Phonology definition for kids
Phonological Awareness | Reading Rockets
Who can understand all the jargon that's being tossed around in education these days? Why is there a word for everything, and why do they have to be so confusing? Consider all the similar terms that have to do with the sounds of spoken words — phonics, phonetic spelling, phoneme awareness, phonological awareness, and phonology. All of the words share the same "phon" root, so they are easy to confuse, but they are definitely different, and each, in its way, is very important in reading education.
Phonics
Thanks to the popular "Hooked on Phonics" television commercials everybody has heard of phonics, but not everybody knows what it is. Phonics is a method of teaching that emphasizes letter-sound relationships. Children are taught, for example, that the letter N represents the sound /n/, and that it is the first letter in words such as nose, nice and new.
In addition, and this is something that most people don't think about when they think of phonics, children are explicitly taught the English spelling–sound "rules. " Children are taught things like "when two vowels go walkin' the first does the talkin'" and "when a word ends in a silent-e, the first vowel sound is long." Since no letter in English, except for the letter V consistently corresponds to a single sound, these rules are quite complex. Nose, nice, and new all start with the letter N, but gnu, knife, and pneumonia certainly do not. There are spelling and pronunciation rules, and then there are exceptions to the rules, and teachers who use the phonics approach try to formally and explicitly teach both.
For the purpose of discussion here, there are two important things to remember about phonics. First and foremost, phonics is an instructional strategy — a method of teaching children to read. Second, phonics has to do with teaching the relationships between the sounds in speech and the letters of the alphabet (both written and spoken). Typically, when somebody is talking about teaching children the "spelling–sound" relationships (or to use some of that psycho-babble ed-speak, the "grapho-phonemic" relationships), they are talking about teaching some form of phonics.
Phonetic spelling or reading
This is a concept which is related to phonics, but unlike phonics, which is a method of teaching reading, phonetic spelling or phonetic reading is a behavior that young readers exhibit when they are trying to write or read. When children spell words the way they sound, they are said to be phonetically spelling — for example, the word lion could be phonetically spelled L-Y-N, or the word move could be phonetically spelled M-U-V. Likewise, a child can phonetically read words — child phonetically reading the word two may say "twah", or the child may phonetically read the word laugh in such a way that it sounds like lag or log.
Phonology
Unlike phonics or phonetic reading and writing, phonology has nothing to do with the letters in our alphabet or the letter names (spoken or written. Phonology has to do with the ability to distinguish and categorize sounds in speech. Some words in English (in all languages actually) sound very similar, and are easily confused if you are not very sensitive to the distinctions.
For some children with phonology deficits, pairs of words like mauve and moth or rate and late sound identical. They can not hear the difference between certain similar phonemes (speech sounds), and as a consequence, they can not hear the difference between certain words.
Phonological awareness
Like phonology, phonological awareness has nothing to do with the letters in our alphabet — it has to do with the sounds in spoken words. And while phonology refers to the ability to hear the difference between sounds in spoken words, phonological awareness refers to the child's understanding that spoken words are made up of sounds.
This fact is obvious to adults, but children do not usually realize that, within a word, there may be other words (in the case of compound words), or that words are made up of syllables and that syllables are made up of phonemes. Children without phonological awareness do not understand what it means for words to rhyme, they do not appreciate alliteration (words that start with the same sound), and they do not understand that some words are longer than other words (the spoken form, that is, not necessarily the written form — the word area in its spoken form is longer than the word though, but in its written form, area is the shorter word).
Phoneme awareness
The phoneme is the basic building block for spoken words. In English, for example, there are an infinite number of possible words, but there are only about 45 phonemes. To make new words, we just delete or rearrange the phonemes — mat becomes man when the phoneme /t/ is replaced with the phoneme /n/, and deleting the phoneme /m/ from man leaves you with the word an.
