<p> Identifying Phonemes and Phonetic Variants of Phonemes</p><p>1. Phonetic Variants of Phonemes </p><p>There are two types of phonetic variants of phonemes. </p><p>1. Free Variants </p><p> variants that can replace one another in exactly the same environment - they vary freely in one and the same place </p><p> alternation between word-final released and unreleased voiceless stops</p><p>2. Allophonic Variants (allophones) </p><p> variants that are conditioned by the environments in which they occur - they occur in mutually exclusive environments, i.e., they never overlap, they are in complementary distribution  the aspiration of voiceless stops  the nasalization of vowels  the palatalization of velar stops  the flapping of /t/ and /d/ </p><p>2. Identifying phonemes</p><p> minimal pairs – a valuable tool in identifying the contrastive sounds in a language</p><p> o a pair of words with different meanings that are pronounced in exactly the same way with the sole exception of one sound – one sound only is different o in a minimal pair, the two interchangeable sounds are contrastive, and are different phonemes.</p><p> teen : team peak : beak pat : bat</p><p>1 Phonemic Analysis</p><p>1. Minimal pairs test</p><p>YES: [s1] and [s2] occur in the same phonetic environments, and make different words  [s1] = /p1/ [s2] = /p2/</p><p>NO: GO to the next test.</p><p>2. Free variation test</p><p>YES: [s1] and [s2] occur in the same phonetic environments, but don’t make different words</p><p> [s1] and [s2] are free variants of /s/</p><p>NO: GO to the next test.</p><p>2. Complementary distribution test</p><p>YES: [s1] and [s2] occur in mutually exclusive phonetic environments</p><p> [s1] and [s2] are allophonic variants of /s/</p><p>NO: Indeterminate</p><p> may be different phonemes  may be free variants</p><p>2</p>