Allophone

In phonology, an allophone (/ˈæləfoʊn/; from the Greek: ἄλλος, állos, "other" and φωνή, phōnē, "voice, sound") is one of a set of multiple possible spoken sounds (or phones) or signs used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, [pʰ] (as in pin) and [p] (as in spin) are allophones for the phoneme /p/ in the English language. The specific allophone selected in a given situation is often predictable from the phonetic context (such allophones are called positional variants), but sometimes allophones occur in free variation. Replacing a sound by another allophone of the same phoneme will usually not change the meaning of a word, although sometimes the result may sound non-native or even unintelligible. Native speakers of a given language usually perceive one phoneme in that language as a single distinctive sound, and are "both unaware of and even shocked by" the allophone variations used to pronounce single phonemes.

History of concept

The term "allophone" was coined by Benjamin Lee Whorf in the 1940s. In doing so, he placed a cornerstone in consolidating early phoneme theory. The term was popularized by G. L. Trager and Bernard Bloch in a 1941 paper on English phonology and went on to become part of standard usage within the American structuralist tradition.