14
Yes. A minimal pair is meant to differ in one phoneme, to demonstrate that a speaker of the language can distinguish between the two words, and therefore that the contrast is phonemic. Since the difference between the words is on the level of phonology, it doesn't matter whether the difference in meaning is grammatical or lexical.
11
This is one of those "it depends" questions. Dinka (Bor dialect) has the vowels [i e ɛ ɔ o u a], as well as long and over-long versions of these (21 vowels), and 4 phonatory contrasts (breathy, hollow, model, creaky) → 84 vowel, which can have 4 different tones (H, F, L, R) giving 336. Unfortunately they do not also have nasal vowels.
You could redefine the ...
11
Intensity is the physical correlate of loudness, and is also a correlate of stress in some languages. Moreover, stress can create differences in meaning in some languages (e.g. PRO-test vs. pro-TEST); we say that such languages have lexical stress, or that stress is lexically distinctive. It follows that if we can find a language where intensity is a good ...
9
This is because they are not minimal pairs. They differ in a consonant. The "бить" has soft б while "быть" has hard б.
9
Update: I have cleaned up and organized this list significantly, and it is now available here.
I had the same question as you, and ended up throwing together some perl scripts to scrape Wikipedia's list of the 10,000 most used French words, pipe them through eSpeak to get their IPA pronunciations, then do a simple (completely non-phonetic) comparison to ...
8
In theory, yes. Tashlhiyt Berber is said to have a contrast, but that does not mean that there are any minimal pairs. That article points to literature, saying that it is generally agreed that they are different. However, the article slightly undermines the claim by noting that [kw] and [kʷ] differ in terms of syllabification: which (potentially) means that ...
7
There doesn't appear to be such a list, hence I made you one based on this word list:
i o
aç iç öç uç üç
ad od öd
af of öf uf
ağ eğ iğ
ah eh ıh oh
ak ek ok
al el il ol öl
an en in on ön un ün
ar er ör ur
as es is ıs us üs
aş eş iş üş
at et it ot öt ut üt
av ev iv ov öv
ay ey oy uy
az ez iz öz uz üz
be de he le ne re ve ye
bu hu mu su şu
da ...
7
In Russian the word stress is marked purely by the loudness/force of the syllable (contrary to other Slavic languages where the stress may be also marked by the length or the pitch.) This stress may alter meaning of words, with the most notorious example being verbs "писать" and "писать" meaning respectively "to write" and "to pee". This is a subject of many ...
6
Australian English has true phonemic length distinctions.
Some examples:
ferry /feɹi/ vs fairy /feːɹi/
Manning (name) /mænɪŋ/ vs manning /mæːnɪŋ/
6
Well, the issue is not as clear as the preceding answer states.
One issue here is morpheme-boundary.
It's not good policy to look for minimal pairs that involve morpheme boundaries. For example, drink drank drunk is ok because there is no boundary involved here, but there is the well-known case of Scottish English where vowel length normally does not exist, ...
5
The distinction between long and short vowels is historic, not merely orthographic. It goes back to proto-Germanic and in many cases to proto-Indo-European. As for minimal pairs, they are not rare. You can start with “Wolle” /ˈvɔlə/ versus “(zum) Wohle” (ˈvo:lə).
5
As a native Polish speaker I would say that @Klaas Edema statement about Polish language was correct.
Polish speakers consecutively tend to classify [ʃ] in English words as [ʂ]. Moreover, in my opinion, in some words newly introduced to Polish were [ʂ] is followed by [i] (in native Polish words "sz" = [ʂ] is never followed by "i" = [i] but by "y" = [ɨ], and ...
5
You should take any such claims with a large grain of salt. While there is no question that Toda has a contrast, it is not evident that the phonetic realization is [ɕ] vs. [ʃ]. Ladefoged & Maddieson in The sounds of the world's languages 156ff list the Toda sibilants as [s̻ s̱ ʃ ʂ] and [ɕ] is not listed. They also list the Ubykh sibilants as [s ŝ ɕ s̥], ...
5
There is circumstantial evidence from Elamite, where "ú" is /u/, but "u" is /aw/. These readings are very clear from the Elamite representation of Old Persian proper names.
4
Here a few more:
pulë (chicken) - pullë (button),
plakë (old woman) - pllakë (plate),
plumb (bullet) - pëllumb (dove),
lum (river) - llum (dirt, sludge),
palë (layer) - pallë (sword),
kollë (cough) - Kolë (a shortened form of the male name Nikollë)
4
Djal (boy) and djall (devil) have been the source of some hilarious mix-ups.
