoe's terminology and notation systemare no longer used by researchers to describe the phonemes of sign languages;William Stokoe's research, while still considered seminal, has been found not to characterize American Sign Language or other sign languages sufficiently.For instance,non-manual featuresare not included in Stokoe's classification. More sophisticated models of sign language phonology have since been proposed byBrentari,Sandler,and Van der Kooij.

Chereme

Cherologyandchereme(fromAncient Greek:χείρ"hand" ) are synonyms ofphonologyand phoneme previously used in the study ofsign languages.Achereme,as the basic unit of signed communication, is functionally and psychologically equivalent to the phonemes of oral languages, and has been replaced by that term in the academic literature.Cherology,as the study ofcheremesin language, is thus equivalent to phonology. The terms are not in use anymore. Instead, the termsphonologyandphoneme(ordistinctive feature) are used to stress the linguistic similarities between signed and spoken languages.

The terms were coined in 1960 byWilliam StokoeatGallaudet Universityto describe sign languages as true and full languages. Once a controversial idea, the position is now universally accepted in linguistics. Stokoe's terminology, however, has been largely abandoned.

See also

• Alphabetic principle
• Alternation (linguistics)
• Complementary distribution
• Diaphoneme
• Diphone
• Emic and etic
• Free variation
• Initial-stress-derived noun
• International Phonetic Alphabet
• Minimal pair
• Morphophonology
• Phone
• Phonemic orthography
• Phonology
• Phonological change
• Phonotactics
• Sphoṭa
• Toneme
• Triphone
• Viseme

Further reading

• Chomsky, Noam;Halle, Morris(1968),The Sound Pattern of English,Harper and Row,OCLC317361
• Clark, J.; Yallop, C. (1995),An Introduction to Phonetics and Phonology(2nd ed.), Blackwell,ISBN978-0-631-19452-1
• Crystal, David(1997),The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language(2nd ed.), Cambridge,ISBN978-0-521-55967-6
• Crystal, David (2010),The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language(3rd ed.), Cambridge,ISBN978-0-521-73650-3
• Gimson, A.C. (2008), Cruttenden, A. (ed.),The Pronunciation of English(7th ed.), Hodder,ISBN978-0-340-95877-3
• Harris, Z. (1951),Methods in Structural Linguistics,Chicago University Press,OCLC2232282
• Jakobson, R.; Fant, G.; Halle, M. (1952),Preliminaries to Speech Analysis,MIT,OCLC6492928
• Jakobson, R.; Halle, M. (1968),Phonology in Relation to Phonetics, in Malmberg, B. (ed) Manual of Phonetics,North-Holland,OCLC13223685
• Jones, Daniel (1957), "The History and Meaning of the Term 'Phoneme'",Le Maître Phonétique,35(72), Le Maître Phonétique, supplement (reprinted in E. Fudge (ed) Phonology, Penguin):1–20,JSTOR44705495,OCLC4550377
• Ladefoged, P. (2006),A Course in Phonetics(5th ed.), Thomson,ISBN978-1-4282-3126-9
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