Allophone

As allophone ( from the Greek allo " unlike " fone " voice" bed. "Different sounding " ) is called in linguistics a phonetic variant of a phoneme. Allophones are also called Phonemvarianten subphoneme or variants.

Demarcation to the phoneme

The distinction between allophone and phoneme is made ​​because a phoneme spoken in different phonetic ( allophonic ) variants ( realized) can be, without that this phonetic difference has an impact on the significance of this phoneme. By systematic investigation of their phonetic characteristics similar to other pronunciation variants, mainly through minimal pair analysis, sounds may be classified as allophones of certain phonemes.

What phonetic variant spoken is determined by the dialect spoken by coarticulation effects or by the phonetic environment of a phoneme. What is considered subphoneme variant in one language can be a separate phoneme in another language.

Types of allophones

It consists of: