allophone n allophonic adj any of the different variants of a phoneme. The different allophones of a phoneme are perceptibly different but similar to each other, do not change the meaning of a word, and occur in different phonetic environments that can be stated in terms of phonological rules. For example, the English phoneme /p/ is aspirated (see aspiration) when it occurs at the beginning of a syllable (as in pot) but unaspiratedwhen it is preceded by /s/ (as in spot) and may be unreleasedwhen it occurs at the end of an utterance (as in “he’s not her type”). These aspirated, unaspirated, and unreleased sounds are all heard and identified as the phoneme /p/ and not as /b/; they are all allophones of /p/.