In linguistics (particularly phonetics and phonology), the phonetic environment of a given instance of a speech sound (or "phone"), sometimes also called the phonological environment, consists of the other phones adjacent to and surrounding it. The phonetic environment of a phone can sometimes determine the allophonic or phonemic qualities of a sound in a given language.
For example, the English vowel sound [æ], traditionally called the short A, in a word like mat (phonetically [mæt]), has the consonant [m] preceding it and the consonant [t] following it, while the [æ] itself is word-internal and forms the syllable nucleus. This all describes the phonetic environment of [æ]. In linguistic notation it may be written as /m_t, where the slash can be read as "in the environment", and the underscore represents the target phone's position relative to its neighbours.[1] The expression therefore can be read as "in the environment after the m sound and before the t sound".
See also
editReferences
edit- ^ Hayes, Bruce (2009). Introductory Phonology (1. publ. ed.). Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN 978-1405184113.
External links
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