ALLPHONES

By:
Siti Aminah
Yuli Dila Audhea
Rico Bontor Sitinjak

STKIP BUDIDAYA BINJAI

ENGLISH STUDY PROGRAM

2018/2019

FOREWORD
 Praise and thanks authors thanks God Almighty, for blessings and mercy so
I can finished subject “The paper about Allphones”. The authors are grateful to
lecturer concerned that already provides guidence.

The author is also aware that the task is still many shortcomings therefore
the authors apologize if there are mistake in the writing and the authors also expect
criticism and constructive sugestions to the perfection of this task.

In clunclusion the authors thanks ,may be useful and can be add knowledge
to the reader.
Allophone

Allphone(Gr.allos “other” and phone “sound, voice”) is a variant of a phoneme.Allophones

are different pronunciations of words which do not change the meaning of these words.
Allophones of English /l/ may be noticed if the 'light' [l] of leaf [ˈliːf] is contrasted with the 'dark'
[ɫ] of feel [ˈfiːɫ]. Again, the difference is much more obvious to a Turkish-speaker, for whom /l/
and /ɫ/ are separate phonemes, than to an English speaker, for whom they are allophones of a
single phoneme.Allophones are the linguistically non-significant variants of each phoneme. In
other words a phoneme may be realised by more than one speech sound and the selection of each
variant is usually conditioned by the phonetic environment of the phoneme.Occasionally
allophone selection is not conditioned but may vary form person to person and occasion to
occasion (ie. free variation).A phoneme is a set of allophones or individual non-contrastive
speech segments. Allophones are sounds, whilst a phoneme is a set of such sounds.Allophones
are usually relatively similar sounds which are in mutually exclusive or complementary
distribution (C.D.). The C.D. of two phones means that the two phones can never be found in the
same environment (ie. the same environment in the senses of position in the word and the
identity of adjacent phonemes). If two sounds are phonetically similar and they are in C.D. then
they can be assumed to be allophones of the same phoneme.

Let us consider the following allophones:

 [pʰ] as in “pin” and [p] as in “spin”

 [l] as in “lean” and [ɫ] as in “fill”

Whether we (or a foreigner) pronounce [pin] or [pʰin], [spin] or [spʰin]; [li:n] or [ɫi:n], [fil]
or [fiɫ], it does not really change the meaning in English. Therefore, we are dealing not with
phonemes, but with allophones.

Allophones can be of three types (Kocherhan, 2006, p. 158):

a) individual (e.g. a foreigner or a person with a speech disorder cannot pronounce [p] correctly);

b) territorial (e.g. when in some part of a country [p] is always pronounced as [pʰ]); and

c) positional (e.g. [l] at the end of words is usually pronounced as [ɫ]).

 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.[1] For example, in English, [t] (as
in stop [stɒp]) and the aspirated form [tʰ] (as in top [ˈtʰɒp]) are allophones for the phoneme /t/,
while these two are considered to be different phonemes in some languages such as Thai and
Hindi. On the other hand, in Spanish, [d] (as in dolor [doˈloɾ]) and [ð] (as in nada [ˈnaða]) are
allophones for the phoneme /d/, while these two are considered to be different phonemes in
English.

The specific allophone selected in a given situation is often predictable from the phonetic
context, with such allophones being called positional variants, but some allophones occur in free
variation. Replacing a sound by another allophone of the same phoneme usually does not change
the meaning of a word, but the result may sound non-native or even unintelligible.

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

Complementary and free-variant allophones and assimilation.Whenever a user's speech is

vocalized for a given phoneme,it is slightly different from other utterances, even for the same
speaker. That has led to some debate over how real and how universal phonemes really are (see
phoneme for details).Only some of the variation is significant, by being detectable or
perceivable, to speakers.

There are two types of allophones, based on whether a phoneme must be pronounced using
a specific allophone in a specific situation or whether the speaker has the unconscious freedom to
choose the allophone that is used.

If a specific allophone from a set of allophones that correspond to a phoneme must be

selected in a given context, and using a different allophone for a phoneme would cause confusion
or make the speaker sound non-native, the allophones are said to be complementary. The
allophones then complement each other, and one of them is not used in a situation in which the
usage of another is standard. For complementary allophones, each allophone is used in a specific
phonetic context and may be involved in a phonological process.
 In other cases, the speaker can freely select from free variant allophones on personal habit
or preference, but free variant allophones are still selected in the specific context, not the other
way around.

Another example of an allophone is assimilation, in which a phoneme is to sound more like

another phoneme. One example of assimilation is consonant voicing and devoicing, in which
voiceless consonants are voiced before and after voiced consonants, and voiced consonants are
devoiced before and after voiceless consonants.

There are many allophonic processes in English: lack of plosion, nasal plosion, partial
devoicing of sonorants, complete devoicing of sonorants, partial devoicing of obstruents,
lengthening and shortening vowels, and retraction.

 Aspiration: In English,a voiceless plosive /p, t, k/ is aspirated (has a string explosion of

breath) if it is at the beginning of the first or a stressed syllable in a word. For example,
[pʰ] as in pin and [p] as in spin are allophones for the phoneme /p/ because they cannot
distinguish words (in fact, they occur in complementary distribution). English-speakers
treat them as the same sound, but they are different: the first is aspirated and the second is
unaspirated (plain). Many languages treat the two phones differently.
 Nasal plosion – In English,a plosive (/p, t, k, b, d, ɡ/) has nasal plosion if it is followed by
a nasal, whether within a word or across a word boundary.
 Partial devoicing of sonorants: In English, sonorants (/j, w, l, r, m, n, ŋ/) are partially
devoiced after a voiceless sound in the same syllable.
 Complete devoicing of sonorants: In English, a sonorant is completely devoiced after an
aspirated plosive (/p, t, k/).
 Partial devoicing of obstruents: In English, a voiced obstruent is partially devoiced next
to a pause or next to a voiceless sound within a word or across a word boundary.
 Retraction: In English, /t, d, n, l/ are retracted before /r/.
 Because the choice among allophones is seldom under conscious control, few people
realize their existence. English-speakers may be unaware of the differences among six
allophones of the phoneme /t/: unreleased [ t̚] as in cat, aspirated [tʰ] as in top, glottalized [ʔ] as
in button, flapped [ɾ] as in American English water, nasalized flapped [ɾ]̃ as in winter, and none
of the above [t] as in stop. However, they may become aware of the differences if, for example,
they contrast the pronunciations of the following words:

 Night rate: unreleased [ˈnʌɪt̚.ɹʷeɪt̚] (without a word space between [ . ] and [ɹ])
 Nitrate: aspirated [ˈnaɪ.tʰɹ̥ eɪt̚] or retracted [ˈnaɪ.tʃɹʷeɪt̚]

A flame that is held before the lips while those words are spoken flickers more for the aspirated
nitrate than for the unaspirated night rate. The difference can also be felt by holding the hand in
front of the lips. For a Mandarin-speaker, for whom /t/ and /tʰ/ are separate phonemes, the
English distinction is much more obvious than for an English-speaker, who has learned since
childhood to ignore the distinction.