MINIMAL PAIRS OF VOWEL

Compiled to complete the assignment of English Phonology

Compiled by : Ahmad Rizki Amrizal (0304183231)

ENGLISH EDUCATION
DEPARTMENT OF TARBIYAH SCIENCE AND TEACHER
TRAINING
STATE ISLAMIC UNIVERSITY OF NORTH SUMATERA
MEDAN
2020
 PREFACE
Thanks to Almighty God who has given his mercy and bless to the
writer for finishing the English Phonology paper assignment. The writer
also wish to express his deep and science gratitude for those who have
guided in compliting this paper. Maybe while we on the process making
the paper, some information couldnot completely gathered. But I hope this
paper can help the readers to expand their knowledge about English
Phonology and the Minimal Pairs of Vowel especially.

Hopefully we as students in “Islamic State University of North

Sumatera” can work more professional by using English as the second
language whatever we done. Thankyou.

Medan, 20 April 2020

Author

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 TABLE OF CONTENTS

PREFACE.............................................................................................i

TABLE OF CONTENTS......................................................................ii

CHAPTER I : INTRODUCTION..........................................................1

1.1 Background of Study...................................................................1

1.2 Problem of Study..........................................................................1
1.3 Purpose of Study..........................................................................2

CHAPTER II : DISCUSSION...............................................................3

2.1 Definition of Minamal Pairs of Vowel.........................................3

2.2 The Anatomy of Vowel.................................................................5
2.2.1. The Front-Back Dimension...............................................6
2.2.2. The High-Low Dimension.................................................7
2.2.3. Lip Position........................................................................7
2.2.4. Length ................................................................................7
2.2.5. Monopthongs and Dipthongs..........................................8
2.3 The Benefits of Study Vowel.......................................................9

CHAPTER III : CLOSING .................................................................11

3.1 Conclusion..................................................................................11
3.2 Suggestion..................................................................................11

REFERENCES.................................................................................12

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 CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background of Study

English is a foreign language in Indonesia. It has an important role

in any sphere of activities especially in the term of education. Because of
that, English language becomes the first foreign language that should be
taught to students in every level of education in Indonesia. The
government and private institution are struggling to enhance teaching and
learning process of English in Indonesia.

The common problem faced by the foreign language learners when

they pronounce English word was caused by the influence of the students‟
mother tongue of their first language. The problems appeared when they
tried transferring their first language into their target language (English).
The other problems faced by students were the difficulties in pronouncing
sounds like /i:/ as in „seat‟ (they are often pronounce it as in „sit‟, which
sounds /ɪ / not /i:/). They also pronounce the English words the same as
they are written, for example word „keep‟ as /kep/, „thanks‟ as /tank/,etc.
Then, misspelling was also happened when they pronounce the word that
had more than one consonant at the end of the word, for example
„played‟, „helped‟, „kept‟,„backed‟, „offices‟, „shops‟, „questions‟,
„north‟,etc., those are pronounced as /play/, /help/, /kep/, /bak/, /ofis/,
/sop/, /kuestion/, /nor/, etc. Those showed that the students also
pronounce the English word as it is written totally in Indonesian. It was
influenced by their first pronunciation of the word as it is spelled.

1.2 Problem of Study

1. What is minimal pairs of vowel?
2. How is the anatomy of vowel?
3. What are the benefits of study minimal pairs of vowel?

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1.3 Purpose of Study
1. To know the definition of minimal pairs of vowel.
2. To know the anatomy of vowel.
3. To know the benefits of study minimal pairs of vowel.

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 CHAPTER II

DISCUSSION

2.1 Definition of Minimal Pairs of Vowel

Minimal pairs are two words that have the same pronunciation
except for one sound. Minimal pairs are two words whose pronunciation is
different by only one sound – like reach and rich, or man and main.
Practicing minimal pairs is helpful when similar sounds are too similar for a
non-native English speaker to pronounce correctly. In this lesson, you’re
going to practice your pronunciation of similar English words with minimal
pairs exercises.

