Here's the question bank on all the english pedagogy topics.
The smallest meaningful unit of sound in a language is
In the English language, some alphabets are pronounced and spelled differently, which results in the incorrect pronunciation of the words.We all tend to pronounce the words as they are spelled. For this, there should be a clear distinction between letters and sounds.The phonemes are the distinctive sound unit in a spoken language.Phoneme:Phonemes are the smallest meaningful unit of sound by which one can distinguish one word from another. A phoneme does not have any inherent meaning by itself, but when you put phonemes together, they can make words. The word "dog" has three phonemes ("d", "o", "g"). These phonemes are initially meaningless, but when put together they form a meaningful word "dog".It is the sound system that is being represented by slash marks conventionally such as the phonemes of the word "cat" can be represented as /c/, /a/, /t/. So, the phonemes are the smallest unit in the sound system of a language that has meaning when combined together.?Hence, it can be concluded that the smallest meaningful unit of sound in a language is phoneme.HintMorphemes are the smallest meaningful units in the structure of a language. It can't be broken up. Eg- 'un' in the word unable.Syntax is the system of rules or a form of grammar that governs how words can be meaningfully arranged to form phrases and sentences.Semantic is the part of linguistics that deals with the study and analysis of the meaning of words, phrases, and sentences in a language.
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