Question

phonemes are the ______ distinctive sound made in language. smallest only first

Explanation:

In linguistics, a phoneme is defined as the smallest unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language. The word "only" would imply there's a single distinctive sound, which is incorrect as languages have multiple phonemes. "First" is also incorrect as phonemes aren't defined by their order in a sequence but by their function as the smallest distinct sound units. So the correct term to fill in the blank is "smallest".

Answer:

smallest