While phonological awareness is a general term describing a child's awareness that spoken words are made up of sounds, phoneme awareness is a specific term that falls under the umbrella of phonological awareness. Phoneme awareness refers to the specific understanding that spoken words are made up of individual phonemes — not just sounds in general (which would include syllables, onsets, rimes, etc.). Children with phoneme awareness know that the spoken word
bend contains four phonemes, and that the words pill and map both contain the phoneme /p/; they know that phonemes can be rearranged and substituted to make different words.
Phonological awareness is a step in the right direction, but phoneme awareness is what is necessary for the child to understand that the letters in written words represent the phonemes in spoken words (what we call the "alphabetic principle"). We spend a lot of time teaching children that the letter M stands for the sound /m/, but we rarely make sure that children understand that words like milk, ham and family all contain the phoneme /m/, or that the difference between man and an is the deletion of the phoneme /m/.
Phoneme awareness can be demonstrated in a variety of ways. The easiest phoneme awareness task is called blending — an adult pronounces a word with a pause between each phoneme (e.g. /b/ /a/ /l/), and the child blends the phonemes together to make the word ("ball"). A more challenging assessment for children is the reverse, called phoneme segmentation — the adult says the whole word, and the child says the word with pauses between the phonemes (adult says "ball," child says /b/ /a/ /l/).
Even more challenging is phoneme manipulation — the adult tells the child to say a word without a particular phoneme (say "boat" without the /t/), or the adult tells the child to add a phoneme to a word to make a new word (What word would you have if you added the phoneme /o/ to the beginning of "pen?"). If the child can reliably do any of these tasks, the child has demonstrated true phoneme awareness, but a relevant point to make here is that the child doesn't need to do much more than these tasks to demonstrate phoneme awareness.
It is possible, in fact it is easy, to create phoneme awareness tasks that are exceptionally tricky, but these should be avoided rather than exploited. English contains many confusing phonemes — there are diphthongs and glides that can confuse anybody, even mature, experienced readers (How many phonemes do you hear in pay?), and there are odd phonemes that are not universally defined (How many phonemes are in the word ring or fur?), and there are clusters of phonemes that are harder to segment than other phonemes (a cluster is a group of consonants that are perceived as a unit, sometimes until the child begins spelling — for example, the /pr/ in pray, the /gl/ in glow, and the /sk/ in school).
It is important for the teacher to remember that the child doesn't need to be an Olympic champion at phoneme manipulation — the child just needs to demonstrate knowledge of the fact that spoken words are made up of phonemes. It is also important that the teacher understands that phoneme awareness is not a magic bullet; it is important, and it is necessary for reading success, but it is only one skill of many that support literacy.
Summary
To recap, phonics is an instructional approach that emphasizes the letter-sound relationships (which letters represent which sounds). Phonetic reading and writing is a behavior the child exhibits that involves "sounding out" words the way they are written or writing words the way they sound (again, relating to the way letters represent speech sounds). Phonology has to do with the ability to hear the difference between different speech sounds (and has nothing to do with letters of the alphabet). Phonological awareness is a term used to describe the child's generic understanding that spoken words are made up of sounds.
Phoneme awareness specifically refers to a child's knowledge that the basic building blocks of spoken words are the phonemes.
The Phive Phones of Reading by Sebastian Wren, Ph.D. Copyrighted © by Southwest Educational Development Laboratory. All rights reserved.
Video: Letters and Sounds
A Hmong-American kindergarten teacher in Sacramento mixes serious instruction with lively play for his second language learners.
Phonological and Phonemic Awareness: Introduction
Learn the definitions of phonological awareness and phonemic awareness — and how these pre-reading listening skills relate to phonics.
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Phonological awareness and phonemic awareness: what’s the difference?
Phonological awareness is the ability to recognize and manipulate the spoken parts of sentences and words. Examples include being able to identify words that rhyme, recognizing alliteration, segmenting a sentence into words, identifying the syllables in a word, and blending and segmenting onset-rimes. The most sophisticated — and last to develop — is called phonemic awareness.
Phonemic awareness is the ability to notice, think about, and work with the individual sounds (phonemes) in spoken words. This includes blending sounds into words, segmenting words into sounds, and deleting and playing with the sounds in spoken words.
