What is an allophone?

• A. A contextual variant of a phoneme that does not change meaning.
• B. A phoneme in a different language family.
• C. A distinct phoneme that changes word meaning.
• D. The basic unit of syllables.

Answer: (A)

An allophone is a contextual variant of a single phoneme, with different pronunciations that do not change word meaning. The underlying phoneme stays the same, but its actual sound shifts depending on the surrounding sounds or position in a word. For example, the same English phoneme /t/ can be heard as an aspirated [tʰ] in some contexts (like the initial sound of “top”) and as an unaspirated [t] in others (often after an /s/ as in “stop”). Both sounds come from the same phoneme and do not create different words. Similarly, the /p/ in “pin” versus “spin” can differ in aspiration, yet they are allophones of the same phoneme. If a sound difference did change the meaning of a word, that would reflect a distinct phoneme, not an allophone.