allophone

How to use allophone in a sentence. Example sentences and definitions for allophone.

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Editorial note

English does have the sound, but only as an allophone of t when it's preceded by s.

Examples6

Definitions1

Parts of speech1

Quick take

(linguistics) any of various acoustically different forms of the same phoneme

Meaning at a glance

The clearest senses and uses of allophone gathered in one view.

noun

(linguistics) any of various acoustically different forms of the same phoneme

Definitions

Core meanings and parts of speech for allophone.

noun

(linguistics) any of various acoustically different forms of the same phoneme

Example sentences

English does have the sound, but only as an allophone of t when it's preceded by s.

Compare German 'sch', or 'st', Italian 'sci' etc."th" representing both voiced and unvoiced interdental fricatives is what's called an "allophone" [2].

There's a real difference in that for a speaker of a language where those are two allophones of the same phoneme, butter and bu'er mean the same thing; they're the same word pronounced differently.

But this claim had been mitigated by subsequent research that suggests it is context dependent, as well as less certainty about phoneme vs. allophone distinctions.

A speaker can pronounce a phoneme as well as the allophone that is easiest to pronounce for them, a listener can distinguish a pair of phonemes as well as the most similar combination of allophones from them.

The original research by a Japanese linguist into this phenomenon in the 70s suggested it was impossible because of the way phoneme and allophone acquisition happens in childhood.