phonology Phonology is the branch of linguistics that studies how languages or dialects systematically organize their sounds or, for sign languages, their constituent parts of signs. The term can also refer specifically to the sound or sign system of a ...

, minimal pairs are pairs of

word A word is a basic element of language that carries an objective or practical meaning, can be used on its own, and is uninterruptible. Despite the fact that language speakers often have an intuitive grasp of what a word is, there is no consen ...

s or phrases in a particular

language Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of ...

, spoken or signed, that differ in only one phonological element, such as a

phoneme In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language. For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-wes ...

toneme Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning – that is, to distinguish or to inflect words. All verbal languages use pitch to express emotional and other paralinguistic information and to convey empha ...

chroneme In linguistics, a chroneme is a basic, theoretical unit of sound that can distinguish words by duration only of a vowel or consonant. The noun ''chroneme'' is derived , and the suffixed ''-eme'', which is analogous to the ''-eme'' in ''phoneme'' ...

, and have distinct meanings. They are used to demonstrate that two

phones A telephone is a telecommunications device that permits two or more users to conduct a conversation when they are too far apart to be easily heard directly. A telephone converts sound, typically and most efficiently the human voice, into ele ...

represent two separate phonemes in the language. Many phonologists in the middle part of the 20th century had a strong interest in developing techniques for discovering the phonemes of unknown languages, and in some cases, they set up writing systems for the languages. The major work of

Kenneth Pike Kenneth Lee Pike (June 9, 1912 – December 31, 2000) was an American linguist and anthropologist. He was the originator of the theory of tagmemics, the coiner of the terms "emic" and "etic" and the developer of the constructed language ...

on the subject is ''Phonemics: a technique for reducing languages to writing''. The minimal pair was an essential tool in the discovery process and was found by substitution or commutation tests. As an example for

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national id ...

vowel A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (l ...

s, the pair "let" + "lit" can be used to demonstrate that the phones (in let) and (in lit) actually represent distinct phonemes and . An example for English

consonants In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced w ...

is the minimal pair of "pat" + "bat". The following table shows other pairs demonstrating the existence of various distinct phonemes in English. All of the possible minimal pairs for any language may be set out in the same way.

Phonemic differentiation In historical linguistics, phonological change is any sound change that alters the distribution of phonemes in a language. In other words, a language develops a new system of oppositions among its phonemes. Old contrasts may disappear, new one ...

may vary between different

dialect The term dialect (from Latin , , from the Ancient Greek word , 'discourse', from , 'through' and , 'I speak') can refer to either of two distinctly different types of linguistic phenomena: One usage refers to a variety of a language that ...

s of a language so a particular minimal pair in one

accent Accent may refer to: Speech and language * Accent (sociolinguistics), way of pronunciation particular to a speaker or group of speakers * Accent (phonetics), prominence given to a particular syllable in a word, or a word in a phrase ** Pitch ac ...

may be a pair of

homophone A homophone () is a word that is pronounced the same (to varying extent) as another word but differs in meaning. A ''homophone'' may also differ in spelling. The two words may be spelled the same, for example ''rose'' (flower) and ''rose'' (pa ...

s in another. That means not that one of the phonemes is absent in the homonym accent but only that it is not contrastive in the same range of contexts.

Types

In addition to the minimal pairs of vowels and consonants provided above, others may be found:

Quantity

Many languages show contrasts between long and short vowels and consonants. A distinctive difference in length is attributed by some phonologists to a unit called a

. Thus,

Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance language *** Regional Ita ...

has the following minimal pair that is based on long and short : However, in such a case it is not easy to decide whether a long vowel or consonant should be treated as having an added chroneme or simply as a

geminate In phonetics and phonology, gemination (), or consonant lengthening (from Latin 'doubling', itself from '' gemini'' 'twins'), is an articulation of a consonant for a longer period of time than that of a singleton consonant. It is distinct from ...

sound with phonemes.

