The above definitions and descriptions show that "phoneme" means
different things to different people.
1. Merriam Webster provides the simplest, most useful
definition: an "abstract unit" of language that is
clearly distinguished from a "set of similar sounds"
corresponding to it. In the example, \k\ represents the mental (abstract)
form of a phoneme giving rise to a number of similar phonetic units
among which are sounds phoneticians identify as "velar c" in the
lexical word cool, but "palatal k" in keel. The
example clearly differentiates among three systems representing words, but does
not describe them: The English (lexical) writing system - words specified
as sequences of letters obtained from a dictionary; the (phonetic)
pronunciation system - words pronounced as sequences of sound units accepted as
standard in a dialectical community; and the "natural" (phonemic)
language system - words stored as sequences of phonemes in minds of individuals
sharing a common language.
2. The remaining references call a phoneme a sound or use synonyms that
imply it is a sound: phonetic unit, speech unit, sound
unit, utterance, or acoustic value. In so defining
phonemes, language and educational professionals usually fail to recognize the
key roles real (mental) phonemes play in the processes of converting
thought/words in a speaker's mind into word/sounds and sounds back again into
word/thoughts in every listener's mind. Recognizing thousands of
different sounds produced by the speech habits of millions of individuals as
relating to a limited set of basic phonemic sounds is an intellectual task that
is difficult for novices to comprehend and use. Understanding the concept
"phoneme as sound" is more complex still when word sounds are
exemplified by the letters in a word's dictionary listing rather than by
invariant symbols representing corresponding mental phonemes. For
example, contrast cat, kick, and chemist with \ kat\, \kik\, and \kemist\ or bluff, tough, and caught
with \bluf\, \tuf\, and \kot\.
Phoneme-as-speech-sound—Linguists classify speech sounds for purposes of examining and comparing languages. Within each language the broadest categories are dialects and within dialects are allophones grouped within phonemes. Phonemes-as-sounds are most useful in phonetic studies of speech patterns of individuals or differences between dialectical groups.
Phoneme-as-word-element—The concept of abstract (mental) phonemes explains how Americans with different speech habits (for example) manage to carry on oral communications despite obviously gross differences in pronunciation. These powerful mental phonemes form the basis for an American phonemic writing system that permits all first-grade children to read and write every word in their oral vocabularies and enables all adults to use written English as naturally and easily as they speak.
I have searched language literature seeking simple, easily understood answers to the following questions: 1) Why is English very difficult to learn to read and write, and 2) knowing why, can we render English very easy to learn?
Citations:
Aristotle (4th Century BCE)—Aristotle, from his Logic (quoted in The Alphabet Abecedarium by Richard A. Firmage), said that “spoken words are the symbols of mental experience and written words are the symbols of spoken words.” [In more modern terms, this relationship is expressed as “Letters represent sounds.”]
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)—His Dictionary of the English Language (1775) established a standard
traditional English orthography. According to Dr. Johnson, words in his
dictionary were spelled the way they were written by various historical “authorities”
he selected. Others (in his own words
“…still continue to be variously written, as authors differ in their care or
skill; of these it was proper to enquire the true orthography, which I have
always considered as depending on derivation, and have therefore referred them
to their original languages….” In other
words, Dr. Johnson spelled English words of “foreign” origin as written in the
original language without regard to the way they were anglicized for
speech. Words that survived from Old and
Middle English were often accorded this treatment (though Johnson does not
admit as much.)
Noah Webster, “America’s schoolmaster” (1758-1843)—His Dissertations on the English Language (1789) identified “irregular” spellings championed by Johnson as the main reason English is notoriously difficult to learn to read and write. He recommended Americans adopt a “regular” orthography simple enough “to facilitate the learning of the language” so that “a child would learn to spell with out trouble in a very short time and…would forever afterwards find it…as difficult to spell wrong as it is now to spell right.”
Jan Baudouin de Courtenay (1845 –1929), Polish linguist. (From Daniel Jones, The Phoneme: Its Nature and Use, 1950. p213)—De Courtenay was the first (about 1870-1880) to describe phonemes as psychological entities distinct from sounds (phones) uttered to represent them in speech. “He applied the term “physiophonetics” to the study of sounds actually uttered and: the term ”psychophonetics” to the study of “mental images” which uttered sounds are intended to represent.” [Note a clear distinction between word-sounds and the mental elements of words.] He ascribed invention of “phoneme” to his student Kruszewski (essay published in1879) as a unique label for these mental word elements.
Henry Sweet (1845-1912) and Daniel Jones (1881-1967), English phoneticians. (See Jones, The Phoneme)— Dr Jones explained: “…although the English k’s in (keep), (call), and (cool) are distinct sounds, it is necessary…to treat them as if they were one and the same.” (Jones, p7) [Why “necessary” is unclear. This characteristic is clear if they are called allophones, a term that define them as distinct speech sounds that have a special relationship with each other in discourse.] Unfortunately, phoneticians misappropriated the term phoneme to represent such a group of speech sounds, leading to great confusion. Modern day linguists and educators blithely follow that error. In the 1967 edition of The Phoneme, Dr Jones cites the de Courtenay definition of phoneme (above) as being “psychological” (read “mental”) in nature and therefore of no practical importance. According to him, no one has demonstrated the existence of such phenomena, and were they to do so, the discovery would have no significance to phoneticians, who deal only with physically measurable entities, that is, with speech sounds.
Kenneth L. Pike (1912-2000), American phonemicist. (Kenneth L. Pike, Phonemics: A technique for Reducing Languages to Writing, U. of Michigan, 1947)—Developed a phonemic theory for deriving an easily-learned writing system from a spoken language: “The purpose of practical phonemics, therefore, is to reduce a language to writing.” “The sounds of a language are automatically and unconsciously organized by the native [speakers] into structural units, which we call phonemes…a practical orthography is phonemic…it has one, and only one, symbol for each sound unit…once a native learns an orthography which is closely correlated with his sound units, there is no ’spelling’ problem.”
Originally published June 10, 2000 last worked on 08/30/07. James H. Kanzelmeyer