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Typology of sound systems of English and second foreign language.

In the linguistic literature phoneme is defined as the smallest distinctive unit. Unlike the other bigger units of language as morpheme and word it doesn’t have its meaning but helps us to distinct the meanings of words and morphemes. Comp. boy-toy, better-letter-latter-litter-later; gehen-sehen, lehren-kehren; стол-стул, ходит-ходим, etc.

To know how sounds are produced by speech organs is not enough to describe and classify them as language units. When we talk about the sounds of a language, the term "sound" can be interpreted in two rather different ways. In the first place, we can say that [t] and [d] are two different sounds in English, [t] being fortis and [d] being lenis and we can illustrate this by showing how they contrast with each other to make a difference of meaning in a large number of pairs, such as tie — die, seat — seed, etc. But on the other hand if we listen carefully to the [t] in let us and compare it with the [t] in let them we can hear that the two sounds are also not the same, the [t] of let us is alveolar, while the [t] of let them is dental. In both examples the sounds differ in one articulatory feature only; in the second case the difference between the sounds has functionally no significance. It is perfectly clear that the sense of "sound" in these two cases is different. To avoid this ambiguity, the linguist uses two separate terms: "phoneme" is used to mean "sound" in its contrastive sense, and “allophone” is used for sounds which are variants of a phoneme: they usually occur in different positions in the word (i.e. in different environments) and hence cannot contrast with each other, nor be used to make meaningful distinctions.

Let us consider the phoneme from the point of view of its three aspects. Firstly, the phoneme is a functional unit. As you know from the above in phonetics function is usually understood to mean discriminatory function, that is, the role of the various components of the phonetic system of the language in distinguishing one morpheme from another, one word from an-other or also one utterance from another.

The opposition of phonemes in the same phonetic environment differentiates the meaning of morphemes and words, e.g. said — says, sleeper — sleepy, bath — path, light — like.

Sometimes the opposition of phonemes serves to distinguish the meaning of the whole phrases, e.g. He was heard badly — He was hurt badly. Thus we may say that the phoneme can fulfil the distinctive function.

Secondly, the phoneme is material, real and objective. That means that it is realized in speech of all English-speaking people in the form of speech sounds, its allophones. The sets of speech sounds, that is the allophones belonging to the same phoneme are not identical in their articulatory content though there remains some phonetic similarity between them.

Formed thus allophones, or variants of the given phoneme, also make a part of a phonologic level of language.

Being in structure of morphemes or words and forming thus steady sequence, phonemes are united in syllables which can be considered as natural units of segmentation (division) speech Stream.