phonological features of a phoneme

phonological features of a phoneme

A phoneme is opposed to all other phonemes of its subsystem (respectively, consonants

and vowels) in several ways. /p / has to be defined as an unvoiced bilabial plosive to account for

all the oppositions found with the other consonants in English. These three features are all

necessary because if /p/ was described as an unvoiced consonant it could be opposed to /b/, /d/,

/g/, /v/, /C/, /z/, /Y/, /dY/, but would not appear as distinct from all other unvoiced sounds. If /p/

was described as a bilabial only it could be opposed to all non-bilabials but would not appear as

distinct from /b/ and /m/. If /p/ was described only as a plosive it would be opposed to all nonplosives but would not appear distinct from /t/, /d/, /g/, /b/, /k/.

Hence we can say that

1) voiceless

2) bilabial

3) plosive

are the distinctive features of /p/.

Consider the phoneme /m/. Phonetically it is described as a voiced bilabial nasal.

However if bilabiality is necessary to account for its opposition to /n/ for example and nasality is

necessary to account for its opposition to /b/ voicing is not a phonological feature since there are

no voiceless nasals.

 As voicing is not a distinctive feature of /m/, we say is it as redundant

feature from a phonological point of view.

Let’s have a look at /l/. It is described phonetically as a voiced alveolar lateral. However

since there are no other lateral sounds in English, voicing and alveolarity are redundant

phonological features.

 Voicing is also a redundant feature for vowels since there are no voiceless

vowels.

Each language has its own set of phonemes; oppositions among those phonemes differ

necessarily from language to language : they have been based on different sets of features for each

language. For example nasality exists both in French and in English. However in French nasality

is a distinctive feature of both consonants and vowels. 

The French /m/ is opposed to /p/, /b/

because it is nasal, as in English. But whereas there are no nasal vowels in English (at least in

Received Pronunciation of British English) in French there are nasal and oral (non-nasal) vowels:

/bo/ beau (“beautiful”) is opposed to /bõ/ bon (“good”) because of its nasality. So is /pla/ plat

(“flat”) when it is opposed to /plã/ plan (“map”).

Another example of the relevancy of sets of features would be the role of lip rounding in

French and in English. Lip rounding exists in both languages. In English, only back vowels are

rounded and rounding alone will never account for the opposition between two vowels. So

rounding is a redundant feature of English vowels. In French , both /i/ and /y/ are high front

vowels, but /y/ is distinct from /i/ because of its rounding only: /vy/ vu (“seen”) is opposed to

/vi/ vit (“saw”). Rounding is a distinctive feature of French vowels.

Segmentation of the string of sounds can also differ from one language to the other. 

example, phonetic [tR] is considered as one phoneme in Spanish (/tR/), as two in French ( /t/+/R/)

and as one or two in English depending on the analysis of the set of consonants.