Introduction

In this lesson, the goal is to learn about the motivations for distribution, allophonic variation, and the concept of the phoneme.

Major Terms

• complementary distribution
• phoneme
• allophone
• overlapping distribution
• contrastiveness

The English Stops

Observe the following English words:

Is the boldfaced letter pronounced the same in all of the words above?

Look to see the actual transcriptions.

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Go on to Part 2

Phonology

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