Meaning & use
allophone
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Meaning
nouncountablespecialist
One of the different ways a single speech sound (phoneme) is pronounced, without changing the word's meaning.
Grammar: Countable: one allophone, two allophones. Often followed by 'of': an allophone of /t/.
Patterns
- allophone of something
- allophone in a language
- allophonic variation
In English, the aspirated [tʰ] in 'top' and the unaspirated [t] in 'stop' are allophones of the same phoneme /t/.
Linguists study allophones to understand how sounds vary in different contexts.
The two sounds are allophones in English but separate phonemes in Hindi.
Word forms
| plural | allophones |
|---|
Common combinations
- allophone of /t/
- The flap sound in 'butter' is an allophone of /t/ in American English.
- allophonic variation
- Allophonic variation explains why the same phoneme sounds different in different words.
- conditioned allophone
- A conditioned allophone appears only in specific phonetic environments.
- free variation allophone
- Some allophones can occur in free variation, meaning either pronunciation is acceptable.
Word family
Commonly confused: allophone or phoneme?
allophone vs phoneme
A phoneme is a meaningful sound unit; an allophone is a variant pronunciation of that unit that does not change meaning.
Practice
Which statement about allophones is correct?
Choose one answer.
Allophones are different ways to pronounce the same phoneme; they do not change meaning. Phonemes, by contrast, do distinguish words, and letters are written symbols, not sounds.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “allophone”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.