Phoneme

In oral language, a phoneme is the theoretical basic unit of sound that can be used to distinguish words or morphemes; in sign language, it is a similarly basic unit of hand shape, motion, position, or facial expression. (Formerly termed chereme.) That is, changing a phoneme in a word produces either nonsense, or a different word with a different meaning.

Neutralization, archiphoneme, underspecification

Phonemes that are contrastive in certain environments may not be contrastive in all environments. In the environments where they don't contrast, the contrast is said to be neutralized. In English there are three nasal phonemes, {{IPA|/m, n, ?/}}, as shown by the minimal triplet,

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However, these sounds are not contrastive before plosives such as {{IPA|/p, t, k/}}. Although all three phones appear before plosives, for example in imp, hint, ink, only one of these may appear before each of the plosives. That is, the {{IPA|/m, n, ?/}} distinction is neutralized before each of the plosives {{IPA|/p, t, k/}}:

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• Only {{IPA|}} occurs before {{IPA|}},
• only {{IPA|}} before {{IPA|}}, and
• only {{IPA|}} before {{IPA|}}.

Thus there is no evidence that these are distinct phonemes in these environments, nor is there any evidence as to what the underlying representation might be. If we theorize that we are dealing with only a single underlying nasal, there is no reason to pick one of the three phonemes {{IPA|/m, n, ?/}} over the other two.

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(In some languages there is only one phonemic nasal anywhere, and it surfaces as {{IPA|}} in just these environments, so this idea is not far fetched.)

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In certain schools of phonology, such a neutralized distinction is known as an archiphoneme. Archiphonemes are often notated with a capital letter. Following this convention, the neutralization of {{IPA|/m, n, ?/}} before {{IPA|/p, t, k/}} could be notated as |N|, and imp, hint, ink would be represented as |iNp, hiNt, iNk|. (The |pipes| indicate underlying representation.) Other ways this archiphoneme could be notated are {{IPA|/m-n-?/}}, {{IPA|{m, n, ?}}}, or {{IPA|/n*/}}.

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Another example from English is the neutralization of the plosives /k, g/ following /s/. Phonetically, the tenuis plosive in sky is closer to English /g/, which is partially voiceless in initial position, than to aspirated /k/. This can be heard by comparing the sky with this guy, and by young children who control voicing but not yet consonant clusters, who pronounce sky as /gai/. That is, /k/ and /g/ are constrastive word initially,

Related Topics:
Tenuis - Voiceless - Aspirated

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But not after an /s/,

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Thus one cannot say whether the underlying representation of the plosive in sky is /skai/ without aspiration, or /sgai/ without voicing. This neutralization can instead be represented as an archiphoneme |G|, in which case the underlying representation of sky would be |sGai|.

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Another way to talk about archiphonemes involves the concept of underspecification. Phonemes can be considered fully specified segments while archiphonemes are underspecified segments. In {{ll|Tuvan}}, phonemic vowels are specified with the features of tongue height, backness, and lip rounding. The archiphoneme |U| is an underspecified high vowel where only the tongue height is specified.

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Whether |U| is pronounced as front or back and whether rounded or unrounded depends on vowel harmony. If |U| occurs following a front unrounded vowel, it will be pronounced as the phoneme {{IPA|/i/}}; if following a back unrounded vowel, it will be as an {{IPA|/?/}}; and if following a back rounded vowel, it will be an {{IPA|/u/}}. This can been seen in the following words:

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