Download the app
educalingo
Search

Meaning of "minimal pair" in the English dictionary

Dictionary
DICTIONARY
section

PRONUNCIATION OF MINIMAL PAIR

minimal pair play
facebooktwitterpinterestwhatsapp

GRAMMATICAL CATEGORY OF MINIMAL PAIR

noun
adjective
verb
adverb
pronoun
preposition
conjunction
determiner
exclamation
Minimal pair is a noun.
A noun is a type of word the meaning of which determines reality. Nouns provide the names for all things: people, objects, sensations, feelings, etc.

WHAT DOES MINIMAL PAIR MEAN IN ENGLISH?

Minimal pair

In phonology, minimal pairs are pairs of words or phrases in a particular language, which differ in only one phonological element, such as a phoneme, toneme or chroneme and have distinct meanings. They are used to demonstrate that two phones constitute 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 setting up writing systems for these languages. The major work of Kenneth Pike on the subject has the title Phonemics: a technique for reducing languages to writing. The minimal pair was an essential tool in the discovery process, arrived at by substitution or commutation tests. Modern phonology is much less interested in such issues, and the minimal pair is consequently considered to be of little theoretical importance. As an example for English vowels, the pair "let" + "lit" can be used to demonstrate that the phones and do in fact represent distinct phonemes /ɛ/ and /ɪ/. An example for English consonants is the minimal pair of "pat" + "bat".

Definition of minimal pair in the English dictionary

The definition of minimal pair in the dictionary is a pair of speech elements in a given language differing in only one respect and thus serving to identify minimum units such as phonemes, morphemes, etc. For example, tin and din constitute a minimal pair in English.

WORDS THAT BEGIN LIKE MINIMAL PAIR

minim
minim rest
minima
minimal
minimal art
minimal artist
minimal free form
minimal invasive
minimalism
minimalist
minimalistic
minimally
minimally invasive
minimarket
minimart
minimax
minimill
minimisation
minimise
minimiser

WORDS THAT END LIKE MINIMAL PAIR

appair
au pair
breeding pair
Cooper pair
despair
disrepair
impair
lone pair
pair
repair
unrepair

Synonyms and antonyms of minimal pair in the English dictionary of synonyms

SYNONYMS

Translation of «minimal pair» into 25 languages

TRANSLATOR
online translator

TRANSLATION OF MINIMAL PAIR

Find out the translation of minimal pair to 25 languages with our English multilingual translator.
The translations of minimal pair from English to other languages presented in this section have been obtained through automatic statistical translation; where the essential translation unit is the word «minimal pair» in English.

Translator English - Chinese

最小的一对
1,325 millions of speakers

Translator English - Spanish

par mínimo
570 millions of speakers

English

minimal pair
510 millions of speakers

Translator English - Hindi

न्यूनतम जोड़ी
380 millions of speakers
ar

Translator English - Arabic

الحد الأدنى من زوج
280 millions of speakers

Translator English - Russian

минимальная пара
278 millions of speakers

Translator English - Portuguese

par mínimo
270 millions of speakers

Translator English - Bengali

সংক্ষিপ্ত জোড়া
260 millions of speakers

Translator English - French

minimale paire
220 millions of speakers

Translator English - Malay

Pasangan minimum
190 millions of speakers

Translator English - German

Minimalpaar
180 millions of speakers

Translator English - Japanese

最小対
130 millions of speakers

Translator English - Korean

최소한의 쌍
85 millions of speakers

Translator English - Javanese

Minimal pasangan
85 millions of speakers
vi

Translator English - Vietnamese

cặp tối thiểu
80 millions of speakers

Translator English - Tamil

குறைந்த ஜோடி
75 millions of speakers

Translator English - Marathi

किमान जोड
75 millions of speakers

Translator English - Turkish

Minimal çift
70 millions of speakers

Translator English - Italian

coppia minima
65 millions of speakers

Translator English - Polish

minimalne para
50 millions of speakers

Translator English - Ukrainian

мінімальна пара
40 millions of speakers

Translator English - Romanian

pereche minim
30 millions of speakers
el

Translator English - Greek

ελάχιστη ζευγάρι
15 millions of speakers
af

Translator English - Afrikaans

minimale paar
14 millions of speakers
sv

Translator English - Swedish

minimal par
10 millions of speakers
no

Translator English - Norwegian

minimal pair
5 millions of speakers

Trends of use of minimal pair

TRENDS

TENDENCIES OF USE OF THE TERM «MINIMAL PAIR»

The term «minimal pair» is used very little and occupies the 151.633 position in our list of most widely used terms in the English dictionary.
0
100%
FREQUENCY
Rarely used
29
/100
The map shown above gives the frequency of use of the term «minimal pair» in the different countries.
Principal search tendencies and common uses of minimal pair
List of principal searches undertaken by users to access our English online dictionary and most widely used expressions with the word «minimal pair».

FREQUENCY OF USE OF THE TERM «MINIMAL PAIR» OVER TIME

The graph expresses the annual evolution of the frequency of use of the word «minimal pair» during the past 500 years. Its implementation is based on analysing how often the term «minimal pair» appears in digitalised printed sources in English between the year 1500 and the present day.

