linguistics1-3  Exercise 1: Is Aspiration a Phoneme in English?
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Data: pit [pʰɪt], spit [spɪt], kit [kʰɪt], skit [skɪt], bit [bɪt].

Answer: aspiration is an ALLOPHONIC feature in English, not a phoneme.

Reasoning:

  1. No pair of English words differs only in aspiration. There is no
     word [pɪt] with a different meaning from [pʰɪt]. So [p] and [pʰ] never
     form a minimal pair.

  2. Their distribution is completely predictable (complementary
     distribution):
       [pʰ] [tʰ] [kʰ]  at the start of a stressed syllable (pit, kit)
       [p]  [t]  [k]   after s (spit, skit)

The rule:

  Voiceless plosives (/p/, /t/, /k/) are aspirated at the start of a stressed
  syllable and unaspirated after /s/.

(Note that [b] in "bit" is a separate phoneme: pit/bit is a minimal pair,
and the difference there is voicing, not aspiration.)

How to show that Hindi differs:

  Find a minimal pair in Hindi where aspiration is the ONLY difference.
  For example पल [pəl] "moment" and फल [pʰəl] "fruit". Since swapping [p]
  for [pʰ] changes the meaning, they are two phonemes in Hindi.

The same two sounds, [p] and [pʰ], are therefore one phoneme in English and
two in Hindi. The sounds are physical facts; the phonemes are facts about
each language's system.