Phonological awareness (PA) involves a continuum of skills that develop over time and that are crucial for reading and spelling success, because they are central to learning to decode and spell printed words. Phonological awareness is especially important at the earliest stages of reading development — in pre-school, kindergarten, and first grade for typical readers.
Explicit teaching of phonological awareness in these early years can eliminate future reading problems for many students. However, struggling decoders of any age can work on phonological awareness, especially if they evidence problems in blending or segmenting phonemes.
How about phonological awareness and phonics?
Phonological awareness refers to a global awareness of sounds in spoken words, as well as the ability to manipulate those sounds.
Phonics refers to knowledge of letter sounds and the ability to apply that knowledge in decoding unfamiliar printed words.
So, phonological awareness refers to oral language and phonics refers to print. Both of these skills are very important and tend to interact in reading development, but they are distinct skills; children can have weaknesses in one of them but not the other.
For example, a child who knows letter sounds but cannot blend the sounds to form the whole word has a phonological awareness (specifically, a phonemic awareness) problem. Conversely, a child who can orally blend sounds with ease but mixes up vowel letter sounds, reading pit for pet and set for sit, has a phonics problem.
44 phonemes
There are 26 letters in the English alphabet that make up 44 speech sounds, or phonemes.
Letters vs. phonemes
Dr. Louisa Moats explains to a kindergarten teacher why it is critical to differentiate between the letters and sounds within a word when teaching children to read and write.
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MOSCOW SCHOOL OF PHONOLOGY • Big Russian encyclopedia
MOSCOW SCHOOL OF PHONOLOGY (MPS), one of the main directions in Russian phonology, based, along with the Leningrad (Petersburg) phonological school [L(P)FS] and the phonological theory of the Prague linguistic school , on the ideas of I.
A. Baudouin de Courtenay on the essence of the phoneme. The IDF originated in con. 1920s Its founders are R. I. Avanesov, P. S. Kuznetsov, A. A. Reformatsky, V. N. Sidorov, their like-minded people are A. M. Sukhotin, I. S. Ilyinskaya, G. O. Vinokur, A. I. Zaretsky and others. The formation of the IMF was also influenced by phonological. the theory of N.F. Yakovlev, who also continued the tradition of Baudouin de Courtenay. Generalization, deepening and development of the IPF theory in the form of a holistic concept was carried out by M.V. Panov, who gave a comprehensive description of the phonetic. level (tier) Rus. language, introduced the concept of the phoneme paradigm (the totality of all the sounds embodying it). nine0005
The basis of the IPF theory is the doctrine of the phoneme. The most important provision is the need for consistent application of the morphemic criterion in determining the phonemic composition of a language. This is the main difference between the IFS and the L(P)FS and from other schools.
To assign different sounds to one phoneme, it is necessary and sufficient that the sounds be in an additional distribution (distribution) depending on the phonetic. positions and occupied the same place in the same morpheme, that is, they alternated positionally. The phoneme is represented by the whole series (set, set) of positionally alternating sounds. This series may include a variety of sounds: articulatory and acoustically near and far, as well as zero sound. So, in Russian in language, the phoneme /s/ can be represented by the sounds [s] (“with father”), [s°] (“with stepfather”), [s'] (“with sister”), [s'°] (“with aunt ”), [s] (“with my brother”), [s '] (“with my uncle”), [w °] (“with my brother-in-law”), [g] (“with my wife”), [w '] ( “with a child”), zero sound (“with generous”), etc.
IMF has developed in detail the theory of positions - the conditions for the use and implementation of phonemes in speech. Positional alternations are associated with phonetic. or morphological.
positions. Sounds due to phonetic. positions and alternating in the same morphemes represent a phoneme. Phonemes due to morphological. positions and alternating in the same morphemes form a morphoneme (see Morphonology).
