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 "l
et" + "l
it" proves that the
phones (in l
et) and (in l
it) 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.
Differentiations in English
Following pairs prove existence of various distinct phonemes in English.
| IPA 1 | IPA 2 | note | | pin | bin | | | initial consonant |
| rot | lot | | |
| zeal | seal | | |
| bin | bean | / | | vowel |
| pen | pan | / | |
| 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:
| 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:
| meaning | | cire | | wax |
| sûre | | sure |
| s"ur | | sister |
| sieur | | sir |
| sueur | | sweat |
Differentiating consonants
A minimal triplet of consonants in French is:
| 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:
| 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:
| meaning | | לראות | | see |
| לירות | | shoot |
In
Korean, phones [r] in Korea and [l] in Seoul are allophones of the phoneme /l/ and are perceived by native speakers of Korean as a single letter i.e. phoneme. The difference is that [r] is pronounced before vowels.
In
Spanish, [z] and [s] are both allophones of /s/ and [z] 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:
| 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):
| 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:
| 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):
| IPA | 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').
*
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
