Identifying Phonemes and Phonetic Variants of Phonemes

1. Phonetic Variants of Phonemes

There are two types of phonetic variants of phonemes.

1. Free Variants

 variants that can replace one another in exactly the same

environment -
they vary freely in one and the same place

 alternation between word-final released and unreleased

voiceless stops

2. Allophonic Variants (allophones)

 variants that are conditioned by the environments in which they

occur - they occur in mutually exclusive environments, i.e., they
never overlap, they are in complementary distribution
 the aspiration of voiceless stops
 the nasalization of vowels
 the palatalization of velar stops
 the flapping of /t/ and /d/

2. Identifying phonemes

 minimal pairs – a valuable tool in identifying the contrastive sounds in

a language

o a pair of words with different meanings that are pronounced in

exactly the same way with the sole exception of one sound – one
sound only is different
o in a minimal pair, the two interchangeable sounds are
contrastive, and are different phonemes.

 teen : team peak : beak pat : bat

1
 Phonemic Analysis

1. Minimal pairs test

YES: [s1] and [s2] occur in the same phonetic environments, and
make different words
 [s1] = /p1/
[s2] = /p2/

NO: GO to the next test.

2. Free variation test

YES: [s1] and [s2] occur in the same phonetic environments, but
don’t make different words

 [s1] and [s2] are free variants of /s/

NO: GO to the next test.

2. Complementary distribution test

YES: [s1] and [s2] occur in mutually exclusive phonetic environments

 [s1] and [s2] are allophonic variants of /s/

NO: Indeterminate

 may be different phonemes

 may be free variants