Many ways could be done by the language learner in improving

their English pronunciation. One of the ways or techniques recommended
by some linguists is minimal pair drills. Michael Ashby and John Maidment
argued, “In order to prove conclusively that a phonetic distinction is
contrastive in a particular language it is necessary to find a pair of words in
the language that differ in only one segment.” 1 It means minimal pair is
one of the appropriate techniques to prove that the single phonetic sound
in a pair of words is contrasted. In addition, according to Avery and Erlich,
“minimal pair refers to pairs of words which have different meanings and
which differ in pronunciation on the basis of one sound only.” 2

In this case, minimal pair is viewed as a technique to distinguish

English sound in the words that have quite similar sound but indeed have
been different meaning. Furthermore, Bloomfield in Marianne Celce-
Muria,et.al defined, “minimal pair drill – drills that use words that differ by a
1
Michael Ashby and John Maidment, Introducing Phonetic Science, (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2005) p.136.
2
Peter Avery and Susan Ehrlich, Teaching American English Pronunciation, (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2009), Second Edition, p.207.

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single sound in the same position. This technique based on the concept of
the phoneme as a minimally distinctive sound, is used for both listening
practice and guided oral production. 3 Bloomfield added that minimal pair is
appropriately used for listening practice and oral production. Basically,
those arguments have the same aim which minimal pair is a technique
that is used in teaching pronunciation to distinct the quite similar sound
that had the same position in a word or sentence. Students sometimes do
not understand the difference of its sound and the effect of its differences.
Even though this seems small problem, but it can affect the
understanding, efficiency, and fluency in communication. So, this practice
is regarded useful for both the speaker and the hearer. There are two
kinds of sample in teaching materials of minimal pair, it demonstrates in
word drills and sentence drills.4

It can be seen that the sound differences in the words seem

obvious, but it may seem strange and difficult to a foreign learner who
does not speak the target language. Minimal pair can be demonstrated in
two drills: word drills and sentence drill. In the word drills, teacher drills the
students by contrasting two different words but the pronunciation seems
similar, but actually sound of the words is different in one sound. Whilst, in
the sentence drills, there are two kinds of the materials that can be
presented in teaching learning activity, they are syntagmatic drills and
paradigmatic drills. Syntagmatic drills contrast two words within a
sentence, while paradigmatic drills contrast two words across who
sentences.47 Minimal-pair drills helps the students to recognize the
English sounds and contrast both the English sounds in their native
language and their target language, thus the sounds are able to be
produced flexibility and smoothly. The advantages of minimal pair for
students is the students perceive English pronunciation accurately and

3
Marianne Celce- Murcia, et. al. Teaching Pronunciation : a Reference for Teachers of
English to Speakers of Other Language, (Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2009), p.3.
4
Ibid

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fluently. In sum up, minimal pair drill is one of the ways in teaching
pronunciation by drilling the words that have the quite similar sounds in
pair. This drill is to train the students‟ tongue being smoothly and introduce
them to recognize the difference sound between the students‟ native
language and their target language. Hopefully, they are familiar with
English sound and practice its sounds correctly.

2.2 The anatomy of a vowel

In classifying vowels, we need not indicate airstream mechanism,

since it will always be pulmonic egressive, and we can generally assume
thatvowels are all voiced and oral. To describe vowels adequately and
accurately, we then need to consider three different parameters, all of
which can be seen as modi-fications of the place or manner of articulation

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continua for consonants:as we shall see, these are height, frontness and
rounding5. Additionally, vowels may be long or short (long ones are
marked with a following below), and monophthongs or diphthongs. The
examples in the sections below will be from Standard Southern British
English (sometimes called RP, or Received Pronunciation), and General
American, the most widely spoken variety of English in the United States,
excluding the southern states, and the eastern seaboard, especially
Boston, New England and New York City. SSBE and GA are generally
thought of by English and American speakers respectively as not having
any strong regional mark-ing, and both are varieties highly likely to be
heard in broadcasting, for instance in reading the television or radio news.