IPF put forward the provision on parallel and intersecting rows of positionally alternating sounds. Parallel rows do not have common members, while intersecting rows have - in phoneme neutralization positions. The ratio of phonemes represented by non-intersecting sets of sounds and phonemes represented by intersecting sets that have a part in common with other phonemes is different in different languages. nine0005
IFS introduced the concept of hyperphoneme - a special case of incomplete implementation in sep. morphemes of the entire range of positionally alternating sounds that embody the phoneme. It is understood as a functional unit, represented by otd. a sound or a series of positionally alternating sounds belonging to the common part of neutralized phonemes, irreducible in these morphemes uniquely to one of these phonemes.
So, the first vowel of the root dog-/dog- (“dog”, “dog”, “dog breeder”, etc.) is never stressed, but is realized accordingly by sounds [a ə ], [ə]. These positionally alternating sounds can only be representatives of the phonemes /o/ and /a/, but which of them is impossible to decide here. The hyperphoneme /o ∣ a/ appears in this root. The concept of a superphoneme is also introduced - phonological. unit, which is formed by phonemes alternating in the same morphemes, depending on the phonetic. positions. So, in the reflexive postfix -sya / -s in all verb forms (except for participles that are characteristic of written speech and uncharacteristic of oral speech), the presence and absence of a vowel phoneme depends solely on the phoneme preceding this postfix: after the consonants, a variant with a vowel phoneme appears (" to be afraid”, “we are afraid”, “were afraid”, “be afraid”), after vowels - without it (“I am afraid”, “are afraid”, “were afraid”, “be afraid”, “afraid”, etc.
). The superphoneme <а∣ø> appears in this postfix. nine0005
In the process of development and improvement, the IDF also uses ideas close to it, expressed by representatives of other schools. So, she participates in the development of the concepts of differential and integral features of the phoneme, previously put forward by the Prague linguistic. school.
The main provisions established in the analysis of the phoneme are also applied by the IFS when considering supersegmental units of language and phenomena: stress, tones, intonation, boundary signals (according to M.V. Panov, dierema; they indicate the nature of sounds on the boundaries between words and between morphemes within words), synharmonism, etc.
Construction of phonological language models, including the definition of all its phonemes and their relationships in different positions, from the point of view of the IMF, is possible only when all words, grammatical. forms and morphemes of a given language and all phonetic.
phonological implementations. units. Hence the close attention of the representatives of the IPF to the sound matter of the language, including its study by the methods of instrumental phonetics.
The ideas of the IFS have found application primarily in the theory of writing - graphics and spelling, the creation of alphabets, practical. transcriptions and transliterations, in the historical phonetics, dialectology and linguistic geography, in teaching a non-native language. The position that positionally alternating units are modifications of the same unit of a higher level of language (tier) is increasingly used not only in phonology, but also in describing the phenomena of word formation, morphology, syntax, vocabulary, poetics, etc. nine0005
The ideas of the IPF are developed by its representatives of the second and following generations: K. V. Gorshkova (problems of historical phonetics and phonology, the history of the development of the phonological system of the Russian language in its dialect division; clarified the concept of the phoneme paradigm), Valery V.
Ivanov (questions historical phonology of the Russian language, syntagmatics and paradigmatics of phonemes), L. E. Kalnyn (research in the field of Slavic phonetics and phonology), V. A. Vinogradov (questions of general, Russian and African phonology, phonological foundations of teaching phonetics non-native language; clarified the concept of hyperphoneme), L. L. Kasatkin (problems of Russian lit. and dialect phonetics, contribution to the development of the theory of phonetic and phonological positions, phonetic alternations; identified a latent period in the history of a phoneme; introduced the concepts of superphoneme, phoneme as a two-way linguistic sign), S. M. Kuzmina (correlation spelling aphia, phonetics and phonology), N.K. Pirogova (studies in the field of vocalism in Russian. lit. language of the 20th century), E. L. Barkhudarova (research in the field of consonantism of the Russian literary language of the 20th century), M. L. Kalenchuk (problems of Russian orthoepy and the development of the concept of orthoepic positions), etc.
Phonology
If linguistics as a science emerged in separate branch of human knowledge at the beginning of XIX in. thanks to the advent of comparative historical method and rudiments of scientific etymology, then the birth modern linguistics, dating back early XX in.,
contacts primarily with phonology, with theoretical works I. A. Baudouin de Courtenay and F. de Saussure, N. S. Trubetskoy and L. V. Shcherba.
