1.

Main Difference Morpheme and Phoneme

a. What is a Morpheme
A morpheme is the smallest grammatical unit of a language. It is also the smallest
meaningful unit in a language. This means that a morpheme cannot be divided into further
meaningful units. A word can be a morpheme, but not all morphemes are words. Morphemes can
be classified into two categories as free morphemes and bound morphemes.

a. Free morphemes are the morphemes that can stand alone, with a specific meaning.
Therefore, free morphemes act as words. Some examples for free morphemes include
dog, cow, dish, yes, ship, event, run, eat etc. However keep in mind that, not all free
morphemes can be considered as words.
b. Bound morphemes are the morphemes that cannot stand alone. They appear only as parts
of words, and when used alone, they do not have a meaning. Most bound morphemes in
the English are affixes. They can be used before or after the base word.(Base or a root is a
morpheme in a word that gives the word its principle meaning.) The affixes that come
before a base are called prefixes. The affixes that come after a base are called suffixes.
Examples:
Prefix: unhappy, postpone, disbelieve
Suffix: happily, kindness, believableMain Difference - Morpheme vs Phoneme

b. What is a Phoneme
A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound in speech that has a meaning. Phonemes help to
differentiate words from one another. Oxford Dictionary defines phoneme as Any of the
perceptually distinct units of sound in a specified language that distinguish one word from
another. For example, bat and mat are two different words because they have two different
phonemes /b/ and /m/. In the English language, there are approximately 44 phonemes. Given
below are some terms that are useful in studying phonemes.
Phonemes can be further classified as vowel phonemes and consonant phonemes. Some
examples of vowel phonemes include
/e/ peg, bread
/ear/ fear, here
/ ue/ -moon, tone
Some examples for consonant phonemes include
/ch/ chip, watch
/p/ pit, pin
Note that phonemes are always written inside slashes.
Difference Between Morpheme and Phoneme
Definition
Morpheme is the smallest grammatical and meaningful unit in a language.
Phoneme is the smallest contrastive unit in the sound system of a language.
Words
Morpheme can be a word.
Phonemes make words, but one phoneme cannot make a word.
Relation
Morpheme is related to the meaning and structure of the language.
Phoneme is related to the sound and pronunciation of the language.
c. Phonetics (pronounced /fntks/, from the Greek: , phn, 'sound, voice') is a
branch of linguistics that comprises the study of the sounds of human speech, orin the
case of sign languagesthe equivalent aspects of sign.[1] It is concerned with the
physical properties of speech sounds or signs (phones): their physiological production,
acoustic properties, auditory perception, and neurophysiological status. Phonology, on the
other hand, is concerned with the abstract, grammatical characterization of systems of
sounds or signs.
The field of phonetics is a multilayered subject of linguistics that focuses on speech. In the
case of oral languages there are three basic areas of study:
Articulatory phonetics: the study of the production of speech sounds by the articulatory and
vocal tract by the speaker.
Acoustic phonetics: the study of the physical transmission of speech sounds from the
speaker to the listener.
Auditory phonetics: the study of the reception and perception of speech sounds by the listener.
These areas are inter-connected through the common mechanism of sound, such as wavelength
(pitch), amplitude, and harmonics.
2. A. Place of Articulation
When we produce and describe consonants, we use vocal track that contains some
discrete physical landmarks. In describing the place of articulation, we are describing where in
the vocal tract a sound is made.
Articulators are the parts of the oral tract that are used in producing speech sounds. There
are two kinds of Articulations, active and passive articulation. Active articulators are ones that
move: the tongue tip is an active articulator in sounds like [s t n], since it moves up to behind the
teeth. Passive articulators are articulators that cannot move, but are the target for active
articulators. In the case of sounds like [s t n], the passive articulator is the bony ridge behind the
upper teeth, known as the alveolar ridge.
Bilabial
Bilabial sounds are sounds produced by both lips. Bi- means two, and labial is an
adjective based on the Latin word for lips. In English, the sounds [p b m] are bilabial. If you
