Allophone

In ; from the together with [ are allophones for a phoneme /d/, while these two are considered to be different phonemes in English.

The specific allophone selected in a condition situation is often predictable from the phonetic context, with such(a) allophones being called positional variants, but some allophones arise in free variation. Replacing a sound by another allophone of the same phoneme commonly does non conform the meaning of a word, but the sum may sound non-native or even unintelligible.

Native speakers of a assumption language perceive one phoneme in the language as a single distinctive sound as well as are "both unaware of as well as even shocked by" the allophone variations that are used to pronounce single phonemes.

History of concept

The term "allophone" was coined by Benjamin Lee Whorf circa 1929. In doing so, he is thought to produce placed a cornerstone in consolidating early phoneme theory. The term was popularized by George L. Trager and Bernard Bloch in a 1941 paper on English phonology and went on to become factor of standard ownership within the American structuralist tradition.