Studying plan of language expression, and above all its sonic side, already had to XX in. certain traditions, but only with emergence the concept of a phoneme it became directly correlate with the study of the content plan, i.e. included to the general system language descriptions. The point is that isolated study of acoustic and articulatory phenomena, conducted using everything more accurate, including experimental, methods, created scientists have an idea of \u200b\u200bthe boundless variety of sound matter: sounds varied infinitely in living speech, turned into each other and eventually turned out to be some elusive entities, "fictions".
The reason for this phonetic research crisis consisted, it can be argued, precisely in that the sounds of speech, already an object physics and physiology, have not yet become a special subject linguistic science. nine0005
Output from this position was slated to be outstanding Russian and Polish linguist I. A. Baudouin de Courtenay. In the 70s. of the past century, he comes to the idea of a mismatch physical and functional properties of sound. foundation for such a conclusion known examples of alternations, or alternations, in which different sounds, for example [k] and [k*] or [k] and [h] etc., could under certain conditions identify. Later linguistic the scientist's ideas take on a pronounced psychological bias. In particular, in special articles "Phoneme", "Phonology" and others written for the Polish Encyclopedia (1899), J. A. Baudouin de Courtenay successively oppose each other two concepts: sound as a "transient physiological-acoustic phenomenon” and phoneme as a stable picture of sound, "the psychic equivalent of sound" (Baudouin de Courtenay 1963, vol.
1:351). Phonemes thus play into the mind of a native speaker the role of "nodes", centers around which sound diversity is grouped speech. It is thanks to phonemes that possible human communication: for example, in audio segment [no] Russian can hear word form leg and get the appropriate semantic information. An important part phonological concept of I. A. Baudouin de Courtenay is also common theory of alternations (alternations). Scientist for the first time strictly delineated phenomena of divergence, (i.e., phonetic variations
phonemes, caused by combinatorial and positional conditions) and correlations (i.e. historically conditioned alternation of phonemes in composition of the morpheme).
Psychological the concept of the phoneme had an essential value for the further development of linguistic theories. However, she Of course, I couldn't answer everything. questions that have arisen and, in particular, did not contain criteria for practical calculus phonemes.
nine0005
Required prerequisites for the creation of a general theory phonemes were contained and in the studies of other linguists, who lived at the end of the XIX — first half of XX in., and above all the Russian scientists P. K. Uslar, N. V. Krushevsky, L. V. Shcherba. The last name is in this series a special place. Student I.A. Baudouin de Courtenay, L. V. Shcherba developed and significantly enriched phoneme theory. Already in one of his early works - "Russian vowels in qualitative and quantitative terms" (1912) - he tried combine the "psychic" foundation to isolate a phoneme with functional. Namely, phonemes defined as those sounds in our minds that allow us discern the meaning of words. Here's what he writes about the scientist himself: “A phoneme is called the shortest general phonetic representation of a given language, capable of being associated with meaning and differentiate words..." (Shcherba 1974! 121). It means that sound units similar in acoustic and articulatory relationships and related with the same meaning, are combined into one phoneme.
With another sides, sounds, physical difference in which are associated with differences in values represent are different phonemes.
Known, example of L. V. Shcherba: in words children and children we perceive [t] and [t*] as two different phonemes: their opposition just as important for understanding these words, as in couples tuk - bale, dressed — dress and etc. And here are the various shades of the first vowel in these words (children and kids) we perceived as one phoneme, because in Russian there is no one pair of words which the difference in values would be associated only with these two shades. Another thing, continues L. V. Shcherba, in French language. There are words that mean differs only due to the fact that in one of them [e] closed, and in another [e] open; at the same time [d] solid and [e] "slightly palatalized" can't differentiate on their own. tokens or word forms...
Immediate the connection of the phoneme with the meaning, according to L.
V. Shcherba, appears and in its ability to function in as a separate words or morphemes, cf. Russian a, i, v, s, l and t.
