Name: ray
Country and Region: australia
Native Language: English
Student or Teacher: Teacher
Age or Grade: year 11

Subject of Question: technical term

Question:
I would be grateful if you could provide my with the technical term for the
situation where phonemes can be grouped in such a way that they are
pronounced the same yet the meaning is different. For example;
         I scream
         Ice cream

Thankyou for your assistance.

The term for this is plain old "homophony". Anytime any two utterances sound the same, be they individual words or not, they are "homophones". In this case, the cause of the homophony is the "juncture" of the word pairs I/scream and ice/cream. "Juncture" describes the manner in which sounds are linked. In American English, "ice cream" will usually have a form closer to /ais krim/, with the /s/ held out to emphasize a word boundary; "I scream", on the other hand, will be pronounced more like /ai skrim/, with the /ai/ held out and the /s/ delayed. When spoken quickly, however, the two may sound quite similar.

Distinctions of juncture and word boundary are key elements in the listening comprehension of language. They are often so unconscious and subtle that we do not notice them except, in cases like this, where they do not distinguish words clearly enough. Failure to make these distinctions correctly is also a common reason why the speech of foreigners who are otherwise very fluent can be difficult to understand.

-Chris Frost
For Ask a Linguistics Tutor
3/14/01