Where Form 5495 Underlying 2017-2024

Phonemes and allophones are terms we use to make sense of the way sounds work in a language. To test if speakers hear two sounds, N and M, as two distinct sounds, we can look for minimal pairs - words that differ by only one sound. For example, the words "meat" and "neat" are minimal pairs, because switching the M to an N gives us a completely different word. By holding all other variables constant, we can determine if switching the sounds changes the meaning of the word. If it does, then we're looking at two different words. In this example, N and M are contrasted, indicating that they are two distinct phonemes in English. A phoneme can have different pronunciations, or allophones. For example, the sound represented by the letter K can come out with a puff of air in the word "kite," but not in the word "sky." These two sounds are different, but we hear them as variants of the same sound. We call these variants allophones of the phoneme K. The same goes for the sounds represented by the letters M and N in the word "input." Some people pronounce it as "input," while others pronounce it as "input." Both pronunciations are considered allophones of the phoneme N. The sounds N and M show up in different environments. After the letter S, we only hear "sky," "scans," and "skirt," but at the beginning of a word, we hear "can" and "keep." These allophones show up in complementary distribution - where we find one, we won't find the other, and vice versa. Other allophones of a phoneme can show up in the same environment. For example, in the word "input," it can be pronounced as "input" or "input." These two allophones of the phoneme N are in...