Some further examples for phonemes

The notion of the phoneme is a notoriously difficult one to come to terms with at first. This is not altogether surprising: it isn’t every day that you are told you know a whole range of things you didn’t know you knew, and moreover that this knowledge seems likely to be structured in terms of a set of mental units you didn’t know you had. However, the fact that phonemes are so central to phonology means it is well worth giving a few extra examples, to make the concept a little more familiar

First, let us return to Modern English /t/ and /k/, which we have already met in tall versus call; in fact, we can add Paul to make a minimal triplet, adding /p/ to our phoneme system. Now hold a piece of paper up in front of your mouth by the bottom of the sheet, so the top is free to flap about, and try saying Paul, tall, call. You will find that a little puff of air is released after the initial /p/, /t/ and /k/, making the paper move slightly: this is called aspiration, and signaled in IPA transcription by adding a superscript [h ] after the symbol in question. This means that /p/, /t/ and /k/ have the allophones [ph ], [th ] and [kh ] word-initially; the aspiration is most noticeable with [ph], since it is articulated with the lips, nearest to where the air exits.

However, /p/, /t/ and /k/ really do have to be right at the beginning of the word for these allophones to appear. Try to make yourself aware of the initial aspiration in pill, till and kill; this time, you will again be producing [ph ] and [th ], but the allophone of /k/ will be slightly different; the front vowel in kill conditions a fronter, aspirated [ch ]. If you add an initial [s] and do the piece of paper trick again, you will find that there is no discernible movement. After [s], we find plain, unaspirated allophones [p], [t] and [c] in spill, still and skill (and unaspirated [k] in scold, as opposed to [kh ] in cold, where /k/ is followed by a back vowel).

It follows that phonemes can have a whole range of allophones. Illustrating with just one phoneme, Modern English /k/, we have now identified word-initial aspirated [kh ] in call, cold; fronter, aspirated [ch ] before front vowels, as in kill, kitchen; unaspirated [k] in scold; and unaspirated [c] in skill. That deals with the beginnings of words. At the ends, /k/ is very frequently accompanied by a partial glottal stop; this is known as glottal reinforcement, and the final sound in back is signaled in IPA terms as [ʔk]. When a following word begins with [g], for instance, this [ʔk] is sometimes replaced by a glottal stop, as in back garden, where you may perceive the [ʔ] allophone of /k/ as almost a pause before the [g]. Glottalisation of this kind is much more common for /t/: as we saw in the last chapter, glottal stops are increasingly found in non-standard accents in forms like statement, seatbelt ,butter, meaning that the glottal stop in English can be an allophone of both /k/ and /t/. We return to this issue of overlap .

For a final example, let us turn to a phoneme we have not considered before, namely /l/. /l/ has only two main allophones in English, depending on its position in the word (unless you speak some varieties of Irish or Welsh English, or Geordie, the variety spoken around Newcastle, in which case you have only the first realization described below; conversely, some varieties of Scottish English only have the second allophone). If you say lull, or lilt, you will notice that the first l in each case is pronounced with the tip of your tongue up behind your top front teeth, while the second additionally has the tongue raised further back. This time the distribution of the allophones does not depend on the frontness or backness of the adjacent vowel, since lull has a back vowel, while lilt has a front one, but both have the fronter [l] first, and the backer [l] second. In the case of /l/, what matters is whether the /l/ precedes or follows the vowel in the word. If /l/ comes first, it is pronounced as ‘clear’, fronter [l], as also in clear; and if the vowel comes first, /l/ is realized as ‘dark’, more back [l], as in dull. The two are obviously in complementary distribution, and hence can both straightforwardly be assigned to the same phoneme, /l/, in Modern English.

We find a different story in Scots Gaelic, however, where minimal pairs can be found for the clear and dark variants. For instance, the words baile ‘a town’ and balla ‘a wall’ are pronounced identically, except for the clear [l] in baile, and the dark [l] in balla. Whereas substituting clear for dark pronunciations, or vice versa, in English would be picked up by listeners as slightly, intangibly peculiar, for a Scots Gaelic speaker the difference is both easily noticeable and meaningful, since a substitution will simply produce the wrong word. Again, we find that differences which in one language are automatic to the point of inaudibility without training, are highly salient and have important linguistic consequences in another.