Minimal pair

In phonology, minimal pairs are pairs of words or phrases in a particular language, which differ in only one phone, phoneme, toneme or chroneme and have a distinct meaning. They are used to demonstrate that two phones constitute two separate phonemes in the language.

As an example for English vowels, the pair "let" + "lit" proves that the phones (in let) and (in lit) do in fact represent distinct phonemes and . An example for English consonants is the minimal pair of "pat" + "bat". In fact, this pair differs in voice onset time of the initial consonant as the configuration of the mouth is same for and ; however, there is also a possible difference in duration, which visual analysis using high quality video supports.

Phonemic differentiation may vary between different dialects of a language, so that a particular minimal pair in one accent is a pair of homophones in another. This does not necessarily mean that one of the phonemes is absent in the homonym accent; merely that it is not present in the same range of contexts.

Examples

Differentiations in English

Following pairs prove existence of various distinct phonemes in English.

word 1	word 2	IPA 1	note
pin	bin		initial consonant
rot	lot
zeal	seal
bin	bean	/	vowel
pen	pan	/	vowel
hat	had		final consonant

Differentiating consonants with same location and manner of articulation

In the articulation of bilabial plosives, 4 phones are defined by the characteristics voiced/unvoiced and aspirated/unaspirated: , , and . In different languages only some of these may occur and the number of phonemes formed may be different again.

In English, phones as in "spin" and as in "pin" both occur, but are allophones of the phoneme and no minimal pair can be found to distinguish them, but the word "bin" shows that the phone forms a phoneme separate from .

In Mandarin only phones (and phonemes) and occur. In the Pinyin transcription is written "p" and is written "b" (using the two available latin letters for the two phonemes).

In French and many other European languages only phones (and phonemes) and occur.

In Hindi, all four phones are separate phonemes.

In Thai, three phones occur and form three phonemes, as shown by the example:

{|class="wikitable" word IPA meaning ใบ sheet ไป to go ภัย danger

Differentiating vowels

The following table shows a minimal set in French distinguishing vowels, some or all of which may sound alike to an Anglophone, because the and sounds do not exist in English:

word	IPA	meaning
cire		wax
sûre		sure
sœur		sister
sieur		sir
sueur		sweat

Differentiating consonants

A minimal triplet of consonants in French is:

word	IPA	meaning
bête noire		black beast, pet peeve
baie noire		black berry (not blackberry, which is mûre sauvage)
baignoire		bathtub

Because is not a single phoneme in French, this shows a minimal pair between the presence and absence of next to , which shares its point of articulation. and differ only in point of articulation.

There are three verbs in Hebrew which demonstrate the distinction, in some dialects, between a velar stop and an uvular stop on one hand, and a glottal stop with and without tightening of the throat on the other:

word	transcription	meaning
קרא		read, call
קרע		tear apart
כרע		kneel

In the following two Hebrew verbs, the only distinction is a glottal stop in the middle of the first word:

word	transcription	meaning
לראות		see
לירות		shoot

In Korean, phones in Korea and ^* is pronounced before vowels.

In Spanish, and ^* appears only before voiced consonants as in mismo /mizmo/.

Differentiating chronemes

Hungarian and Italian have distinctive length of consonants, as did Latin. A differentiator for length is called a chroneme. Note that IPA allows length to be indicating by doubling the symbol, commonly used for consonants, while generally the special lengthening sign is used for vowels. E.g. in Italian:

word	IPA	meaning
pina		pine
pinna		fin

Hungarian, German and Thai have distinctive vowel length, as did Latin. E.g. in Thai (and compare this example also to the one on tone):

word	RTGS	quality	meaning
เขา	khǎo	short, rising tone	he/she
ขาว	khǎo	long, rising tone	white
เข้า	khâo	short, falling tone	enter
ข้าว	khâo	long, falling tone	rice
เข่า	khào	short, low tone	knee
ข่าว	khào	long, low tone	news

Differentiating tonemes

Languages such as Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, Thai and many African languages. (See: pitch accent and tonal language.) For example in Thai:

word	RTGS	quality	meaning
ขาว	khǎ:o	rising tone	white
ข้าว	khâ:o	falling tone	rice
ข่าว	khà:o	low tone	news

Differentiating stress

Spanish, Romanian and Italian have many minimal pairs differing only in stress. Dutch has several, e.g. (stress indicated by acute accent):

language	word	meaning
Dutch	voorkómen	prevent
Dutch	vóórkomen	occur
Romanian	copíi	children
Romanian	cópii	copies

Minimal pairs may differ superficially in more than one place if one feature is dependent on the other. For example, English record (noun) and record (verb) (and similar pairs) appear superficially not to be minimal pairs for stress because they differ in vowel quality as well. However, since the differences in vowel quality are predictable consequences of the differences in stress, such pairs are considered minimal pairs. The case is similar in Russian, eg. мука ('torture, pain') and мука ('flour').

External links

Minimal pairs for English RP — examples for all phoneme pairs in British Received Pronunciation
Software that generates a list of minimal pairs from a wordlist
A list of minimal pairs for teaching English pronuncation to Japanese junior high school students

Phonology

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