LINGUIST 1A03 Chapter Notes - Chapter 2: Alveolar Consonant, Obstruent, Minimal Pair
25 Apr 2016
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Week 7 reading sections 3. 1 & 3. 3. Some sounds contrast with each other in that they can be used to distinguish between words, and some don"t. One can establish which sounds in a language contrast with each other and which don"t by means of a minimal pair test. Minimal pair consists of two words with distinct meanings that differ by only one segment in the same position. Non-contrastive differences in pronunciation typically arise when a sounds articulation is affected by its neighbors, so that it has one pronunciation in one position or environment and another pronunciation in other environments. When two sounds occur in non-overlapping, mutually exclusive environments, they are said to be in complementary distribution. Phonologists organize a language"s sounds into phonemes based o the presence and absence of contrasts. A phoneme is a class of phonetically similar sounds that o not contrast with each other. The sounds that make up a the phoneme are called its allophones.
