The ending consonant sounds /s/, /z/, and /ɪz/ found in the words 'cats', 'dogs', and 'boxes' are examples of which linguistic concept?

Explanation

The final consonant sounds /s/, /z/, and /ɪz/ in 'cats', 'dogs', and 'boxes' represent different forms of the same morpheme, making them allomorphs. Allophones refer to phoneme variants, while minimal pairs are pairs of words differing by a single sound.