Questions tagged [minimal-pairs]
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26 questions
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Can loudness of speech sounds influence meaning?
In Chinese, words can have different meanings if their tones are changed, e.g. 是 (shì) and 十 (shí). In Italian, words can have different meanings if a consonant is geminated, e.g. sete and sette.
My ...
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How to distinguish Korean "ㅔ" /e/ and "ㅐ" /ɛ/?
I've always had trouble with the distinction between the "e"-like vowels in European languages: /e/ vs /ɛ/. But pronouncing them the same has never caused me any problems.
In fact I don't even know ...
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Does any living language contrast /kʷ/ and /kw/?
Does any living language contrast /kʷ/ and /kw/?
If yes, is there a way I can hear a minimal pair spoken?
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Why don't minimal pairs like "быть" and "бить" prove that /ɨ/ and /i/ are separate phonemes in Russian?
In analyses of Russian, there's a dispute about whether the vowels /ɨ/ and /i/ (typically represented in the orthography as "ы" and "и", respectively) are separate phonemes, or if [...
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Which language has the most vowel phonemes?
Which language has the largest number of vowels with minimal pairs?
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List of French minimal pairs
I recently asked a general question about minimal pairs (i.e. words that differ by one phoneme) and got a link to a website that provides a comprehensive list of English minimal pairs.
Is there a ...
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List of minimal pairs in Turkish
Is anyone aware of a resource (web-based or in print) providing a comprehensive list of minimal pairs in Turkish?
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Does a difference of tense count as a difference of meaning in a minimal pair?
Does a difference in tense count as a difference in meaning in a minimal pair?
Here's a made up example to illustrate my question:
If we know that:
[wuga] means "read"
[wugi] means "reading"
Can ...
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Is there good evidence for five vowel phonemes in Hittite?
The Hittite writing system generally distinguishes three, sometimes four vowels: /a i u/ and sometimes /e/.
However, I've seen it suggested that the language actually had five vowel phonemes, ...
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Are there minimal pairs for "l" vs "ll" in Albanian?
I'd like to ask some Albanian speakers to say pairs of words which come as close as possible to differing only by one of each pair having "l" and the other having "ll". I'm trying ...
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Which languages contrast /ɕ/ and /ʃ/?
According to Wikipedia, there's a phonemic contrast between /ɕ/ and /ʃ/ in Ubykh, North Qiang, South Qiang and Luxembourgish (though they are merging). Do any other languages exhibit this distinction?
...
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Georgian minimal pairs with p' t' k'
Does anybody know any minimal pairs for /p'/ and /p/, /t'/ and /t/ or /k'/ and /k/ in Georgian (or any other indigenous caucasian language)?
I'm writing a seminar paper about ejectives in caucasian ...
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Why in the world are French "Paul" and "Paule" distinguished by vowel openness?
Wikipedia lists
Paul [pɔl] ('Paul', masculine), vs. Paule [pol] ('Paule', feminine),
as a minimal pair of the two mid rounded back vowels of French.
What I wonder is, how did it happen that the two ...
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Are there minimal pairs between normal length and long vowels in English?
Are there minimal pairs between vowels of normal length such as a and vowels of long length such as aː?
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help with minimal pairs in English
In a famous paper on phonology R. Jakobson made an example of an English minimal triplet as follows:
pop ~ tot ~ cock
By this example he wanted to show that syllable onset and coda positions ...
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I need a list of common minimal pairs in Thai
I'm looking for a list of minimal pairs in Thai where the only difference is an accent mark/diacritic. One example would be
ห่าง (far) =/= ห้าง (store)
Is there someplace to find this? My Thai ...
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Resource for German minimal pairs
I recently asked a general question about minimal pairs and got a link to a website that provides a comprehensive list of English minimal pairs.
Is there a similar list for German minimal pairs?
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Is "dzeru" : "ceru" a minimal pair in Latvian?
I'm finding it a bit hard to determine the prosody of these words. I'm basically asking if "dzeru" and "ceru" are prosodically identical.
If "dzeru" : "ceru" ...
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Seeking Lao minimal pairs for /ɯ/ vs /ɤ/ vs /ɯː/ vs /ɤː/
In learning Lao one of the tricky things For a native English speaker is the two vowels that we don't have in English and sound very similar to us. This is compounded by the fact that both exist in ...
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Are there any minimal pairs for German lax/tense vowels?
As we know, most German vowels have a 'tense' (or long) pronunciation and a 'lax' (or short) pronunciation.
Most of the time, which pronunciation should be used can be determined by the context that ...
user19661
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Is there any natural language having minimal pairs over tongue root position?
I am building a conlang, which is very likely going to be an isolating language. As such, I decided to make it a tonal language.
But there is a problem. This language is to be sung very often, so ...
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Do infants deliberately change the words when they omit the sounds and these words are minimal pairs?
While I was studying an infant's transcript, I realized that he deleted the [l] sound in "alma" [alma], a word in Turkish meaning "do not take". When he deleted the sound, the word became [a:ma]. ...
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Looking for a database of minimal pairs
I'm looking for a database of english minimal pairs that is at least somewhat organized by some principle such as features or phonemes similar to :
https://www.speech-language-therapy.com/index.php?...
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Database of words that differ by one phoneme
I want to test whether people are able to distinguish different phonemes from each other.
Example:
men (/mɛn/) and man (/mæn/)
The user of the software is supposed to hear the correct pronunciation ...
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minimal pairs for Portuguese
Does anyone know of a list of minimal pairs for pronunciation, preferably with audio files?
So far the best I have found https://european-portuguese.info/minimalpairs but this is specific to European. ...
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What are near-minimal pairs
What are near-minimal pairs? How are they different from minimal pairs? Can Allophones occur in near-minimal pairs?
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