Examples of use in the English literature, quotes and news about minimal pair

EXAMPLES

10 ENGLISH BOOKS RELATING TO «MINIMAL PAIR»

Discover the use of minimal pair in the following bibliographical selection. Books relating to minimal pair and brief extracts from same to provide context of its use in English literature.
1
Speech Disorders: Resource Guide for Preschool Children
Minimal Pair Therapy WHY? To eliminate homonymy HOW? Utilizing minimal contrastive pairs in phonologic intervention In the 1970s, assessment and intervention practices shifted from a sound -by-sound approach to a pattern approach.
A. Lynn Williams, 2003
2
The MIT Encyclopedia of Communication Disorders
and thus on the pragmatic limitations of unintelligible speech; (2) a focus on the contrastive nature of phonemes and the use of minimal pair contrast training to facilitate reorganization of the system; (3) the use of phonological analysis and ...
Raymond D. Kent, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2004
3
Teaching Pronunciation: A Reference for Teachers of English ...
1 2 Minimal pair contrasts of final consonants (based on Bowen 1972) Bowen ( 1972) devised an enjoyable exercise to practice these final consonant distinctions. For this activity, first make pairs of index cards with drawings representing ...
Marianne Celce-Murcia, Donna M. Brinton, Janet M. Goodwin, 1996
4
STACS 90: 7th Annual Symposium on Theoretical Aspects of ...
Ambos-Spies [1] addressed the question of which degrees can be half of a minimal pair and proved that any nonpolynomial recursive set is such. That is, given a recursive set Ag P, there exists a recursive B such that A and B form a minimal ...
Christian Choffrut, Thomas Lengauer, 1990
5
Computation Theory and Logic
Minimal Pairs for Polynomial Time Reducibilities Klaus Ambos-Spies Fachbereich Informatik Universitat Dortmund Abstract. Two recursive sets A and B form a minimal pair with respect to some polynomial time reducibility notion <pr if neither A ...
Egon Börger, 1987
6
Logical Methods: In Honor of Anil Nerode's Sixtieth Birthday
... [LL2] to prove some theorems about minimal pairs. In Section 1-3, we show how to use these methods to prove the Minimal Pair Theorem of Lachlan [L] and Yates [Y]: Theorem 3.4 (Minimal Pair). There exist nonrecursive r.e. degrees a and ...
Anil Nerode, John N. Crossley, 1993
7
Computability and Randomness
Given a highness property H, it is interesting to determine whether there is a minimal pair of sets A, B satisfying H: as we remarked already at the beginning of Section 1.5, this would show that H is not too close to being Turing above ∅. In fact ...
André Nies, 2009
8
The Sound Structure of English: An Introduction
A linguist would call such a pair a minimal pair, and the construction of minimal pairs — the sort of thing we've been doing for the past few pages — is an important discovery procedure in establishing the phonology of a language. A useful ...
Chris McCully, 2009
9
Computers and English Language Learning
The particular problem here was that a number of similar pairs showed up in the minimal pair list for the HAD/HEAD distinction, such as barman, bogeyman and businessman. Comparing the electronic list with the paper edition of the dictionary ...
John Higgins, 1995
10
How Languages Work: An Introduction to Language and Linguistics
SIDEBAR 3.2 Determine whether each of the following pairs of words constitutes a minimal pair: sled vs. slayed face vs. case 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. attack vs. aback You can check your answers in Sidebar 3.3. hot vs. shot grout vs. clout remain ...
Carol Genetti, 2014

6 NEWS ITEMS WHICH INCLUDE THE TERM «MINIMAL PAIR»

Find out what the national and international press are talking about and how the term minimal pair is used in the context of the following news items.
1
5 Neutral Men's Coats For Now
Just make sure you pick a decent, minimal pair – Common Projects and adidas produce some superb examples – and you won't go wrong. «FashionBeans, Feb 15»
2
First run: Hoka One One Huaka running shoes review: More …
... this new amount of cushioning jarred with our usual running experience - but to be fair we normally run in a very minimal pair of Nike Free 5.0 ... «Pocket-lint.com, Jan 15»
3
6 Instant Style Upgrades
While brands at both ends of the price scale now offer an ever-growing selection of fits, a straight- or slim-leg, minimal pair of dark solid wash ... «FashionBeans, Jan 15»
4
How to Wear a T-Shirt With Your Suit
Pairing a sharply tailored suit with a vintage band tee and a minimal pair of sneakers shows you haven't lost your rock-and-roll edge and puts you firmly in line ... «GQ Magazine, Mar 14»
5
Philosophy and the Poetic Imagination
Here then we have a minimal pair: a single presentation understood in two ways. Our philosophical claim is that this difference is crucial for any ... «New York Times, Dec 12»
6
The Lake House
The DVD on the other hand combines decent specs and a minimal pair of extras to make a disc that few will climb over fences to obtain. «DVD Talk, Sep 06»

REFERENCE
« EDUCALINGO. Minimal pair [online]. Available <https://educalingo.com/en/dic-en/minimal-pair>. May 2024 ».
Download the educalingo app
en
English dictionary
Discover all that is hidden in the words on
index
a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z