allophone

allophone
—allophonic /al'euh fon"ik/, adj. —allophonically, adv.
/al"euh fohn'/, n. Phonet.
any of the members of a class of speech sounds that, taken together, are commonly felt to be a phoneme, as the t-sounds of toe, stow, tree, hatpin, catcall, cats, catnip, button, metal, city; a speech sound constituting one of the phonetic manifestations or variants of a particular phoneme.
[1930-35; ALLO- + PHONE2]

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      one of the phonetically distinct variants of a phoneme (q.v.). The occurrence of one allophone rather than another is usually determined by its position in the word (initial, final, medial, etc.) or by its phonetic environment. Speakers of a language often have difficulty in hearing the phonetic differences between allophones of the same phoneme, because these differences do not serve to distinguish one word from another. In English the t sounds in the words “hit,” “tip,” and “little” are allophones; phonemically they are considered to be the same sound although they are different phonetically in terms of aspiration, voicing, and point of articulation. In Japanese and some dialects of Chinese, the sounds f and h are allophones.

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Universalium. 2010.

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Look at other dictionaries:

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  • allophone — n. any one of two or more speech sounds that considered variants of the same phoneme. For example, the p sounds of pin and spin are allophones of p; and the t sounds of toe stop and catnip are allophones of t. [PJC] …   The Collaborative International Dictionary of English

  • allophone — [al′ō fōn΄, al′əfōn΄] n. [ ALLO + PHONE1] Linguis. any of the variant forms of a phoneme as conditioned by position or adjoining sounds [the relatively short (a) of mat and the relatively long (a) of mad are allophones] allophonic [al′ōfän′ik,… …   English World dictionary

  • Allophone — In phonetics, an allophone is one of several similar speech sounds (phones) that belong to the same phoneme. A phoneme is an abstract unit of speech sound that can distinguish words: That is, changing a phoneme in a word can produce another word …   Wikipedia

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  • Allophone (Quebec) — In Quebec, an allophone is a resident, usually an immigrant, whose mother tongue or home language is neither English nor French [ [http://www12.statcan.ca/english/census06/analysis/language/note.cfm 2006 Census: Portrait of the Canadian… …   Wikipedia

  • Allophone (sociolinguistique) — Pour les articles homonymes, voir Allophone. En sociolinguistique et en sociodémographie, un allophone est une personne qui, dans un territoire donné, a pour langue maternelle une autre langue que la ou les langues officielles, et qui réside… …   Wikipédia en Français

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