complementary allophone

English edit

Noun edit

complementary allophone (plural complementary allophones)

  1. (phonology) A variant pronunciations of a phoneme that occur in specific phonetic contexts and do not change the meaning of a word
    • 2017, Robert Kennedy, Phonology: A Coursebook, Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, page 102:
      ... complementary allophone from the underlying phoneme. In each pair, the unaspirated form has a more general distribution. The aspirated allophone occurs in a very specific set of circumstances: in initial position of a word or stressed []
    • 2012, Irén Heged?s, Alexandra Fodor, English Historical Linguistics 2010: Selected Papers from the Sixteenth International Conference on English Historical Linguistics (ICEHL 16), Pécs, 23-27 August 2010, John Benjamins Publishing, →ISBN, page 47:
      ... complementary allophone of /i/, its occurrence being largely restricted to positions before /r, h, hw/. Similarly, the emergence of short 〈aú〉 /ɔ/ was primarily associated with PGmc. /u/ preceding the same three consonants. In Early []