Minimal categories of speech sounds that serve to keep utterances apart are called
A) morphemes.
B) minimal pairs.
C) words.
D) phonemes.

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

Minimal categories of speech sounds that serve to keep utterances apart are phonemes. Phonemes are the smallest unit of sound in a language that can distinguish one word from another. Minimal pairs are pairs of words that differ by only one phoneme, and they are used to show the contrastive function of phonemes in a language. Morphemes are the smallest unit of meaning in a language, and words are made up of one or more morphemes. Therefore, the best choice for the minimal categories of speech sounds is phonemes.

Minimal Categories of Speech Sounds That Serve to Keep Utterances