Glossary of Linguistic Terms

Allophone

Definition: 

An allophone is a phonetic variant of a phoneme in a particular language.

Examples: 

(English)

  • [p] and [pH] are allophones of the phoneme /p/.
  • [t] and [tH] are allophones of the phoneme /t/.

(Spanish)

  • [b] and [B] are allophones of the phoneme /b/.
  • [d] and [D] are allophones of the phoneme /d/.

Glossary Hierarchy