An Acoustic Study of the Phoneme as a Physical Reality: Aspects of Segmental Phonology in View

Abstract

The phoneme is undoubtedly a crucial and indispensable aspect of the study of phonetics and phonology. Giegerich (31) defines the phoneme as a minimal contrastive sound unit of a language. They are contrastive units because they distinguish words. Jowitt (2005) further affirms this by adding that segments or phonemes are vowels and consonants, of which syllables are composed. In spite of this, the phoneme has over the years, to speakers and learners of English Language appeared to be only a theory or letter representation of phonetic notations. This research examines the above notion and corrects it by analysing some vital aspects of segmental phonology as evidence to the fact that the phoneme is and can be realised physically. Using the systemic functional approach and specifications, the study intends to categorically analyse and further reveal how minimal pairs, free variation, suspicious pairs and segments go a long way in establishing the phoneme as a physically concrete and not an abstract reality. It is pertinent to note however, that the paper limits itself to those central aspects of segmental phonology. It also, lends credence to research works on the phoneme as a mental or psychological reality but for the sake of this study, the researcher is primarily concerned with the phoneme as a physical reality.