A CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS OF TIV PHONEMES WITH ENGLISH PHONEMES AND ITS IMPLICATION TO TIV LITERACY

Looking at phonemes generally, it is important to note that phonetic, phonemes and phonology are three similar things that work hand in hand. Phonology deals purely with sound, phonetics is fundamentally tied to phonology, so much so that it is sometimes difficult for the beginning student to comprehend the distinction between two. PHONETIC is the production and understanding of speech sounds in any language and it deals with "phone". PHONOLOGY is the interpretation of speech sounds in a particular language and it deals with phoneme. PHONEME is the smallest unit of sound. A specific unit of sound in the language that is represented is what is called “Phoneme”.

Sounds are considered to be members of the same phoneme if they are phonetically similar, and do not occur in the same environment (i.e. they are in complementary distribution) – or, if they do, the substitution of one sound for the other does not cause a change in meaning (i.e. they are in free variation). A sound is considered ‘phonemic’, on the other hand, if its substitution in a word does cause a change in meaning (Crystal 2008: 362).