Classical Latin Classical Latin is the form of Literary Latin recognized as a literary standard by writers of the late Roman Republic and early Roman Empire. It was used from 75 BC to the 3rd century AD, when it developed into Late Latin. In some later pe ...

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ger ...

, some

Italian dialects Italian dialects may refer to any of the following linguistic notions: *the various dialects pertaining to different languages which are spoken in Italy, regardless of the origins thereof; * the , which are related to Italian, but do not stem fro ...

, almost all

Uralic languages The Uralic languages (; sometimes called Uralian languages ) form a language family of 38 languages spoken by approximately 25million people, predominantly in Northern Eurasia. The Uralic languages with the most native speakers are Hungarian (w ...

, Thai, and many other languages also have distinctive length in

s. An example is the ''cŭ/cū'' minimal pair in the dialect that is spoken near

Palmi Palmi may refer to: People Given name Palmi is an Icelandic male given name. Notable people with this surname include: * Pálmi Gestsson (born 1957), Icelandic actor and voice actor * Pálmi Gunnarsson (born 1950), Icelandic musician * Pálmi Ha ...

(Calabria, Italy):

Syntactic gemination

In some languages like Italian, word-initial consonants are

d after certain vowel-final words in the same

prosodic unit In linguistics, a prosodic unit, often called an intonation unit or intonational phrase, is a segment of speech that occurs with a single prosodic contour ( pitch and rhythm contour). The abbreviation IU is used and therefore the full form is o ...

. Sometimes, the phenomenon can create some syntactic-gemination-minimal-pairs: In the example, the graphical

on ''dà'' is just a

diacritical mark A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacriti ...

that does not change the

pronunciation Pronunciation is the way in which a word or a language is spoken. This may refer to generally agreed-upon sequences of sounds used in speaking a given word or language in a specific dialect ("correct pronunciation") or simply the way a particular ...

of the word itself. However, in some specific areas, like

Tuscany it, Toscano (man) it, Toscana (woman) , population_note = , population_blank1_title = , population_blank1 = , demographics_type1 = Citizenship , demographics1_footnotes = , demographics1_title1 = Italian , demogra ...

, both phrases are pronounced and so can be distinguished only from the context.

Tone

Minimal pairs for tone contrasts in

tone language Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning – that is, to distinguish or to inflect words. All verbal languages use pitch to express emotional and other paralinguistic information and to convey empha ...

s can be established; some writers refer to that as a contrast involving a

. For example, Kono distinguishes high tone and low tone on syllables:

Stress

Languages in which stress may occur in different positions within the word often have contrasts that can be shown in minimal pairs, as in

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

and

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: ** Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Ca ...

: In English stress can determine the part of speech of a word: ''insult'' as a noun is while as a verb it is . In certain cases it can also differentiate two words: ''below'' vs ''billow'' .

Juncture

Anglophones can distinguish between, for example, "great ape" and "grey tape", but phonemically, the two phrases are identical: . The difference between the two phrases, which constitute a minimal pair, is said to be one of

juncture Juncture, in linguistics, is the manner of moving (transition) between two successive syllables in speech. An important type of juncture is the suprasegmental phonemic cue by means of which a listener can distinguish between two otherwise ide ...

. At the word boundary, a "plus juncture" /+/ has been posited and said to be the factor conditioning allophones to allow distinctivity: in this example, the phrase "great ape" has an diphthong shortened by pre-fortis clipping and, since it is not syllable-initial, a with little aspiration (variously , , , , etc., depending on dialect); meanwhile in "grey tape", the has its full length and the is aspirated . Only languages with allophonic differences associated with grammatical boundaries may have juncture as a phonological element. There is disagreement over whether or not French has phonological juncture: it seems likely that the difference between, for example, "" (some little holes) and "" (some little wheels), phonemically both , is only perceptible in slow, careful speech.

Minimal sets

The principle of a simple binary opposition between the two members of a minimal pair may be extended to cover a minimal set in which a number of words differ from one another in terms of one phone in a particular position in the word. For example, the vowels , , , , of