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A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound in a language that can distinguish one word from another. For example, the ‘p’ in ‘pat’ and ‘bat’ are different phonemes.
An allophone is a variant of a phoneme that occurs in different phonetic contexts. For instance, the ‘p’ in ‘pat’ and ‘spat’ are allophones of the same phoneme.
A phonological rule is a principle governing how sounds change in different linguistic environments. These rules help explain how sounds are organized within a language’s sound system.