2.2.1 The Front–Back Dimension

Front vowels are produced with the front of the tongue raised
towards the hard palate (although not raised enough, remember, to
obstruct the airflow and cause local friction; vowels are
approximants)6. These could, in principle, equally be described as
palatal, and this might be helpful in making phonological rules
transparent, the rule palatalising velar /k/ before front vowels in
kitchen, key, give, geese looked rather perplexing as the relation-
ship between palatal and front was not obvious. However, calling
front vowels palatal would be misleading, since frontness covers a
larger area than [palatal], as we shall see below; and it contrasts
with completely different alternatives, namely central and back,
rather than labial, alveo-lar, dental, velar and so on.

5
April McMahon, An Introduction to English Phonology ,(Edinburgh, Edinburgh
University Press, 2002), p. 69.
6
April McMahon, An Introduction to English Phonology ,(Edinburgh, Edinburgh
University Press, 2002), p. 69.

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2.2.2 The High–Low Dimension

High vowels have the tongue raised most towards the roof of
the mouth; if the raising was significantly greater, then friction would
be produced, making a fricative consonant, not a vowel.

Low vowels are those where the tongue is not raised at all,
but rather lowered from its resting position: when you produce a low
vowel, you will be able to feel your mouth opening and your jaw
dropping, even if it is not very easy to figure out quite what your
tongue is doing.

Again, there is a further class intermediate between high and

low, namely the mid vowels. These can if necessary be further
subclassified as high mid (like the face and goat vowels) or low mid
(like the dress, thought, strut vowels) depending on whether they
are nearer the high end of the scale, or nearer the low end.

2.2.3. Lip Position

In the high back [u:] vowel of goose, there is tongue raising

in the region of the soft palate; but in addition, the lips are rounded.
Vowels in any of the previous categories may be either rounded,
where the lips are protruded forwards, or unrounded, where the lips
may be either in a neutral position, or sometimes slightly spread (as
for a high front vowel, like [i:] fleece). However, it is overwhelmingly
more common cross-linguistically for back vowels to be rounded
than for front ones, and for high vowels to be rounded than low
ones; this is borne out in English.

2.2.4. Length

Using these three dimensions of frontness, height and

rounding, we can now define the vowel in fleece as high, front and
unrounded; that in goose as high, back and rounded; and the

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unstressed vowel of about, schwa, as mid, central and unrounded.
However, our elementary descriptions would class the kit vowel as
high, front and unrounded, and the foot vowel as high, back and
rounded; these labels make them indistinguishable from the clearly
different vowels of fleece and goose respectively. SSBE and GA
speakers very readily perceive the fleece and kit vowels, and the
goose and foot vowels, as different; and there are plenty of minimal
pairs to support a phoneme distinction, as in peat – pit, leap – lip,
Luke – look, fool – full. This distinction is usually made in terms of
vowel length: in SSBE and GA.

This is not to say, however, that the only difference between

[I:] and [I], or [u:] and [υ], is one of length: the quantity difference
goes along with a difference in quality. [I:] is higher and fronter than
[I]; [u:] is higher and backer than [υ]; and similarly, [ɑ:] in palm is
lower and backer than the corresponding short [a] in trap. In
general, long vowels in English are more peripheral, or articulated
in a more extreme and definite way, than their short counterparts.
Some phonologists use a feature [±tense] rather than length to
express this difference, with the long, more periph-eral vowels
being [+tense], and the short, more centralised ones being [–
tense], or lax.

2.2.5. Monophthongs and Diphthongs

Most of the vowels we have considered so far have been

monophthongs, in which the quality of the vowel stays fairly
consistent from the begin-ning of its production to the end.
However, there are also several diphthongs in English. Diphthongs
change in quality during their production, and are typically
transcribed with one starting point, and a quite different end point;
as might be expected from this description, diphthongs are typically
long vowels. In English, all diphthongs have the first element as

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 longer and more prominent than the second, and are known as
falling diphthongs. Three diphthongs are found very generally in
accents of English.

