Final answer:
A phoneme is the correct term for a speech sound that combines with others to make words in a language; English has 44 such sounds. Phonemes build morphemes, and we use semantics and syntax to create meaningful language. The correct option is B.
Step-by-step explanation:
A phoneme is a speech sound that combines with others in a language system to make words; English has 44 phonemes. The answer to the fill-in-the-blank question is B) Phoneme. Phonemes are the basic sound units in a language that distinguish one word from another, for instance, the sounds "p", "b", "t", and "d" in English.
These sounds, such as the "ah" versus "eh", allow us to form morphemes, which are the smallest grammatical units in a language. Morphemes carry meaning and can be a word or a part of a word, like a suffix or prefix. As part of language learning, we use semantics and syntax to form sentences that are coherent and convey specific information.
Semantics deals with meaning derived from morphemes and words, while syntax involves the arrangement of words to create logical and grammatically correct sentences. The correct option is B.