the phoneme in English

Lecture No.13
Title: The phoneme in English
A phoneme can be defined as the smallest abstract unit in the sound system of a particular language. It can be studied with referance to two principal criteria: phonetic similarity and distribution( subject to the overriding criterion, which finds its application in all theories of phonology). Phonetic similarity is a matter of more or less, and is multidimentional. It follows that a particular speech sound may be similar to a second speech soundon one or more dimentions. The practical result of this fact is that the analyst is faced with alternative solutions when it comes to the problem of deciding which phonetically similar speech sounds should be grouped together as variants, more technically allophones , of the same phoneme. At that point, various supplementarycriteria may be applied
The distribution of an entity is the set of contexts in which it occursthroughout the sentences of a language. The term entity is to be taken in as general a sense as possible .the notion of distribution presupposes the notion of well –formedness. This means that we must operate not simply with tha actual forms of the language system , but with set of phonetically and phonologically well – formed forms.