• Minimal Pairs: Two words that show distinctive features distinguishing English sounds that aren’t necessarily distinctive in other languages. Minimal pairs demonstrate the phonemes of a language.

• Phonological Processes: The processes of combining sounds differ in different languages. Students can have difficulties communicating if they do not subject a sound to a proper process or if they subject them to a process used in their native language. (http://www.personal.psu.edu/mam1034/csd300.phonologicalprocesses.html)

• Phonotactic Constraints: Rules governing syllable structures differ from language to language. In teaching, it is necessary to watch to see if students use processes that change structure away from English syllabic structure. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonotactics)

Phones, Phonemes, and Allophones

Minimal pairs are pairs of words that share all except one sound in order, and the one difference in sound creates a difference in meaning. It doesn't matter which sound in the words is different, but there must be only one difference, the sounds must be in the same order in the words, and the difference must affect the meaning.

The words illustrated above, ship and sheep, represent a minimal pair. Both words have three sounds, which we can see if we write the words in the IPA [ʃɪp] and [ʃip]. The first sound in each word is the same sound, and the last sound in each word is the same. The vowel sound in the middle, though, is different. The first word has a high front tense unround vowel, and the second word has a high front lax unround vowel. This difference in sound, or pronunciation, changes the meaning of the word.

Cab and cap are also a minimal pair. Again, each word consists of three sounds. The first sound in each word is the same, and so is the second sound. The third sound is different, however. This means that the two words share the same sounds in the same order except one, and that difference in sound changes the meaning of the words. The first word refers to a type of car, and the second refers to a type of hat.

Here are some other examples:

Sink-think

Bit-beet

She-see

Sinner-singer

Pear-bear

Activity: Minimal Pairs

Now try drawing up additional lists of minimal pairs for some common problem areas for ELLs:

• /b/ and /p/ (Difficult for speakers of Arabic)
  Click here for a short list of /b/ and /p/ minimal pairs
• /l/ and /ɹ / (Difficult for speakers of Korean)
  Click here for a short list of /l/ and /ɹ / minimal pairs
• /i/ and /ɪ/ (Difficult for speakers of Spanish)
  Click here for a short list of /i/ and /ɪ/ minimal pairs
• /e/ and /ε/ (Difficult for speakers of Japanese)
  Click here for a short list of /e/ and /ɛ/ minimal pairs

We can see the importance of these meaning differences by putting some examples into sentences:

The man in the boat is sinking.
The man in the boat is thinking.

Willie put a bit in the horse’s mouth.
Willie put a beet in the horse’s mouth.

Although the sounds (or pronunciations) are very close and easily confused by some ESL students, the meanings of the paired sentences are very different. The difference in the first pair of sentences will either induce passers by to call 9-1-1 or cause them to ignore the man as entirely unentertaining. The difference in the second pair of sentences tells us whether Willie is planning to ride the horse or is feeding the horse.

Minimal pairs demonstrate an essential difference between two sounds in a language, thereby demonstrating that the difference is fundamental to the language.

This means that the two sounds involved must be thought of as unique and different in the minds of the native speakers of the language.

Sounds that are unique and distinct in the minds of native speakers are called the phonemes of the language.

When lists of minimal pairs can be drawn up in a language, as we have just done, the list proves that the sounds are phonemes, not just a less-than-perfect enunciation of sounds or alterations of sounds for easier production.

A phone is a sound.
A phonetic transcription is the writing of the exact sounds a person says and can include imperfect enunciation and changes for easier production.

A phoneme is an ideal sound, or the idea of a sound, or a unique fundamental sound.
A phonemic transcription is the writing of the idea of pronunciation that a person has in his head, not the actual sounds he makes. It is what a person thinks he is saying, even though the actual phonetic production may differ.

Activity: Name That Actor

Same or Different Actor?

