The material aspect of the phoneme

The phoneme is material because it exists in the speech in the form of a number of articulatory and acoustically definite sounds – allophones. It is real as it exists in actual speech of the language. It is objective as it exists in the language independently of the will of the person.

The abstractional aspect of the phoneme manifests itself in a fact that native speakers abstract themselves from the differences between the allophones of one and the same phoneme because they do not influence the meaning of the word.

The generalized aspect of the phoneme manifest itself in the fact that the same native speakers subconsciously generalize and sort out a bundle of features among the allophones none of which can be changed.

For example, all the allophones of the phoneme [t] must be occlusive, forelingual, voiceless. If we change voiceless articulation for voiced, but preserve occlusive, forelingual articulation, we shall get the sound [d] ten - den - consequently another word. If we change occlusive articulation for constrictive, but preserve forelingual voiced articulation, we shall get the sound [z] deal - zeal. If the forelingual articulation is changed for backlingual, preserving theocclusive and voiceless character of the sound, we shall get the sound [k] try - cry. So, we can notice that none of these features can be changed without the change of the meaning of the word.

None of these features can be changed, otherwise will get another sound and consequently another word. These unchangable features are called rellevant, and make he so-called invariant of the phoneme. While the characteristics of the sound that do not influence the meaning of the word are called irrelevant.

The functional aspect of the phoneme manifest itself in the fact that the phoneme functions to make one word or grammatical form distinct from the other. It functions because it constitutes words and due to this fact that it really functions we recognize words.

The principle (основной) variant of the phoneme is the most representative of its sounds. It preserves all of its characteristic features, both distinctive and non-distinctive. For example, the principal variant of the English phoneme [k] as pronounced in the word calm may be defined as occlusive, noise, backlingual, plosive, aspirated and voiceless.