Coarticulation, Allophone, and Elision - Case Study Example

Elision: Elision is the loss of a phoneme. I.e. the omission of sounds (vowel/consonant/syllable), so that the speaker can simplify the pronunciation. This usually occurs in fast speech and is normally unintentional. Allophone: Allophone is a phonetic variant of a phoneme in a particular language. I.e. it is one of the several speech sounds belonging to the same phoneme. A change in allophone does not alter the meaning but rather makes the word sound non-native.

Minimal pairs enable linguists to build up the phoneme inventory for a language or a dialect. Though the words differ by only one segment, there may be wide variations in terms of articulation. However, most minimal pairs are considerably distinct and hardly pose an inconvenience to the speaker or listener. Complementary Distribution: it is the mutually exclusive relationship between two phonetically similar segments. It exists when one segment occurs in one particular environment and the other occurs in an entirely different environment.

Example: Consider the allophones [p'] and [p]. Example: Consider the allophones [p'] and [p]. [p'], the aspirated phoneme occurs when there is a syllable onset and is followed by a stressed vowel (as in the word put) and the unaspirated phoneme [p] occurs all other times. Here we see complementary distribution in similar phones. Every time it need not be allophones. For example,[h] and ['] are in complementary distribution, since [h] only occurs at the beginning of a syllable and ['] only at the end.

Since they have hardly anything in common in phonetic terms, they are better considered as separate phonemes. Phonological conditioning and conditioning factors: Consider the words- cats, dogs, and judges. The final sounds- /s/, /z/, /s/ occur after the sounds /t/, /g/, and /'/, respectively. When the distribution of the various allomorphs can be stated in terms of their phonemic environments, the allomorphs are said to be phonologically conditioned. Phonological conditioning is the most general and productive kind of conditioning of morphemic variants in languages.

Phonemic overlapping: Biuniqueness: It is a principle that provides a one-to-one correspondence between phonemic and phonetic levels of analysis. A phonemic description is said to be biunique if phonemes and allophones are unambiguously mapped onto each other. Example: send and sent pronounced as /sent/ and seed and seat pronounced as /si:t/.Neutralization: phonemes that are contrastive in certain environments may not be so in all environments. In those environments where they do not contrast, the contrast is said to be neutralized.

Example: consider the word sum: /sm/. In other words, plumber: /plumb/, since /m/ is followed by a plosive sound /b/, the contrast is lost.