This the concept was further developed in the book by L. V. Shcherba "Phonetics of the French Language" (1937). And Here the scholar emphasizes that the main criterion for selection phoneme is its semantic function. AT the whole concept of a phoneme receives a completely modern definition in the light of fundamental opposition "language (general) - speech (private)": "In living speech is pronounced significantly more than we usually think the number of different sounds, which in each this language are combined into comparatively small number sound types capable of differentiating words and their forms that is, to serve the purposes of human communication. These sound types and are meant when they talk about individual sounds speech. We will call them phonemes. actually pronounced various sounds that are private, in which implements the general (phoneme), we will call shades phonemes.
Among the shades of one phoneme, usually there is one who, for various reasons is the most typical for this phonemes: it is pronounced in isolated sight, and in fact he is the only one and is recognized by us as speech element. All other shades are ok we don't recognize how different from this typical shade, and need a special phonetic ear training to learn to hear them "(Shcher-ba nineteen74:132).
So Thus, it can be argued that L.V. Shcherby phoneme already acts as a two-way language unit - with its own plan expressions (sound shades) and plan content (meaningful function).
94. Teaching of N.S. Trubetskoy about the phoneme
Proceedings I. A. Baudouin de Courtenay and L. V. Shcherba laid the foundation to create a general theory of phonemes. But if talk about phonology as an independent and integral industry linguistics, then its occurrence is associated with the name one Russian scientist - N. S. Trubetskoy. N. S. Trubetskoy — leading specialist in fields of morphology and phonology of Slavic languages, one of the founders of the Prague linguistic circle.
Last 12 He dedicated years of his life to working on major work "Fundamentals of Phonology". This book was first published in 1939 in Prague in German (Russian translation - M., 1960).
Initial theoretical prerequisites for N. S. Trubetskoy came provisions developed by I. A. Baudouin de Courtenay and L. V. Shcherboy. These are: a) the phoneme is the shortest language unit,
ongoing in speech sounds, and b) the phoneme serves to distinguish meaning words. practical material for his concepts served over a hundred sound systems surveyed languages. However merit of the scientist is not only that he combined theory with practice. Much more important is that N.S. Trubetskoy was active in science consistent system-structural approach, and namely this approach gave the entire phonological missing theory her harmony and completeness. nine0005
An object research with this approach regarded as one system, all elements which interconnected and interdependent.
At the same time the degree of complexity of the system, nature its organizations and material nature the phenomena that form it do not play fundamental roles. As such systems, interpret the most various objects, such as natural language, type of human culture, fashion in clothes, living organism, chess game etc. For the system-structural approach one thing is important: every element object can be described (i.e. characterized, defined according to him place in system or, in general the same, in his relations with others elements. So way, under the structure at all here refers to the internal organization object hidden from direct observations. That is why to describe structure of the object its material side is at some stage unimportant, even superfluous - from she needs to relax. nine0005
AT linguistics, such ideas were first clearly enough formulated by F. de Saussure. Here is one from characteristic places in his "Course of General linguistics": "Which side of the sign we take neither the signifier or the signified, everywhere there is one and the same picture: in the language there are no concepts, nor the sounds that existed regardless of the language system, and there are only semantic differences and sound differences arising from this system" (Saussure 1977: 152-153).
From this follows the conclusion revealing general methodological (philosophical) background of the linguistic theories of F. de Saussure: “Distinctive unit properties merge with the unit itself. In language, as in any semiological system, what distinguishes one sign from others, and there is everything what constitutes it" (Saussure 1977:154).
AT the teachings of N. S. Trubetskoy, these theoretical principles find themselves practical use. Language units - phonemes - form, according to N. S. Trubetskoy, the system, and the whole tool needed and sufficient to describe them, is opposition concepts, or o p p o z i -
tion, and differential sign.
Before all sound oppositions are divided into two types: phonological (semantic) and non-phonological. Phonological opposition is formed by any sound units, with provided that their opposition is connected in our minds with different meaning. For example, Russian nine0035 lock and stump, gardener and sit down, hor'i hor or German.
