{"id":1435,"date":"2024-08-21T08:46:34","date_gmt":"2024-08-21T15:46:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.dyslexiatraininginstitute.org\/?p=1435"},"modified":"2024-08-22T10:43:22","modified_gmt":"2024-08-22T17:43:22","slug":"what-is-a-phoneme","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dyslexiatraininginstitute.org\/dyslexia-training-institute\/what-is-a-phoneme\/","title":{"rendered":"What is a Phoneme?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
A Necessarily Long Blog Post<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Kelli Sandman-Hurley, Ed.D.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There\u2019s been quite a hubbub of activity regarding the little ole\u2019 phoneme lately, but little coherent explanation of what it actually is\u2026in terms we can all understand and then make quasi-informed instructional decisions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the world of literacy and literacy instruction, we often contend with how to incorporate knowledge from other fields like neuroscience, linguistics, and psychology into our everyday work with struggling students and those who teach them. Sometimes the professionals from these other fields don\u2019t speak education-ease and sometimes that creates a knowledge and implementation gap between what these experts are trying to teach us and what we ultimately come to understand. Additionally, there are educators who talk about linguistics and there are linguists who talk about education \u2013 this often leads to confusion and misunderstanding. But we wouldn\u2019t (generally) go to a car dealership to buy a bike, so why do we turn to the education community for information about Case in point is the recent conversation about phonemes and phonemic awareness. We have no choice but to turn to linguistics to truly understand this concept, even if it challenges our current beliefs and practices. It might cause us discomfort because perhaps we haven\u2019t really understood it, but that is when growth happens. Let\u2019s embrace the uncomfortableness of refining our understanding in an effort to be better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Full disclosure \u2013 I am someone with a doctorate in education who was compelled to go back to school in my old age and earn my degree in linguistics. I did this so that I could be comfortable being both an educator and a linguist (some have suggested I am a wannabe linguist \u2013 but I am weirdly ok with that moniker), who teaches educators. I wanted to attempt to bridge that knowledge and implementation gap between education and linguistics. So, without further ado\u2026the phoneme, in language we can all understand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What is a phoneme? Phonemes represent the mental concept of a sound in a common language. For the purposes of this post, we will stick to English. Phonemes exist in a contrastive distribution; this means they can appear in the same positions within words, leading to a change in meaning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Example:<\/strong> Swadesh (1934, p. 117) defined a phoneme based on its ability to distinguish meaning in minimal pairs: \u201cthe phoneme is the smallest potential unit of difference between similar words recognizable as different to the native [speaker]\u201d Some sounds are in complementary distribution, meaning they never appear in the same positions and, therefore, do not contrast with each other. These sounds are not recognized as separate phonemes but rather as allophones. Allophones are variations of the same phoneme that do not change meaning \u2013 this is what we actually pronounce when we speak. The image below attempts to illustrate this point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The word pit starts with the phoneme \/p\/. This sound is produced with a burst of air, making it an aspirated version of \/p\/, represented as [p\u02b0]. You can test this by placing your hand in front of your mouth and saying the word, pit; you will feel a puff of air on your hand. In English, all instances of \/p\/ at the beginning of words are aspirated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, the \/p\/ in spit lacks aspiration (say this in front of your hand again), so it is transcribed as [p]. Both [p\u02b0] and [p] are allophones of the phoneme \/p\/ because they do not occur in the same positions and thus do not contrast. [p\u02b0] is found at the beginning of words, while [p] appears after [s]. Another allophone of \/p\/ occurs at the end of words, as in top, where the \/p\/ is often unreleased, meaning the lips close without opening again, represented as [p\u031a]. This [p\u031a] will never occur at the beginning of a word. Instead of contrasting, these three variants of \/p\/ complement I realize at this point, you may still be a bit confused, so let\u2019s take a look at how the real linguists explain it through excerpts from linguistic texts in chronological order:<\/p>\n\n\n\n A phoneme is\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n Source: The American Way of Spelling: The Structure and Origins of American English Orthography. <\/em>(1990). Richard Venezky<\/p>\n\n\n\n Source: An Introduction to Phonetics and Phonology, 3rd Edition<\/em> (2007). Clark, Yallop & Fletcher.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Source: Handbook of the International Phonetic Association<\/em>. (2013).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Source: Language Files: Materials for an Introduction to Language and Linguistics<\/em> (2016). The Ohio State University<\/p>\n\n\n\n Source: This Language, A River: The History of English<\/em> (2018). Smith & Kim<\/p>\n\n\n\n Source: Beneath the Surface of Words: What English Spelling Reveals & Why it Matters<\/em> (2021). Sue Hegland<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n Now might be a good time to take a few moments to look at your curriculum handbooks, instruction guides and books written by experts (mine included \u2013 I have learned a lot along the way and, as a writer, I know I will continue to learn new things, refine my understanding and constantly edit my writing), and think about the source of the information you have come to understand, or misunderstand. So, what do you think? Do we have a phonemic awareness understanding problem? Do we need to adjust how we talk about the phoneme?<\/p>\n\n\n\n My intention here was not to solve the debate of how, when, and if we should spend instructional time on phonemic awareness without graphemes attached. My intention was to give you the information you need to make an informed decision. I will leave up that up to you, but now you can make a choice that is educated by those who understand language better than anyone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What is a phoneme? Let’s learn more!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":1441,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,17,2,41],"tags":[42,64,43],"class_list":{"0":"post-1435","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-advocacy","8":"category-dyslexia","9":"category-dyslexia-training-institute","10":"category-orthography","11":"tag-orthography-2","12":"tag-phonemes","13":"tag-spelling"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dyslexiatraininginstitute.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1435"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dyslexiatraininginstitute.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dyslexiatraininginstitute.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dyslexiatraininginstitute.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dyslexiatraininginstitute.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1435"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.dyslexiatraininginstitute.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1435\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1442,"href":"https:\/\/www.dyslexiatraininginstitute.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1435\/revisions\/1442"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dyslexiatraininginstitute.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dyslexiatraininginstitute.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dyslexiatraininginstitute.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dyslexiatraininginstitute.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
linguistics?<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhat is a Phoneme?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The sounds \/p\/ and \/t\/ can both occur at the beginning of words in English, as seen in pill and till. These sounds are distinct, so we understand the words to have different meanings (passing the minimal pair test – words that differ in only a single sound but differ in meaning). As a result, \/p\/ and \/t\/ are considered separate phonemes because they contrast with each other when placed in the same positions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhat is an Allophone?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
Let\u2019s Study It In the Wild<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
each other, collectively representing the phoneme \/p\/.
<\/p>\n\n\n\nLet\u2019s Hear From the Real Experts \u2013 the Linguists<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Source: The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Writing Systems.<\/em> (1999). Florian Coulmas<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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