This essay is about the difference between phonemics and segmentation.
Generally, if the second language learner wants to be a good speaker he needs to develop his skills in the target language and specific language he tries to spoke it he has to focus on his pronunciation to make his idea clear to the listener. But which way he
must follow to develop this particular point Dose he obligate to study the linguist fields like grammar, pronunciation, vocabularies, and word formation to achieve a certain level in spoken language?
Does he need to read and study phonetics and phonology to be a good narrator, In fact, there is no set answer to these questions but all that we can say he must understand the way that he wants to follow in developing the process of his speaking?
The difference between phonemes and segments.
Generally, if the second language learner wants to be a good speaker he needs to develop his skills in the target language and specific language he tries to spoke it he has to focus on his pronunciation to make his idea clear to the listener. But which way he must follow to develop this particular point Dose he obligate to study the linguist fields like grammar, pronunciation, vocabularies, and word formation to achieve a certain level in spoken language? Does he need to read and study phonetics and phonology to be a good narrator, In fact, there is no set answer to these questions but all that we can say he must understand the way that he wants to follow in developing the process of his speaking?
How can learn English through its spoken form represented in conversations and dialogues? From this question, we can set out to cover most of the difficulties in second language learning especially pronunciation. According to communication facilities, most second language learners are enthusiastic to get highly acquainted with the rhythmical languages one of these languages is English. The second language learners would like to speak the language more than to write a composition or be in touch with its grammar, word formation, and the process of pronunciation. In other words, the difficulties which they are facing to speak and write in the rhythmical language English. One of the most difficult problems that second language learners face is a better way to pronounce words. Most of the theories focus on reading skills as considering it a better way to develop the spoken language, in case the learner will be in touch with the text that contains the word-formation, grammar, and vocabularies. In this case, the learner needs to understand the pronunciation of the word to have the ability to read as much as he or she can. This report will discuss the most difficult task for the second learner which is (The different between phonemics and segmentation in English). An important try in any science is the classification of the units of the material with which that science operates. This rating can be done in different ways and on different grounds according to the purpose that the scientist has in View, and the criteria of the success of rating lay in its adequacy and usefulness in answering that purpose. Rating presupposes first an analysis to isolate units to be rated and second methods of description of these units which enables some to be distinguished from others (Brosnahan and Malmberg, 1970: 74). According to the subject matter, phonemics and segmentation, the scientific area represents both phonetics and phonology (or phonemics) and what needs to be rated is the continuum of speech listed into small units named as phonemes or segments. These two terms used specifically in some books without giving a justification or reasons stand for beyond this why phoneticians have rated the speech continuum into phonemes and segments; therefore, there is a mutual and misusing the terms. Nevertheless, the fact is they are quite distinctive and each one and the difference is not big to tackle a problem to the leaner "has its own description, which enables us to understand and recognize whether this is a phoneme or a segment. Peter Roach has another point of view to classify the two concepts phonemes and segments "when we speak we produce a continuous stream of sounds, this stream of sounds can be divided into small pieces" (Peter Roach, 2009: 31) which means every sound it is a phoneme cause it represents the smallest unit of sound in an English word so, the phoneme itself represents a segment like a word (Man) it has three phonemes and in the same area this word has three segments. For the second language learners, these two concepts very hard to understand, the concepts of visualization of those learners; the distinctions between phonemes and segments. So far, they are keen to communicate in English; still, their demand and study are to manage the basic notions. In other words, those learners have to get in perceiving and understand, acquire the difference between production and pronunciation; the airstream mechanism participation to make them cope with the precise production and pronunciation.
This report is to reveal the importance of segmentation and phonemics of English for second language learners. In another hand it is done in order to cope with such inquiry, the linguistic subjects - phonetics and phonology are taught with so many details; learners have to know that "letters are written and sounds are spoken"( J.D.O'Connor Better English Pronunciation page 7 ,2003 ).The result would reveal the accents and dialects of English; overseas learners are instructed to get used to the teachable variety of English-hence BBC.
