Library / English Dictionary |
PHONEME
Pronunciation (US): | (GB): |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
(linguistics) one of a small set of speech sounds that are distinguished by the speakers of a particular language
Classified under:
Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents
Hypernyms ("phoneme" is a kind of...):
phone; sound; speech sound ((phonetics) an individual sound unit of speech without concern as to whether or not it is a phoneme of some language)
Domain category:
linguistics (the scientific study of language)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "phoneme"):
allophone ((linguistics) any of various acoustically different forms of the same phoneme)
Derivation:
phonemic (of or relating to phonemes of a particular language)