Phone (phonetics)

In linguistics, the Phon (also: sound, speech sound ) is the smallest distinguishable " unit of sound in the sound continuum " - a minimal sound segment that is still perceived as independent.

The term " phone" itself is ambiguous. He referred

• A concrete utterance: a problem caused by a concrete speakers specific spatiotemporal noise event
• According to an abstract entity: an abstract sound pattern or sound form, and therefore a phonetic form, or phoneme.

The Phon in the sense of an abstract unit of sound is not empirically observable and each is realized by an empirically perceptible and measurable concrete utterance.

It is sometimes assumed that the term " phone" call within the phonetics specifically the concrete audible and brought forth by a particular person at a particular time speech sound. The Phon phonetics should then be distinguished by its situation bondage of the abstract phoneme phonology. Such an interpretation is thus suggested that the Phon and the slogan associated with the Langue is opposed, while the antonym of the phoneme is considered part of the Langue. However, this is not the Phonbegriff phonetics. Also the Phonbegriff is abstract. Because " sounds are produced in an infinite range of variations ."

Each utterance is unique. No utterance is identical to another. This is when human vocalizations already in individual people often audible and measurable ( variation after volume, intonation, pitch, depending on the situation, fatigue, colds, puberty) and in comparison to other people of the rule ( wife or husband, child or adult, Bayer or friezes ). The step of assigning a sound event at a particular Phon by the phonetician is " an abstraction associated power ". The phon is " already a first abstraction from the concrete sound event ". Under Phon within the meaning of phonetics is meant a ( abstract ) "Properties class of sounds with identical differencing ( distinctive ) ".

Phon and phoneme do not differ by concreteness one hand, and abstractness of the other, but that is had solely to the identification and mapping the concept of Phons to a phonetic class without that it is asked whether this in a concrete individual language a semantic difference in meaning is connected.

Phone are ultimately seen in universal linguistic perspective. There are not as many phone, although there are any number of specific spatiotemporal vocalizations. The limitations of Phoninventars finds its expression in the possibility of this in the form of a phonetic alphabet as that of the International Phonetic Association (IPA ) to represent. The one text, Phon only and not also to be phoneme feature is relative to single language.

The phonetic system based on the fact that Phone ( lute) are indeed called " atoms of utterances ", this indivisibility of the image but should not be confused with Unanalysierbarkeit. Phone can be identified in the course of phonetics based on their articulatory and acoustic properties (phonetic characteristics) and described. The individual sounds ( Phone) are a bundle of phonetic features. The phonemes of a language are single analog a bundle of phonological features.

The " essential feature " of the phoneme is that it leads to words of a specific individual language to a difference in meaning. In phonetics, however, one does not ask for a sense-discriminative function with respect to a single language. In this perspective, a phon is a phoneme, when it has a meaning-differentiating function words in a single language, ie but also that one phone in universal linguistic perspective is a potential phoneme.

In phonology, the individual linguistically relevant Phone be studied as phonemes segmented and classified. The single Phon is considered as the realization of a phoneme: it serves to "make audible " phoneme in a concrete utterance. Such phones, which have been assigned to a phoneme are then referred to within the phonology as allophones.

With certain restrictions, can the relationship of phones and phonemes compared to the ratio of the following picture " Δ " and the category " triangle". The image has properties such as line thickness, material, size, position, and is therefore, strictly speaking, of this image " Δ " different. However, both structures can be assigned to the abstract category " triangle", which is abstracted from the properties mentioned in the formation of the category. Just as one can now draw the category " triangle", but only a concrete picture of a triangle, one can say no phoneme - äußerbar are always only phone.

In linguistics Phone in general are enclosed in square brackets and written with the characters from the International Phonetic Alphabet [ f], [ o ː ], [ n]