[IPA Sounds] Minimal Pair List Vowel 5 /ɑ/ versus null 61 pairs
These pairs exhibit either the loss of a complete opening or closing prominent syllable, eg arbiter/bitter and bizarre/biz , or the loss of an internal vowel where the surrounding consonants are capable of clustering, so that the second word seems to bear little relation to the first word, eg regard/rigged or starring/string . In both cases an unstressed component moves up to acquire stress, so that the contrast is not strictly minimal, though there are a few cases where the deleted /ɑ/ vowel is unstressed and the contrast is more truly a minimal pair, eg arcane/cane , radar/raid and sonar/sewn .
The density is 1.47%. There are 47 semantic contrasts in the list, giving a semantic loading of 77%.
amen men arbiter bitter arbiters bitters arcane cane argon gone argot go aria rear arias rears aria rhea arias rheas armies Ms arsenic snick article tickle articled tickled articles tickles articling tickling Bahrain brain Bahraini brainy barring bring bizarre biz canard canned depart dipped dinar dean dinars deans impasse amps koala cola koalas colas Laos loss locale local locales locals matriarchs matrix PR P PR pea PR pee pulsar pulse Qatar cut RA ray RA re radar raid radar rayed rampart ramped RC C RC sea RC see real rail reals rails rearm ream rearms reams rearms Rheims regard rigged RN Rennes RN wren sirdar surd sirdars surds sitar sit sonar sewn sonar sown sparring spring starring string tarring Tring USSR USS
