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Linguistics

Notes and what criteria the native speaker uses to tell sounds apart. We said earlier that by substituting
other segments, the linguist can arrive at a list of these significant, contrastive classes of sounds
called ‘phonemes’. But we do not always find minimal pairs to help us figure out the list of phonemes.
There must be other criteria too, which we will have to incorporate into the definition of a phoneme.
The k-sound in keel, calm and cool differs. In keel it is at the front in the mouth, in calm it is a little
in the centre and in cool further back in the mouth. The absence of the above mentioned features do
not distort the message for the native speaker. He does not differentiate these sounds in every day
speech in the sense that he is not aware of the physical differences. He thinks these sounds are members
of the k-class or are all k. In other words for the phoneme /k/. central-k, retracted-k, fronted-k are all
allophones.
Hence an allophone is a speech sound which is one of a number of variants of a phoneme. Such a
variant can be either in complementary variation or in free variation. The occurrence of a particular
allophone may be determined by its environment, or it may be in free variation. Allophones determined
by environment, for example, are front or clear [l] as in lamp or light occurring before vowels and the
so-called ‘back’ or ‘dark [l] as in old and table occurring before consonants and at the end of words.
They are in complementary distribution, that is where the dark [l] appears in English, there cannot
occur the clear [l]. An example of allophones occurring in free variation in the Southern British English
(R.P.) is the /r/ between vowels, as in very, which can occur either as a flap, or as a fricative. Thus
allophones are phonetic variants; they are positional or contextual, or conditional variants (alternants)
of phoneme.
According to Trager and Smith (An Outline of English Structure), a linguist identifies these allophones
in the following way:
1. The sounds should be phonetically similar.
2. They should be in complementary distribution.
3. They should exhibit pattern congruity with other groups of sounds.
10.3.4 Diaphone
Sometimes a sound is used by a particular speaker or group of speakers of a language, but is substituted
by another sound by some other speaker or group of speakers of the same language. For example, the
sound of the diphthong /ou/, as in the word ‘loan’ may be substituted by the vowel-sound / / :/
,or the sound of the consonants dark ‘I’ as in ‘little’ may be substituted by the sound of clear ‘I’ by
e
some speaker. The bilabial plosive consonant-sounds /p/ and /b/ may often be replaced by the
h
h
aspirated sound /p / and /b /. In Hindi words vksj (meaning ‘towards’), the sound ‘vks‘is replaced by
‘vkS’ and the word is spoken as ‘vkSj’ (meaning ‘and’). Similarly, the consonant ’”k’ //∫ is replaced by
‘l’/s/, and the word “kh”kk is pronounced as lhlk. Now, both the sounds that is originally used by the
speakers of a language as well as that which is used by other speakers of that language, are said to
constitute a diaphone. Daniel Jones has defined a diaphone in the following manner: “The term diaphone
is suggested to denote a sound used by one group of speakers together with other sounds which
replace it consistently in the pronunciation of other speakers” (An Outline of Phonetics, 9th edn. 1962,
Cambridge, Heffer.)
Jones elucidates certain facts related to diaphones, two of which are stated below:
1. “Everyone has different styles of pronunciation. Such different styles are merely different ways of
pronouncing the language. When a person consistently uses one sound in one style of speech but
substitutes another for it in another style, it is as if two different people were speaking, and the
two sounds must be regarded as two members of the same diaphone.” (Ibid).
2. “Care must be taken to distinguish diaphones from phonemes. The different members of one
phoneme are sounds used by one single person speaking in one particular style; their use is
conditioned by the nature of the surrounding sounds in the sequence and on the degree of stress,
sometimes also on length and intonation. The different members of one diaphone are found in
comparing the speech of one person with that of another, or in comparing two styles of speech of the
same person.” (Ibid.,)

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