Allophones of /t/

Our poster will investigate the different allophones of the phoneme /t/. We will look at aspirated [tʰ] and unreleased forms [t˺], flaps [ɾ], and glottal stops [ʔ] in Praat, an acoustic analysis program. By recording native speakers producing words with /t/ in different contexts, we will create spectrograms of the words. Along with illustrations of the allophones, our poster will include helpful definitions, including phoneme (a unit of sound that changes the meaning of a word), allophone (a context-dependent variant of a phoneme which cannot change the meaning of a word), aspiration (pronounced with a puff of air), unreleased sound (pronounced without a puff of air), a flap (a simple trill that only includes one contraction of the tongue), and glottal stop (a consonant that is articulated by the sound of the airstream after the epiglottis closes). Studying allophonic differences can be illuminating, because many native speakers of English do not realize that /t/ is pronounced differently in different positions within words.This topic can also shed light on the complexity and difficulties of learning and teaching English (or any other language)