Phone (phonetics)

In phonetics (a branch of linguistics), a phone is any distinct speech sound or gesture, regardless of whether the exact sound is critical to the meanings of words.

In contrast, a phoneme is a speech sound in a given language that, if swapped with another phoneme, could change one word to another. Phones are absolute and are not specific to any language, but phonemes can be discussed only in reference to specific languages.

For example, the English words kid and kit, [kɪd] and [kɪt], end with two distinct sounds (phones), [d] ^ⓘ and [t] ^ⓘ, and swapping one for the other changes the word. Thus, in the English language, these particular phones are classifiable as distinct phonemes, which are written between slashes in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA): thus, /d/ versus /t/. However, the difference between the [ɕ] ^ⓘ sound in some dialects' pronunciation of sheet and the [ʃ] ^ⓘ in shack ([ɕit] versus [ʃæk] in the IPA) never affects the meaning or identity of a word in English. Even if those particular phones were interchanged, those two words would still likely be recognized as sheet and shack by native English speakers. Therefore, [ɕ] and [ʃ] are not two separate phonemes in English; rather, they could be classified as two possible phonetic variations (called allophones) of the same phoneme. In contrast, languages other than English, such as some Slavic languages like Polish or Russian, may indeed perceive [ɕ] and [ʃ] as separate phonemes.

As another example, swapping the sounds [pʰ] and [p] in the English word spin does not change its meaning. However, in Hindustani (Hindi and Urdu), swapping these phones can change one word into another: for instance, [pʰal] (फल/پھل) means 'fruit', and [pal] (पल/پل) means 'moment'. The sounds [pʰ] and [p] are thus different phonemes in Hindustani but are not usually considered distinct phonemes in English.

As seen in the examples, phonemes, rather than phones, are usually the features of speech that are mapped onto the characters of an orthography.

Overview

In the context of spoken languages, a phone is an unanalyzed sound of a language. A phone is a speech segment that possesses distinct physical or perceptual properties and serves as the basic unit of phonetic speech analysis. Phones are generally either vowels or consonants.

A phonetic transcription (based on phones) is enclosed within square brackets ([ ]), rather than the slashes (/ /) of a phonemic transcription, (based on phonemes). Phones (and often also phonemes) are commonly represented by using symbols of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).

For example, the English word spin consists of four phones, [s], [p], [ɪ] and [n] and so the word has the phonetic representation [spɪn]. The word pin has three phones. Since its initial sound is aspirated, it can be represented as [pʰ], and the word's phonetic representation would then be [pʰɪn]. (The precise features shown in a phonetic representation depend on whether a narrow or broad transcription is used and which features the writer wishes to draw attention to in a particular context.)

When phones are considered to be realizations of the same phoneme, they are called allophones of that phoneme (more information on the methods of making such assignments can be found under phoneme). In English, for example, [p] and [pʰ] are considered allophones of a single phoneme, which is written /p/. The phonemic transcriptions of those two words is thus /spɪn/ and /pɪn/, and aspiration is then no longer shown since it is not distinctive.

Connection to orthography

Whether a direct mapping between phonemes and characters is achieved depends on the type of orthography used. Phonological orthographies like the Indonesian orthography tend to have one-to-one mappings of phonemes to characters, whereas alphabetic orthographies like the English orthography tend to try to have direct mappings, but often end up mapping one phoneme to multiple characters.

In the examples above the characters enclosed in square brackets: "pʰ" and "p" are IPA representations of phones. The IPA unlike English and Indonesian is not a practical orthography and is used by linguists to obtain phonetic transcriptions of words in spoken languages and is therefore a strongly phonetically spelled system by design.

See also

• Emic unit
• Index of phonetics articles

Bibliography

• Barry, W. J. (2006). "Phoneme". In Brown, Keith (ed.). Encyclopedia of Language & Linguistics (2nd ed.). Elsevier. pp. 345–350. doi:10.1016/B0-08-044854-2/00009-2. ISBN 978-0-08-044854-1.
• Crystal, David (1971). Linguistics. Baltimore: Penguin.
• Loos, Eugene E., ed. (1997). "What is a phone?". LinguaLinks: Glossary of linguistic terms. SIL International. Archived from the original on 15 October 2017. Retrieved 16 December 2013.
• "Urdu: Structure of Language". Language Information Service (LIS) – India. Mysore: Central Institute of Indian Languages. 2008. Retrieved 1 February 2016.