Phoneme (음소)

Phoneme (음소)

A phoneme /ˈfoʊniːm/ is a basic unit of a language's phonology, which is combined with other phonemes to form meaningful units, morphemes. The phoneme can be described as "The smallest contrastive linguistic unit which may bring about a change of meaning". In this way the difference in meaning between the English words kill and kiss is a result of the exchange of the phoneme /l/ for the phoneme /s/. Two words that differ in meaning through a contrast of a single phoneme form a minimal pair.

[출처: en.wikipedia.org]

의미의 변화를 가져올 수 있는 가장 작은 대조 언어학 단위. 

예를 들어, kill과 kiss는 /l/과 /s/의 차이로 두 단어의 의미가 달라지는 경우이다.