Mann 'man' and Weib 'woman', Mahne 'mane' and Biihne 'scene' etc. are in a relationship meaningful opposition and, consequently, according to Trubetskoy, are phonological units. Finding similarities and differences in sound shell of these units, we we decompose them into successive a number of smaller items such as, for example, [here] and [chickpeas'] at grower and sit down. This analysis can be continued until (cf.: here - notes, current — touk, tuk — bale...), so far we will not reach oppositions, whose members for the carrier languages are no longer split: [in] - [n], [o] - [y], [t] - [t'], etc.
Minimum sound units that carry meaning eloquent function, N. S. Trubetskoy and calls phoneme-m and. "Every word is integrity, structure; it is perceived by the listeners as structure like that how do we recognize, for example, on the street of acquaintances by their general appearance. Structure recognition means however, their difference this is only possible if individual structures are different from each other by known signs.
Phonemes are just are distinctive sign-m and word structures. Every word must contain as many phonemes and in such a sequence that could distinguish it from other words" (Trubetskoy 1960:43). So, in relation to words phonemes play the role of distinctive signs. And how do they differ phonemes themselves? Here and here becomes apparent that special place which is assigned in the concept of N. S. Trubetskoy the concept of differentiation. i • t >
*
95. Differential phoneme sign
AT as a distinguishing feature phonemes can act practically any acoustic-articulatory sound characteristic: for example, the degree of participation of the voice, nature, place and method of education obstacles in the path of the air jet, longitude or brevity vowel or consonant, etc. - only would this characteristic serve opposing at least two phonological units. nine0005
If the difference that exists between some sounds, by itself unable to differentiate words, then such sounds form non-phonological opposition, but a sign, which distinguishes them considered phonologically inconsequential (i.
e., it may appear when implementing phonemes, but is not included in its principal characteristic). For example, in Russian language phonologically deafness of consonants is insignificant [l], [p] or [l'1, [p'], manifested at the end of a word after the deaf - cf. minister, wail and etc.; it is clear that [r] is sonorant and [r] is deaf, [l '] sonorous and [l '] voiceless etc. will never be on their own distinguish Russian words.
AT in general, all the differential signs are divided into three classes. The first class - vocal signs serving to contrast (and, accordingly, formation) of vowels phonemes. Second class - consonant signs that form consonant phonemes. And by the third grade - prosodic signs - include, by N. S. Trubetskoy, stress and variations voice tone. nine0005
Naturally, every language uses to make sense Not all possible acoustic-articulatory signs of sound, but only them a certain set. (Therefore, the number phonemes in the languages of the world ranges from 12-20 to 75-80, but does not exceed limit.
) Moreover, the same physical sound characteristic in the phonological system of one language is differential sign (she creates pairs of phonemes there), and in another system turns out to be phonologically insignificant. drew attention to this already L. V. Shcherba. For example, he pointed out that "the same" voiceless [l], which is a shade phonemes
N. S. Trubetskoy developed this position as practically as well as theoretically. Using sound set material languages, he showed that different combinations of differential features form certain systems of vowels and consonants phonemes. His research scientist laid the foundations typologies these systems.
96. Phoneme as a bundle differential signs
Each phoneme is different from other phonemes given language as one or several differential signs.
But differential signs not only serve to distinguish phonemes; they're in Ultimately, they are their essence. Let's explain it on
example. If you organize the material diverse phonological oppositions, which gives us a modern Russian language, then we, in particular, obtain the contraposition or Continuing systematization of factual material, we will come to oppositions of type that - cat, dot — kidney, there - gam, congestion — fence. Vo in all these and similar cases, the phoneme However signs of deafness and front tongue, taken together, still unable to distinguish between Finally, in a similar way we find in AT As a result, it turns out that anterior lingualism, hardness and explosiveness. as about different phonemes. It is clear that for the same reason deafness - voicedness, which distinguishes them, the phoneme
In other words, we cannot, based on these examples, distinguish this phoneme from 
This makes a sign of hardness - softness. It's clear, that the same sign participates in oppositions 
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