Professional Documents
Culture Documents
WHAT IS A PHONE?
A phone is:
● a speech sound considered as a physical event
without regard to its place in the sound system of a
language — phone in a sentence.
WHAT IS A PHONEME?
A phoneme is the smallest contrastive unit which may bring about a
change of meaning.
The smallest distinctive or contrastive units of the sound system of a
language.
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.
Examples:the phoneme /k/, which occurs in words such
as cat, kit, scat, skit.
Here are examples of the phonemes /r/ and /l/ occurring in a minimal
pair: rip lip
The phones [r] and [l] contrast in identical environments and are
considered to be separate phonemes. The phonemes /r/ and /l/ serve to
distinguish the word rip from the word lip.