4
A classic example is that virtually all dialects distinguish [bid] "bid" and [bi:d] "bead". Also, dialects often distinguish [bit] "bit" and [bi:t] "bid". A "minimal pair" is a pair of words whose phonetic valued differ only in the presence of A vs. B in the phonetic output. To rephrase, "minimal pair" is a property of phonetic outputs, not underlying ...
4
Here you go. Note also, that all these six words differ only in the first consonant, so they can be used to form a minimal pair for any two of the six consonants you are interested in. The language is Georgian.
ფარი - /pari/ - shield
პარი - /p'ari/ - parry (a fencing term)
თარი - /tari/ - tar (a long-necked, waisted lute)
ტარი - /t'ari/ - ...
4
Thai can be what you are looking for.
It has onset clusters /kw/, /kʰw/. Quite often, they are realized as labialized velar consonants /kʷ/, /kʰʷ/.
However¹, final stops like /-k/ are accompanied by a simultaneous glottal stop, thus making syllable boundaries well defined by intersyllabic juncture. This prevents any C-to-C coarticulation and ...
4
Just because a language contrasts two sounds, doesn't mean there should be minimal pairs (cf. English /h/ and /ŋ/).
The IPA uses a plain w to symbolise the [w] sound (war) and a superscript ʷ for labialisation (i.e. secondary articulation). There's a constriction at the velum for w, but ʷ doesn't have any constriction at the velum, it's simply the ...
3
Vowels
pap, tat, cack /ɑ ~ æ/
pep, teth, kek /e ~ ɛ/ (Second word very rare, third very informal)
peep, teat, keek /i/ (Is teat too anatomical for your taste?)
pip, tit, kick /ɪ/
pup, tut, cuck /ʌ/
pop, tot, cock /ɒ ~ ɔ/
poop, toot, cook /u ~ ʊ/
Diphthongs
pipe, tight, kike /aɪ/
pape, Tate, cake /eɪ/ (Second word a proper noun (name))
pope, tote, coke /oʊ ...
3
Coke, pope, tote is the only one that completely avoids potential snicker-words.
3
There are many.
denn/den
Zinn/ziehn
(dem) Sohne/(die) Sonne
As for the word Mond, it's not irregular as you guessed. That syllable is structured just like gehst or klebt:
onset nucleus coda suffix
M o n d - Mond
g eh s t - gehst
kl e b t - klebt
Germanic languages tend to have a rule ...
3
Yes, though it depends on the variety. For example in Scottish English, vowel length does not have minimal pairs since it is determined by "Aitken's law".
In Standard Southern British English (SSBE) however there are minimal pairs for example:
For /ɪ/ vs. /iː/: bit vs. beat; lick vs. leek; hit vs. heat etc.
For /æ/ vs. /ɑː/: cat vs. cart (though this ...
3
Sanskrit contrasted three sibilants, two of which most probably were [ɕ] and [ʂ] (or [ʃ]).
The former was an outcome of an Proto-Indo-Iranian affricate that developed from PIE voiceless palatalised velar stop whilst the latter had its roots in PIE /*s/.
Again here comes the matter of the exact phonetical nature of the second, non-palatal sound, retroflex [...
3
To begin with, I think we have to distinguish two facets: one is philology, that is to say reading and interpreting texts, the other is reconstructed phonetics.
From a purely philological viewpoint, the number of vowels does not matter much. Even the contrast being i and e can to some extent be ignored.
Reconstructed phonetics is an issue mostly for ...
3
Kloekhorst's Etymological Dictionary of the Hittite Inherited Lexicon proposes that /o/ and /u/ are separate phonemes in Hittite, but that the distinction doesn't appear in all environments: it's almost exclusively restricted to the position C_C.
As evidence, he analyzes plene spellings of /u/ in interconsonantal position; the vast majority of words are ...
2
The German word for minimal pair is Minimalpaar: de Wikipedia article
You can then search for examples using that word. Here is one slideshow I encountered:
Phonologie
Some examples are:
mahlen, zahlen, kahlen, fahlen, ...
2
In many Korean dialects, there are no sound difference between ㅐ and ㅔ. I mean almost every Korean pronounce those same. Of course, the standard pronunciation rules in both South and North Korea don't allow it.
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