A minimal pair differs in:

A minimal pair differs in One phonological segment. In phonology, a minimal pair consists of two words that are identical in every way except for one sound (phoneme), occurring in the same position, and that difference in sound is sufficient to distinguish their meanings. For example, “cat” and “bat” constitute a minimal pair because they differ only in their initial phoneme (/k/ vs. /b/) and have distinct meanings. This concept is crucial for identifying the phonemes of a language, as it demonstrates that a single sound change can alter the meaning of a word.

• Option A, “Morpheme count,” is incorrect. While minimal pairs often consist of words with a single morpheme, the defining characteristic is the difference in sound, not the number of meaningful units. Words can have different morpheme counts (e.g., “cat” vs. “cats”) but not necessarily form a minimal pair based on a single phonological segment difference that changes the core lexical meaning.
• Option B, “Syllables,” is incorrect. Minimal pairs must have the same number of syllables. If words differed in their syllable count, they would likely differ in more than one phonological segment or even structural elements, thus failing the