LINGUIST 1A03 Chapter Notes - Chapter 1-5: Complementary Distribution, Allophone, Sonorant
22 Apr 2019
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Document Summary
Variants within a phoneme are called allophones. Allophones: any variants that are not contrastive, that don"t lead to a meaning change, are members of that same phoneme category. Allophones usually appear in complementary distribution-a given allophone of one phoneme appears in one predictable environment, but the other allophones of that phoneme never appear in that environment. Not all sounds in one phoneme are identical, the mental category has room for variation. One of the big things that phonology is concerned with is the distribution of allophones: that is, what phonetic environments each allophone appears in. Some allophones appear in free variation, which means that it"s pretty much random which variant appears in any environment. Most allophones are entirely predictable: linguists say that allophonic variation is phonetically conditioned because it depends on what other sounds are nearby within the word. complementary distribution: there"s no overlap in where we find the allophones.
