Each language has a limited number of sound-types (çâóęîňčďű) that are shared by all speakers of the language and are linguistically important because they distinguish meaningful units
[spil] - [stil]
[bæd] - [læd]
Such elements of the language sounds are called phonemes. This term was supposedly introduced by Nikolay Grushevsky. The one we rely on – by Vasilyev.
The definitions of the phoneme vary greatly.
V.A.Vassilyev: The phoneme is a smallest unit capable of distinguishing one word from another word, one grammatical form of word from another.
B. Bloch: phoneme is a class of phonemically similar sounds contrasting and mutually exclusive with all similar classes in the language.
R. Jacobson: phoneme is a minimal sound by which meaning may be discriminated.
L.V. Shcherba: the phoneme may be viewed as a functional, material and abstract unit.
Schools of Phonology and theories of the phoneme
Mentalistic. Was supported by the Kazan school. It regards the phoneme as an ideal “menal image” or a target at which the speaker aims.
Physical view represented by the London school with O.Shones. Regards the phoneme as a “family” of related sounds satisfying certain conditions, notably:
a) the various members of the “family” must show phonetic similarity to one another, in other words, be related in character;
b) no member of the “family” may occur in the same phonetic context as any other
Abstract view. Was supported by the Geneve School (Ferdinand de Sossur). It regards phonemes as essentially independent of the acoustic and physiological properties associated with them, that is of speech sounds. Thus, phoneme – an abstract concept existing in the mind only independent of any physical properties. This abstraction has been unconsciously made by and unconsciously exist in the mind of each member of a language community. As a result of this, an Englishman thinks that in all these words he hears other people say and he pronounces himself on and the same “sound” [t], for ex. But in reality, he hears and pronounces one and the same phoneme /t/, a different variant of it in each word. This is an example of unconscious phonemic abstraction.
Functional view (Trubetskoy; Jakobson). It regards the phoneme as the minimal sound unit by which meanings may be differentiated without much regard to actually pronounced speech sounds. No association with real sounds.
Jakobson was the 1st to make up a list of universal distinctive features for all languages. All the features – binary (voiced – voiceless), each feature is marked by + and –. Vowels are marked as [+ high] or [– high]. One of the features – coronal (for dental palatal and alveolar palatal).
This classification is more economical than classification 1. Its aim – to cover all the languages => 12 binary distinctive oppositions may be used to characterize any language.
The model is criticized by many phonologists.
Nowadays the phoneme is characterized from the point of view of its three aspects (functional, material, abstract): the phoneme is a minimal abstract linguistic unit realized in speech in the form of speech sounds, opposable to other phonemes of the same language to distinguish the meaning of morphemes and words.