A minimal pair is a pair of words which differ in terms of just one contrastive sound. In other words, they would be homophones (words pronounced identically) if it weren't for just one sound. For example, the words ship and sheep are a minimal pair, because the only sound that makes their pronunciation different is the vowel: ship has /ɪ/ while sheep contains /iː/. Here I omit technical terms such as phoneme or allophone or a discussion whether a long vowel can be treated as two vowel sounds rather than one since this is not a post about linguistics.
Ex. I. The words written below contain the short /ɪ/ sound. Find their counterparts containing long /iː/.
a. bin, bit, biz b. did, dim, dip c. fill, fist, fizz d. gin, grid, grin, grit e. hid, hip, hit f. ill, is he (spoken fast)
g. kill, kin, kipper, knit h. lid, lip, list, live (verb) i. mid, mill
Ex. II. The words written below contain the long /iː/ sound. Find their counterparts containing short /ɪ/.
a. kneel, peat, peak, peal/peel, peep b. read, ream, reap, seal, seat, seen, seep c. teal, team, teen, weep, ween, wheat, wheeze
KEY
I. a. bean/been, beat/beet, bees; b. deed, deem, deep; c. feel, feast, fees; d. Jean/Gene, greed, green, greet; e. heed, heap, heat; f. eel, easy; g. keel, keen, keeper, neat; h. lead (verb), leap, least, leave; i. mead, meal
II. a. nil, pit, pick, pill, pip; b. rid, rim, rip, sill, sit, sin, sip; c. till, Tim, tin, whip, win, wit, wiz
No comments:
Post a Comment