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The phonemic variant (allophone). The classification of variants

Variants of the phoneme or allophones are sounds which occur in different environments, they are entirely predictable according to the phonetic environment, they are not opposed to one another and can not differentiate meaning. Allophones have one or more articulatory and therefore acoustic features in common and at the same time differ from each other in some degree and belong to the same phoneme.

There are two main types of allophones:

1) principle or typical allophones which do not undergo any distinguishable changes in the chain of speech;

2) subsidiary allophones which have quite predictable changes in the articulation due to the influence of the neighbouring sounds in different phonetic situations.

Ex. The phoneme [d] when not affected by the articulation of the preceding or following sounds is a plosive, forelingual, apical, alveolar, voiced, occlusive. This is how it sounds in isolation or in the intervocalic position when it retains its typical articulatory features (leader). In this case [d] is the principal allophone. But there are the following articulatory modifications of the phoneme [d] in various phonetic contexts.

[d] is slightly palatalized before front vowels and the sonorant [j] (deal, day, did you);

[d] is pronounced without any plosion before another stop consonant (bed time, bad pain, good dog);

[d] is pronounced with the nasal plosion before the nasal consonants [n] and [m] (sudden, admit, could not, could meet);

[d] is pronounced with the lateral plosion before the lateral sonorant [l] (middle, badly, bad light);

[d] followed by [r] becomes post alveolar (dry, dream);

[d] followed by interdental [θ], [ð] becomes dental (good thing, lead the way);

[d] followed by the labial [w] becomes labialised (dwell);

[d] in the word-final position is devoiced (road, raised, old).

These modifications cause the appearance of slightly palatalized, non-plosive, nasal, lateral, post-alveolar, dental, devoiced variants of the phoneme [d] which are subsidiary.

Subsidiary variants of a phoneme are subdivided into combinatory and positional. Combinatory allophones appear due to the influence of neighbouring speech sounds (as a result of assimilation or accommodation) and to the specific way in which adjacent sounds are joined together. Positional allophones are used in different positions (word-final, initial, stressed, unstressed) traditionally according to the orthoepic norm of the language. (Ex. [l] is clear in the initial position, dark in the final: lip – pill; the variants of any vowel are longer in the word-final position than before a consonant and are longer before a voiced consonant than before a voiceless one). But the boundary between combinatory and positional variants is not clear-cut.

Thus, although allophones of the same phoneme possess similar articulatory features they may frequently show considerable phonetic difference.

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