Phones vs. Phonemes

This section contains graphics to help illustrate the relationship between phones and phonemes.

Phones

Here is a subset of phones. Phones are just sounds, and they are not associated with meaning.

Phonemes

Phonemes are a mental abstraction consisting of one or more phones. We distinguish between phonemes to create meaning. In the figure above, the voiceless bilabial plosive [p], its aspirated form [pʰ], and its unreleased form [p̚] all map to the phoneme \/p\/, so we can say that they are allophonic.

Creating Meaning

Phonemes define what makes a new word. The above example uses a minimal pair to illustrate this. The voiceless bilabial plosive [p] and the unreleased voiceless bilabial plosive [p̚] both map to the word “tap,” whereas the voiced bilabial plosive [b] transforms it into a different word, “tab.”

[tʰæp]

[tʰæp̚]

[tʰæb]

Languages

Because phonemes are an abstraction, different languages have different sets of phonemes. This is caused by differences in the language’s phonetic inventory, of course, but languages also make phonemic distinctions in unique ways. For example, in Hindi, the aspirated unvoiced bilabial plosive [pʰ] belongs to a separate phoneme than its non-aspirated counterpart, [p].