Finally, SSBE has a third set of diphthongs, which are known

as the centring diphthongs as they all have the mid central vowel
schwa as the second element. These centring diphthongs
developed historically before /r/, which was then lost following
vowels in the ancestor of SSBE; they consequently appear mainly
where there is an <r> in the spelling, although they have now been
generalised to some other words, like idea. GA speakers have a
diphthong in idea, but still pronounce the historical [ɹ] in near,
square, force, cure and therefore lack centring diphthongs in these
words

2.3 The Benefits of Study Vowel

Pronunciation is one of the language components in English which

is needed to be learned to support the development of language skills
mastery of the students. It has important roles in English teaching. If the
students have good pronunciation, they can speak and understand what
the interlocutor is saying. In other words, pronunciation is needed in
developing language skill, particularly for speaking. Therefore, it is very
important for the students to learn pronunciation.

The errors in pronouncing English word pronunciation that are

made by students apparently could give bad effect to the improvement of
students’ communicative competence. Those problems are also existed in
the Indonesia students’ pronunciation when they speak English. In
addition, Harmer assumed that “some students have great difficulty
hearing pronunciation features which I want them to reproduce.
Frequently, speakers of different first language have problems with

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different sound that the students‟ first language does not have the same
sounds.7 In this case, the students‟ problem is lack of students‟ knowledge
for English sound, so they might face difficulties when they find the
different sound between their target language and their first language.
They seem confused to imagine what kind of sound they heard. This
problem may influence the students‟ listening and speaking
comprehension because when they are asked to reproduced that English
new sound or word they may be quite or cannot respond the spoken.
Moreover, different sounds between English language and the student‟s
native language exist in some moments. This problem is also supported
Avery and Herlich, which the mostly problem in pronunciation is because
of the uncommon sounds for the students‟ first language that exists in
English.8 For example, learners from most language backgrounds have
difficulty with the English of sounds.

CHAPTER III

Jeremy Harmer, The Practice of English Language Teaching, (New York:

7

Longman, 2007), 4th ed., p. 249- 250.

8
Peter Avery and Susan Ehrlich, Teaching American English Pronunciation,
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), Second Edition, p. 95.

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 CLOSING

3.1 Conclusion

Minimal pairs are two words that have the same pronunciation
except for one sound. Many ways could be done by the language learner
in improving their English pronunciation. One of the ways or techniques
recommended by some linguists is minimal pair drills. In this case, minimal
pair is viewed as a technique to distinguish English sound in the words
that have quite similar sound but indeed have been different meaning. It
can be seen that the sound differences in the words seem obvious, but it
may seem strange and difficult to a foreign learner who does not speak
the target language. Minimal pair can be demonstrated in two drills: word
drills and sentence drill. Those problems are also existed in the Indonesia
students’ pronunciation when they speak English.

3.2 Suggestion

Thus the paper that I can convey hopefully can benefit us all. The
author believes that in writing this paper there are still many mistakes and
shortcomings and therefore constructive criticism and suggestions are
needed to improve the next paper.

REFERENCES

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April McMahon, An Introduction to English Phonology ,(Edinburgh,
Edinburgh University Press, 2002).
Ashby, Michael and Maidment, John. (2005). Introducing Phonetic
Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Avery, Peter and Ehrlich, Susan. (2009). Teaching American English
Pronunciation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Fatmawati, Tri, et. al. (2014). e-Journal of English Language Teaching
Society (ELTS).
Harmer, Jeremi. (2007). The Practice of English Language Teaching. New
York: Longman.
Murcia, M.C, et. al. (2009). Teaching Pronunciation : a Reference for
Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Language. Cambridge :
Cambridge University Press.
Nuraeni, Eni. (2005). The Effectiveness Of Minimal Pairs Towards
Students’ English Pronunciation. Jakarta: Universitas Indonesia.
Nur, Isna. (2018). The Use Of Minimal Pair Technique In Teaching
Pronunciation At The Second Year Students Of Sman 4
Bantimurung. UIN Alauddin.

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