Phonemes and segments/ Mutual points
Within the spoken English language, many concepts are presented in the study of phonetics and phonology fields two main processes are dealt with: phonemics and segmentation which tackle phonemes and segments, respectively. Peter Roach (2009: page 31) represents phonemes as the fundamental units of phonology; virtually all theories of phonology hold that) the spoken English language can be broken into small units of sounds (phonemes), and that each language has a specific small fixed set of these phonemes. Most of them can be divided into groups, for example/p t k b d g/. When the study of the phoneme became widely focused on, in the 1930's and 40's, many attempts were made to find scientific ways of establishing the phonemes of a language and listing each phoneme, this is known as phonemics. As it has been always presented by phoneticians that any stretch of spoken sentences is composed of smaller pieces in different selections and on different orders. This term dates as far back as the work of the nineteenth- century Polish linguist Jan Baudouin de Cowhiay. The phoneme is a concept used in phonology. As a result of the information which is showed up, we can take a deep look at the overlap between the phoneme and segment. However, the definition of a phoneme has been interpreted in many views. Most phoneticians' defined phoneme as the smallest distinctive unit in a specific language e.g., tips in English realizes three phonemes/t//i//p/. By 'distinctive' is meant having a contrastive function e.g./l i p/is different from/s i p/in English the substitution of one sound type for other results change of word meaning (Carr, 2008:1122). Even Peter roach has the same idea about this fact changing one sound can change the meaning of the word e.g. the word Man if we change the phoneme /* / into / e / will change the grammatical base from singular to plural. This point of view is rather a concrete conception of the phoneme. A variant on this concrete view is that a phoneme is a set, or family, same points of distinct speech sound-types sharing in producing the speech sounds that count as 'the same thing'. This variant version is more abbreviate than the idea that phonemes are literally sounded since sets are not sounds; they are abstract, in some sense. Another view is more mentalist than this. This view states that phonemes are not sounds and cannot be heard which means the speaker will not focusing on it we speak since they are mental categories. Another point of view takes phonemes to be no more than theoretical constructs, devised -sound patterns in a specific language. This view is based on instrumentalism. Some phonologists, such as Trubetzkoy, have argued for a functional View of phonemes; for Trubetzkoy, one must identify phonemes based on their function in the phoneme system of a particular language. Laver (1994:412) defines phoneme in two perms The first is: "The speech sounds are said to be the manifestation of different phonemes in a given accent of a language when they take place as the basis of a contrastive opposition that distinguishes a pair of words of identical phonological structure, differing in the systemic choice made at a single place in that structure." The second part is: the producing of "speech sounds regularly needs in several various structures and contexts may be rated as members of a given phoneme if their occurrences are in complementary distribution". Tim (2007:106) states that a phoneme may well represent several phonetically similar or phonologically related sounds, but the relationship may not be phonetically obvious, which is representing one of the problems with this conceptual scheme. As we discussed above, and take a look off with is the similar points the overlap and the misusage of the concept become very clear; in addition, the concept segment is ignored by the time, which is should be replaced by the concept phoneme in some of the definitions mentioned to be more clear to the learner. So, all this leads us to ask a particular question, what is the difference between segments and phonemes? How can we recognize it? Is it different from the phoneme? To answer these three forms of questions we have to understand a very important point which is the speaker will never feel the segments or phonemes while he spoke. A segment refers to any discrete unit that can be identified either physically or auditory in the stream of speech (Crystal, 2003: 408). According to (Matthews, 2007:359) states Segmentation is a process, used in descriptive analysis or in speech processing, by which a form of representation at one level is divided into a succession of discrete units, i.e. concerning a representation of continuous speech into successive phonemes. Lodge (2009: 97) has been shared conceptualism and he states that segmentation is a convenient way of conceptualizing speech for further phonological analysis. Laver (1994: 1023) represents two approaches to segmentation, which are the parametric approach and the linear approach. In the first one, each component of vocal performance is stated as a parameter whose value is in a state of constant potential change, e.g. the pitch of voice and the loudness of the voice. In the second approach, each unit can be shaped in terms of representing the real values known during the production of that unit by the individual phonetic components forming up the performance. In spite of the overlap, there are important points that must be mentioned to clear the distinctions between phonemes and segments. Skandera and Burleigh (2005:19) state that it is very important to remember that phonemes are representing abstract, ideal sounds that are never produced and never heard (i.e. mental forms). When these abstract shapes (in the mind) are sequenced into groups of sounds, they are called segments, i.e. segments are different realizations of phonemes pronounced in actual speech e.g.,/l/ sound when we try to produce it is a phoneme that has different versions or other realizations in the actual speech which means it takes place that is clear and in the end we will have three shapes of one sound [l], dark [f], syllabic [l]and devoiced [l] which are further called allophones. Hewlett and Beck (2006: 15) did tell that it is important to remember a simple fact that segments do not exist in isolation and that the production of each one will be affected by the other sounds and by the context and style of production of speech sounds as a group of sounds representing the actual way of speech. Phonemes, in the way of producing it, will stand individually to produce minimal pairs. In short; it is possible to tell that when a phoneme functions in the actual speech it becomes a segment. Phoneticians disagreed about the conceptualism of segments: when we want to analyze an utterance we can clarify a number of phonological and grammatical factors, partly as a result of our knowledge and comprehension of the language. Consequently, we are able to write down something we hear in words separated by spaces, and (with proper training) transcribe with phonemic symbols the punch of sounds that we hear. However, when we examine speech sounds within connected speech closely, we find many cases where it is very difficult to clearly separate sound units (segments) that correspond to phonemes since many of the articulators movements that create the sounds tend to be continuous rather than sharply switched. For example, sequences of fricative often overlap, so that it is hard or impossible to split the sequence [Js] in fish soup [fijs su:p]. As a result, some people believe that classifying speech up into segments (segmentation) is fundamentally misguided; the opposite View is that segmentation appears to be possible in most cases, and was seen to be aware of segments in their speech. As a result to what is mentioned above we can clarify the two concepts phonemes and segments as it shown below:
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- Layth Jabbar (Autor), 2021, The difference between phonemics and segmentation, Múnich, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/1039757
