Allophone (definition)

Allophones are variant forms of a sound. In English, for example, the sound 't' can be pronounced two different ways. At the beginning of a syllable, as in top, it is pronounced with a burst of air (aspiration) transcribed [tʰ]; after an "s" sound, as in stop it is pronounced without this burst of air (transcribed [t]). [tʰ] and [t] are allophones of an underlying phoneme /t/.

See Also

• Phoneme (definition)

External Links

Be careful with Wikipedia Pages, they can be edited by anyone and often contain incorrect information

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allophone
• http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/WhatIsAnAllophone.htm

References

• Crystal, David (1999) Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics. Oxford: Blackwell.