One of a small set of speech sounds that are distinguished by the speakers of a particular language. linguistics-the scientific study of language.
If the exchange of one phone in a word for another gives a new word with a different meaning, then the two phones belong to different phonemes. The difference in meaning between the English words kill and kiss is a result of the exchange of the phoneme /l/ for the phoneme /s/ . Two words that differ in meaning through a contrast of a single phoneme form a minimal pair. Within linguistics there are differing views as to exactly what phonemes are and how a given language should be analyzed in phonemic (or phonematic) terms. When a phoneme has more than one allophone, the one actually heard at a given occurrence of that phoneme may be dependent on the phonetic environment (surrounding sounds) – allophones which normally cannot appear in the same environment are said to be in complementary distribution. Phonologists have differing views of the phoneme. Following are the two major views considered here: 1  In the American structuralist tradition, a phoneme is defined according to its allophones and environments. 2  In the generative tradition, a phoneme is defined as a set of distinctive features. 1 In linguistics, an audibly distinct variant of a phoneme, such as the different pronunciations of the t sound in tar and star. Adjective: allophonic. Substituting one allophone for another allophone of the same phoneme doesn't lead to a different word, just a different pronunciation of the same word.  A phoneme is a unit of sound in speech. A phoneme doesn't have any inherent meaning by itself, but when you put phonemes together, they can make words. Think of when adults try to get a baby to say his or her first word.  A phoneme is the smallest contrastive unit in the sound system of a language. 1 In the American structuralist tradition, a phoneme is defined according to its allophones and environments. 2  In the generative tradition, a phoneme is defined as a set of distinctive features. Noun. 1. phoneme - (linguistics) one of a small set of speech sounds that are distinguished by the speakers of a particular language. linguistics-the scientific study of language. speech sound, phone, sound - (phonetics) an individual sound unit of speech without concern as to whether or not it is a phoneme of some language. allophone - (linguistics) any of various acoustically different forms of the same phoneme. Translations. An allophone is a phonetic variant of a phoneme in a particular language. [ 1 p] and [pH] are allophones of the phoneme /p/. 1 [p] and [pH] are allophones of the phoneme /p/. [ 2 t] and [tH] are allophones of the phoneme /t/. Different speech sounds that are realizations of the same phoneme are known as allophones. Allophonic variation may be conditioned, in which case a certain phoneme is realized as a certain allophone in particular phonological environments, or it may be free in which case it may vary randomly. When a phoneme has more than one allophone, the one actually heard at a given occurrence of that phoneme may be dependent on the phonetic environment (surrounding sounds) – allophones which normally cannot appear in the same environment are said to be in complementary distribution. Here is a chart that compares phones and phonemes: A phone is …. A phoneme is …. One of many possible sounds in the languages of the world. A contrastive unit in the sound system of a particular language. 1 In the American structuralist tradition, a phoneme is defined according to its allophones and environments. 2  In the generative tradition, a phoneme is defined as a set of distinctive features. O.T. FORD, 1999. A phoneme is the basic unit of spoken language. It is a speech sound as it exists in the mind of the speaker ― what it thinks it is saying. The actual sound produced is a phone. (Phones are recorded in brackets, phonemes in slashes.) The word keep is phonemically /kip/, but phonetically [k‛ip]. 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoneme http://www-01.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/WhatIsAPhoneme.htm http://grammar.about.com/od/ab/g/allophoneterm.htm http://study.com/academy/lesson/phoneme-definition-segmentation-examples.html http://www-01.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/WhatIsAPhoneme.htm http://www.thefreedictionary.com/phoneme http://www-01.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/WhatIsAnAllophone.htm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoneme http://www-01.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/WhatIsAPhoneme.htm http://the-stewardship.org/research/blte.htm
what is a phoneme in linguistics