Talk:Phonemic contrast

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Text and/or other creative content from this version of Accidental gap was copied or moved into Phonemic contrast with this edit. The former page's history now serves to provide attribution for that content in the latter page, and it must not be deleted as long as the latter page exists.

As for “Phonemic contrasts,” there is much improvement to be made. The opening paragraph is only a single sentence, which is ambiguous and does not provide inexperienced readers with enough context to understand what phonemic contrast is. The following paragraphs, also sentences themselves, do not lay out the concept in simple terms either, and actually include grammatical mistakes. Even for a student of this concept this article is unclear and lacking true explanation of what phonemic contrast is. An entire paragraph in the introduction section, the longest paragraph in the article, is dedicated to phonemic gaps, which seems particularly irrelevant given the skeletal information provided about phonemic contrasts in the first place. Perhaps the information is so difficult to process because it is all either in quotations or clear paraphrases of, and not layman explanations, which are necessary for the opening of a Wikipedia article. Even though there is only one section, the introduction, the structure within that section is not cohesive and seems to be information given at random. There are two rather specific examples of phonemes in a language given, yet one, the Thai, seems inadequate at explaining phonemic contrast and the article is still lacking a generalized explanation. As for citations, the information on Thai phonemes is cited but the information about Russian phonemes is lacking any kind of citation, which invalidates the examples given. The coverage seems to be neutral, or without bias, but this is perhaps due to the lack of focus in the article rather than an intention to remain neutral. The sources given seem neutral, though too specific for such a brief article. An article on English phonemic contrasts is cited, though no examples are provided. Given that this page is in English and is intended for English speakers English examples of phonemic contrast would be useful in helping readers to understand the concept. Lastly, this article does have a “See also” section in which “Phonetic contrast” is linked. The page “Phonetic contrast” does not yet exist, and so should definitely not be linked there. Briannah J (talk) 18:41, 1 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The term 'distinctive speech elements' could be better explained to novices in linguistics or curious parties. The term 'allophone' appears but also requires a better explanation for the confused than the one we find here. The sentence introducing the idea of a contrastive feature desperately needs better wording and a comma removed. The example of long vs. short vowels as a phonemic contrast is a much better explanation than the actual intended explanation. The long vs. short vowel example is a good beginning, although that along with others could have been included in a larger separate section illustrating examples of phonemic contrast. In that case the introductory passages could have focused more on making sense of all of these terms that have been introduced with this very difficult wording. The same problems crop up in the final lines that introduce neutralization. The term is brought up but explained only with an example, and although it is related to the topic neutralization isn't the most relevant idea on the page. Perhaps if the article started with a solid foundation in explaining what phonemic contrast was and was able to explain the differences between a phoneme and an allophone, and if it were able to explain contrastive features better, then it would feel more natural for these side topics to be included and discussed with this level of detail. Some of the ideas brought up, if they were to remain, would need their own sections. Another issue appears when diaphonemic contrast is mentioned but is not explained or developed and no examples for it are given. This idea does seem relevant to the idea of phonemic contrast and deserves more attention than it receives in the article. To make matters worse, the link for the citation for diaphonemic contrast does not go anywhere. When the article specifically discusses 'the phonemic contrast of a word' the wording is also worded in a way that makes it very difficult to understand and doesn't include enough information to make any sense of the subject. Potential Articles to Improve This Page:

Dufour, Sophie, Noël Nguyen, Chotiga Pattamadilok, and Ulrich Hans Frauenfelder. "Does Orthographic Training on a Phonemic Contrast Absent in the Listener's Dialect Influence Word Recognition?" The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 140.3 (2016): 1871-877. Web. 16 Feb. 2017.

Minagawa-Kawai, Yasuyo, Koichi Mori, Nozomi Naoi, and Shozo Kojima. "Neural Attunement Processes in Infants during the Acquisition of a Language-Specific Phonemic Contrast." Journal of Neuroscience 27.2 (2007): 315-21. Web. 16 Feb. 2017. Eckman, Fred R., Gregory K. Iverson, and Jae Yung Song. "The Role of Hypercorrection in the Acquisition of L2 Phonemic Contrasts." Second Language Research 29.3 (2013): 257-83. Web. 16 Feb. 2017.

Native English speaking L2 learners often have difficulty developing an awareness for the contrasts between sounds that are in English allophones of the same phoneme and in other languages are different phonemes. Take for instance the presence of aspirated and un-aspirated alveolar stops that both appear frequently in English, oftentimes without the speaker knowing about the existence of two allophones instead of one. In other langauges the difference between these two allophones is obvious and significant to the meaning of the word. There is also the example of Arabic, which has two sounds that an English speaker would hear and classify as a voiced glottal fricative, only one of which is actually a voiced glottal fricative. The other, written as ⟨ħ⟩, is a voiceless pharyngeal fricative.

Wedge95 (talk) 20:53, 1 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Wedge95, Rachelwech, Briannah J.

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This example isn't accurate because /k/ in "leak" has no release, while /g/ in "league" does. Try saying "league" the way you would say "leak" — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:86:401:12C0:8DB4:4808:F645:E259 (talk) 16:47, 10 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]