Introductory Phonology - UCLA Department of Linguistics

Introductory Phonology Chapter 2: Phonemic Analysis p. 15
[ˈpita] ‘century plant’
[ˈpiɾa] ‘funeral pyre’
As with the minimal pairs given for English above, this one demonstrates that for Spanish, the
difference between [t] and [ɾ] signals a difference in meaning. That is to say, [t] and [ɾ] are in
contrast, and are separate phonemes, /t/ vs. /ɾ/.
Comparing English and Spanish, we see that the [t] vs. [ɾ] difference is allophonic (nondistinctive)
for English, but phonemic (distinctive) for Spanish. Thus, in this area, the two
languages are phonetically similar but phonologically different.
Here is a similar case. Both English and Spanish have a [d] and a [ð] (the voiced dental
fricative). In English, we know that the two sounds are separate phonemes, because minimal
pairs exist:
die [da] vs. thy [ða]
bayed [bed] vs. bathe [beð]
den [dɛn] vs. then [ðɛn]
But in Spanish, there are no such pairs. Furthermore, by looking at Spanish data one can
determine that [d] and [ð] are allophonic variants:
[daðo] ‘given’
[deðo] ‘finger’
[usteð] ‘you (polite)’
[donde] ‘where’
[de ðonde] ‘from where’
These and other data indicate that [ð] occurs only after a vowel, while [d] is the elsewhere
allophone, occurring after consonants and initially. Thus [ð] and [d] are allophones of the same
phoneme.
We can set up the following phonological analysis for the sounds of Spanish discussed so
far.