English

Noun

diaphoneme ‎(plural diaphonemes)

1. (linguistics) An abstract phonological unit that represents collectively the dialectal variants of a phoneme.

   The transcription /əʊ‖oʊ/ represents the diaphoneme descended from the ancestral Old English phoneme /oː/, which is realised as [əʊ] in Received Pronunciation and as [oʊ] in General American.‎

   • 1980, S. Noble & J.A. Fishman (trr.), M. Weinrich (auth.), P. Glasser (ed.), History of the Yiddish Language II (2008), ch. vii, pp. 467f.:

     The series with the long a as a point of departure…today has the diaphoneme /o‖u/, and to be exhaustive the diaphoneme should be rendered /o‖u‖au‖oi/, for in western Yiddish there are also the articulations /šlaufn/ and /šloifn/ (sleep). From the point of departure of long e (Early Vowel E₂) Yiddish arrived at the diaphoneme /ei‖ai/, for example in veynik (little) (cf. MHG wênic). In groys (big; Early Vowel O₂) (cf. MHG groȥ), Yiddish has the diaphoneme /ei‖oi/; with the variant of Samogitia–Latvia (7.35), the symbolization will become still more complicated: /ei‖øu‖oi‖ou/.

Derived terms

• diaphonematic
• diaphonemic
• diaphonemically
• diaphonemics

See also

• archiphoneme
• diaphone
• diaphonology
• diasystem

Translations

References

• OED (2nd ed., 1989), “diaphoneme”
• Merriam–Webster OnLine, “di·a·pho·neme” (retrieved the 25th of February, 2014)