A phoneme is an abstract linguistic unit – essentially, a category of speech sounds – that signals differences in meaning. Phonemes are language-specific: each language has its own inventory of phonemes, and changing one phoneme in a word can produce a different word (as the substitution of one vowel or consonant often does). Importantly, phonemes may encompass a family of slight sound variations (allophones) that are perceived as the same sound by native speakers. Identifying a language’s phonemes involves finding minimal pairs (words that differ by only one sound) to confirm that a sound difference corresponds to a meaning difference. In clinical practice and linguistics, understanding phonemes is crucial for assessing and treating speech sound disorders, as these disorders often involve difficulty distinguishing or producing certain phonemic contrasts.
Phoneme – an Overview. ScienceDirect Topics (2016).
Victoria Fromkin, Robert Rodman, and Nina Hyams. An Introduction to Language. 11th ed. Cengage, (2018).