say [apa aba ama] and look in the mirror, you will see that they look identical. If you say the
sounds silently to yourself and concentrate on your lips, you will feel that the two lips touch one
another for a short period, and the action is basically the same for all three sounds.
Libiodental
Labiodental sounds are made with the upper teeth (dental) against the lower lip
(labio). In English the labiodental sounds [f v] occur. Logically speaking, labiodental sounds
could involve the lower teeth and the upper lip, but this is difficult for most people to do: it
involves protruding the jaw, and most people have upper teeth that sit in front of the lower teeth.
Labiodental sounds can be made with the teeth against either the inside surface of the lip
(endolabial) or the outside edge of the lip (exolabial).
Dental
Dental sounds involve an articulation made against the back of the upper 12 teeth. [ d] in
English (as in the initial sounds of think and then) are often dental; they can also be
interdental, that is, produced with the tongue between (inter in Latin) the teeth, especially in
North America. Dental forms of [l] and [n] are used in words like health and tenth, where they
are followed by a dental; and dental forms of [t] and [d] are regularly used in many varieties of
English (e.g. some forms of Irish or New York English, and in Nigeria) as forms of [ d].
B. Manner of articulation
 This scheme gives us a different arrangement into stop(or plosive) consonants, affricates,
fricatives, nasal consonants, laterals and approximants.
Stop consonants (so-called because the airflow is stopped) or plosive consonants(because it is
subsequently released, causing an outrush of air and a burst of sound) are:
Bilabial voiced /b/ (as in boat) and voiceless /p/ (as in post)
Alveolar voiced /d/ (as in dad) and voiceless /t/ (as in tap)
Velar voiced /g/ (as in golf) and voiceless /k/ (as in cow)
Affricates are a kind of stop consonant, where the expelled air causes friction rather than
plosion. They are palatal /t/ (as in cheat) and palatal /d/ (as in jam)
Fricatives come from restricting, but not completely stopping, the airflow. The air passes through
a narrow space and the sound arises from the friction this produces. They come in voiced and
unvoiced pairs:
Labio-dental voiced /v/ (as in vole) and unvoiced /f/ (as in foal)
Dental voiced // (as in those) and unvoiced // (as in thick)
Alveolar voiced /z/ (as in zest) and unvoiced /s/ (as in sent)
Palatal voiced // (as in the middle of leisure) and unvoiced // (as at the end of trash)
3. Cardinal vowels are a set of reference vowels used by phoneticians in describing the sounds of
languages. For instance, the vowel of the English word "feet" can be described with reference to
cardinal vowel 1, [i], which is the cardinal vowel closest to it. It is often stated that to be able to
use the cardinal vowel system effectively one must undergo training with an expert phonetician,
working both on the recognition and the production of the vowels. Daniel Jones wrote "The
values of cardinal vowels cannot be learnt from written descriptions; they should be learnt by
oral instruction from a teacher who knows them".[1]
A cardinal vowel is a vowel sound produced when the tongue is in an extreme position,
either front or back, high or low. The current system was systematised by Daniel Jones in the
early 20th century,[2] though the idea goes back to earlier phoneticians, notably Ellis[3] and
Bell.[4]
Cardinal vowels are not vowels of any particular language, but a measuring system.
However, some languages contain vowel or vowels that are close to the cardinal vowel(s).[5] An
example of such language is Ngwe, which is spoken in Cameroon.
4. Diphthongs contrast with monophthongs, where the tongue or other speech organs do not
move and the syllable contains only a single vowel sound. For instance, in English, the word ah
is spoken as a monophthong (//), while the word ow is spoken as a diphthong in most dialects
(/a/). Where two adjacent vowel sounds occur in different syllablesfor example, in the
English word re-electthe result is described as hiatus, not as a diphthong.
A monophthong (Greek monphthongos[1] from mnos "single" and phthngos "sound")
is a pure vowel sound, one whose articulation at both beginning and end is relatively fixed, and
which does not glide up or down towards a new position of articulation. The monophthongs can
be contrasted with diphthongs, where the vowel quality changes within the same syllable, and
hiatus, where two vowels are next to each other in different syllables.