What is a phoneme?
Some define phonemes in terms of "meaning," such that stress, duration,
pitch apply. For instance if the "sounds" (phonemes?) of two words are the
same but one has a stress on the first syllable while the other has stress
on the second, thus changing the meaning of the word, that this is a
phonemic change.
I would say that a phoneme is the sound itself and that stress (loudness),
duration, and pitch do not apply even though word meaning may change. I
would say that these are not phonemic, and that word meaning is not
phonemic.
Tom Zurinskas
>From: "Dr Martin J. Ball" <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: "Dr Martin J. Ball" <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Numbers of phonemes
>Date: Wed, 4 Jun 2003 09:04:29 -0500
>
>On a recent PBS television program a biologist interested in language
>mentioned that there were 1000 different phonemes universally, from
>which each language took a small number.
>
>Leaving aside the problem of defining whether one phoneme in a specific
>language differs from a similar phoneme in a different language (or,
>indeed, the problem of defining phonemes in the first place), has anyone
>else come across this number? Is there a reference for this surprisingly
>confident claim?
>
>Martin J Ball, PhD
>University of Louisiana at Lafayette
><< mjb0372.vcf >>
Convert English to truespel (USA accent) by copy/pasting at
http://www.foreignword.com/dictionary/truespel/transpel.htm
Truespel is the world’s first phonetic spelling based on English, using no
special symbols, showing syllabic stress, and proposed for all languages.
Also see truespel.com. Write [log in to unmask]
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