A
phoneme of a language can be determined by a
minimally
phonologically distinctive pair of words which
establishes a
minimal and
distinctive linguistic sound - these two words, distinctive only that one
feature, is known as a
minimal pair. The selection of words is taken from among the
acoustically distinguishable sounds in a language, known as the phones
1 of the language. A
phoneme is the
minimal distinctive linguistic sound.found for all environments.
An example taken from English:
bat:pat is a minimal pair for the phonemes /b/:/p/
bat:bad is a minimal pair for the phonemes /d/ : /t/
In many cases the minimal pair is
orthographically distinguishable, as in the examples above. However, in some cases, like the
voiced and unvoiced occlusives, represented by the letters "th," the phonemic character can be distinguished only by a minimal pair.
thigh:thy (voiced:unvoiced)
either(Amer. pronunciation):ether (voiced:unvoiced)
___________
1 = a speech sound considered as a physical event without regard to its place in the sound system of a language