The scientific study of a spoken language (descriptive linguistics) involves several interrelated areas of analysis: phonology, morphology, lexicon, and syntax. Phonology, the study of speech sounds, considers which sounds are present and significant in a given language. Morphology studies the forms in which sounds combine to form morphemes—words and their meaningful parts. Thus, the word cats would be analyzed as containing two morphemes—cat, the name for a kind of animal, and -s, a morpheme indicating plurality. A language’s lexicon is a dictionary containing all its morphemes and their meanings. Syntax refers to the arrangement and order of words in phrases and sentences. For example, do nouns usually come before or after verbs? Do adjectives normally precede or follow the nouns they modify?
Speech Sounds
From the movies and TV, and from meeting foreigners, we know something about foreign accents and mispronunciations. We know that someone with a marked French accent doesn’t pronounce r like an American does. But at least someone from France can distinguish between “craw” and “claw,” which someone from Japan may not be able to do. The difference between r and l makes a difference in English and in French, but it doesn’t in Japanese. In linguistics we say that the difference between r and l is phonemic in English and French but not in Japanese. In English and French r and l are phonemes but not in Japanese. A phoneme is a sound contrast that makes a difference, that differentiates meaning.
We find the phonemes in a given language by comparing minimal pairs, words that resemble each other in all but one sound. The words have different meanings, but they differ in just one sound. The contrasting sounds are therefore phonemes in that language. An example in English is the minimal pair pit/bit. These two words are distinguished by a single sound contrast between /p/ and /b/ (we enclose phonemes in slashes). Thus /p/ and /b/ are phonemes in English. Another example is the different vowel sound of bit and beat . This contrast serves to distinguish these two words and the two vowel phonemes written /I/ and /i/ in English.
Standard (American) English (SE), the “region-free” dialect of TV network newscasters, has about 35 phonemes—at least 11 vowels and 24 consonants. The number of phonemes varies from language to language—from 15 to 60, averaging between 30 and 40. The number of phonemes also varies between dialects of a given language. In North American English, for example, vowel phonemes vary noticeably
from dialect to dialect. Readers should pronounce the words in Figure 4.1, paying attention to (or asking someone else) whether they distinguish each of the vowel sounds. Most North Americans don’t pronounce them all.
Phonetics is the study of speech sounds in general, what people actually say in various languages. Phonemics studies only the significant sound contrasts (phonemes) of a given language. In English, like /r/ and /l/ (remember craw and claw), /b/ and /v/ also are phonemes, occurring in minimal pairs like bat and vat. In Spanish, however, the contrast between [b] and [v] doesn’t distinguish meaning, and they therefore are not phonemes (we enclose sounds that are not phonemic in brackets). Spanish speakers normally use the [b] sound to pronounce words spelled with either b or v. In any language a given phoneme extends over a phonetic range. In English the phoneme /p/ ignores the phonetic contrast between the [ph] in pin and the [p] in spin. Most English speakers don’t even notice that there is a phonetic difference. The [ph] is aspirated, so that a puff of air follows the [p]. The [p] in spin is not. (To see the difference, light a match, hold it in front of your mouth, and watch the flame as you
pronounce the two words.) The contrast between [ph] and [p] is phonemic in some languages, such as Hindi (spoken in India). That is, there are words whose meaning is distinguished only by the contrast between an aspirated and an unaspirated [p].
Native speakers vary in their pronunciation of certain phonemes, such as the /e/ phoneme in the midwestern United States. This variation is important in the evolution of language. Without shifts in pronunciation, there could be no linguistic change. The section on sociolinguistics below considers phonetic variation and its relationship to social divisions and the evolution of language.