PHONEMES AND ALLOPHONES

WHAT IS A PHONEME?
A phoneme is the smallest, indivisible, significant, contrastive and functional unit of speech sound E.g

sing[siñk]
 zinc [ziñk]

From the examples  above, the phoneme /s/ and /z/ are''indivisible".NOTE: the definition of phoneme used here, is based on the classical phonemic theory which was propounded by the American Structuralists.

DISCOVERY PROCEDURES OF CLASSICAL PHONEMIC THEORY

The various batteries of test or procedures used in identifying a phoneme of a language include:

1) Minimal Pair
 2)Free variation
 3)Complementary Distribution
 4)Phonetics similarities

  Although the classical phonological theory agree on general principle concerning the identification of language. There are also significant differences in the concept of a phoneme. For instance,  the structuralists in America considered the phoneme from the physical point of view.  While the European looked at the phoneme as  being independent, the functions the sounds perform in the language, and  also how the sound is  conceptualized by the native speakers of the language

There are three views of the phoneme these are;
 1) Physical point of view
 2) Mental point of view
 3) Psychological point  of view(Hyman 1975)
 ALLOPHONES
 Allophones are the different realization of a phoneme in a particular environment E.g in the word
A)cat/kaet/ -[khæt]
B)back /bæk/-[baek]
In example A, The aspirated [Kh] occurs word initial position. In B, the unreleased [k~] occurs word final position.  Thus, the aspirated [kh] and unreleased  [k-] are the variants form  of the phoneme /k/. NOTE: environment plays vital roles in realization of speech  sound. What maybe a phoneme in a particular language may not be in another.

REFERENCES
 1) Maddieson, I. (1984) PATTERNS OF SOUNDS.Cambridge of University Press

 2)Yule, G.(1996) THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE. Oxford University Press