Actor 1	Actor 2
		Same	Different
		Same	Different
		Same	Different
		Same	Different
		Same	Different
		Same	Different
		Same	Different

What you should have experienced in the activity above was to realize what you were using to make the judgments about whether the two individuals were the same or not. You learned what the essential features were to identify each person and what the nonessential features were. For one thing, you probably considered whether you knew the person or not. You might have recognized the actor Brad Pitt right away in several of the pictures. Second, you probably considered other features, such as build and weight and jaw line. Finally, you considered things such as hair color, hair cut, and aspects of the environment.

So we have a person named Brad Pitt and another person named Neal. These two different people share similar features (male, blonde, goatee at times), but they are not the same person. What you just did with these actors is the same thing that native speakers of a language do when identifying the phonemes of the language. For example, in English we have a sound named voiceless alveolar stop /t/ and another sound named voiced alveolar stop /d/. These two different sounds share similar features (alveolar, stop), but they are not the same sound. In English, these two sounds are considered unique and distinct from each other. That is, they are two phonemes of English. In the teaching of reading to young children, the ability to recognize the distinctions between the essential sounds of the language is referred to as phonemic awareness.

We also found that the person called Brad Pitt was often found in environments with lots of different kinds of backgrounds and props, and the person called Neal was usually found in one or two backgrounds with few props. The many backgrounds can make us wonder if we are really looking at Brad Pitt, but sparse backgrounds and few props make us feel sure when we aren't looking at him and are looking at Neal instead. Likewise, the voiceless alveolar stop is often found in a variety of backgrounds and surrounded by various other sounds that affect it and make it harder to identify. The voiced alveolar stop, however, is rarely found in a variety of environments, and when it is, it is still easy to recognize as not being a voiceless alveolar stop.

In short, the phonemes of a language are the essential sounds in the language, and native speakers can recognize them even when they are modified (like a well-known actor is recognized even when he is dressed up and has props for different parts in different movies). Non-native speakers of a language have trouble recognizing an unfamiliar phoneme, especially when it is surrounded by and affected by other sounds, just as people watching an unknown actor have trouble recognizing the actor from movie to movie when he is made up and dressed up as different characters.

When talking about movies, we say that an actor is dressed up or in costume to play a role. When talking about sounds in a language, linguists say that a phoneme is modified or altered to become an allophone.

Phonemes and Allophones

A phoneme is one of the essential, unique, and distinctive sounds in a language. Lists of minimal pairs in a language can act as a scientific proof whether a sound is essential to that language or not. That is, if lists of words that differ only in one sound can be drawn up, then the sound in question is distinct and is used meaningfully in that language. If such lists can't be drawn up, then the sound isn't distinctive and isn't used meaningfully in that language.

What do we call sounds that are used but aren't meaningful in a language? Generally they are allophones, or variations of the essential sound that are produced because of the other sounds around the actual phoneme. To return to our movie star metaphor, a phoneme is the actor himself, but an allophone is the actor in costume playing a certain role in a certain film.

The diagram below shows the relationship between phonemes and allophones. Sometimes a phoneme shows up in a word just as itself without any modification at all (like an actor playing himself, such as Brad Pitt hosting Saturday Night Live). Sometimes a phoneme is affected by or influenced by the other sounds around it, and it is modified somewhat (like an actor in make-up, such as Brad Pitt playing Rusty Ryan in Ocean's Eleven). Sometimes a phoneme is very affected by the other sounds of the word, and it is altered quite a lot (like an actor with a mask, not just make-up, such as Brad Pitt in Benjamin Button)

One difficulty for learners of languages is that different languages have different phonemes and each phoneme has different acceptable variations.

This is the situation for speakers of several Asian languages.

• Create word lists showing contrasting phonemes in words, putting the phonemes at word initial, medial, and final positions.
  
  
• Choose phoneme contrasts that are particularly difficult for actual students.
  
  
• Have students listen and tell which word they hear by pointing to the letter that corresponds to the phoneme, by pointing at pictures that show the thing (like cap and cab), etc.
  
  
• Have students say the words that you direct them to say by pointing.
  
  
• Have students say the words and you point to the sound that they have actually produced.