CSCD 2209 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Free Variation, Minimal Pair, Complementary Distribution
9 Aug 2018
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The object of this finite game is to decide whether two phones (speech sounds) belong to the same phoneme or to separate phonemes in a given language. As you look through the data for occurrences of the two sounds . First, always look for a minimal pair (a pair of different words that differ in only one sound): To do so, select the topmost environment type not yet checked from the list below: You"ve found 2 interchange- able ways of pronouncing the same word instead. Cite the minimal pair (or pairs) that you found as your evidence. Make a list of the environments of that type in which each of the two sounds occur, and compare those two sets of environments for whether they overlap in membership or are complementary (mutually exclusive). The sounds happen to be interchangeable in this word or words, but if they also occur in minimal or near- minimal pairs, they must still belong to.
