Chapter 2 Phonology.doc

Chapter 2 Phonology1. What are the three branches of phonetics? How do they contribute to the study of speech sounds?1、 Articulatory phonetics describes the way our speech organs work to produce the speech sounds and how they differ.2、 Auditory phonetics studies the physical properties of speech sounds, it studies the speech sounds from the hearers point of view, and reaches the important conclusion that phonetic identity is only a theoretical ideal.3、 Acoustic phonetics studies the physical properties of speech sounds, the way sounds travel from the speaker to the hear.2. Where are the articulatory apparatus of a human being contained?In the three cavities: pharyngeal cavity, oral cavity, and nasal cavity.3. What is voicing and how is it caused?Vibration of the vocal cords results in a quality of speech sounds called voicing, which is a feature of all vowels and some consonants.4. What is the function of nasal cavity? How does it perform this function?To nasalize the sounds that are produced. It does this by closing the air passage connecting the oral and nasal cavities so that he air stream can only go through the nasal cavity.5. Describe the various parts in the oral cavity which are involved in the production of speech sounds?The various parts of the tongue: the tip, the front, the blade, and the back of the tongue; the uvula; the soft palate; the hard palate, the teeth ridge (alveolar); the upper and lower teeth; the lips. Of all, tongue is the most flexible, and is responsible for more varieties of articulation than any other.6. Explain which examples how broad transcription and narrow transcription differ?Broad transcription one letter symbol for one sound.Narrow transcription a way to transcribe speech sounds. Narrow transcription is the transcription with letter symbols together with the diacritics. Diacritics are added to show the finer differences between sounds.7. How are the English consonants classified?Two ways to classify consonants: by place of articulation and by manner of articulation.For example, p is stop from the classification according to manner of articulation, and from the classification of place of articulation, p is a bilabial sound.8. What criteria are used to classify the English vowels?I. Position of the tongue. ( front vowel, central vowel, back vowel)i.e., a front vowel is a vowel which is produced with the front part of the tongue that is held highest.II. Openness of the mouth. (close vowels, semi-close vowels) III. Length of the sound. (long vowel I: u:, short vowel IIV. Shape of the lips (rounded vowels and unrounded vowels) a: are rounded vowels. V. Laxity of the glottis.9. Give the phonetic symbol for each of the following sound description:1) Voiced palatal affricate: d 2) Voiceless labiodental fricative: f3) Voiced alveolar stop: d4) Front, close, short: i5) Back, semi-open, long: 6) Voiceless, bilabial stop: pGive the phonetic features of each of the following sounds:1) d: voiced, alveolar, stop2) l : alveolar, liquid, lateral3) t : voiceless, palatal, affricate4) w: glide, labial5) u : back, close, short6) : front, open10. How do phonetics and phonology differ in their focus of study? Who do you think will be more interested in the difference between, say, l and l , p and p , a phonetician or phonetician or a phonologist? Why?Phonetics: study of the phonic medium of language, it is the description of all speech sounds in the worlds language and their fine differences.Phonology: description of sound systems of particular languages and how sounds function to distinguish meaning and how these sounds are used to convey meaning in linguistic communication.For example the t sounds in the two English words stop an top are pronounced differently. The first one is what we call an unaspirated t and the second one an aspirated th. Phoneticians have recognized two quite distinct sounds for t in English; but if we consider these two sounds from the phonological point of view, we wound say these two sounds are fundamentally the same, since they have one and the same function in communication, in distinguishing between words and meanings.A phonetician would be more interested in such differences because such differences will not cause the differences in meaning.11. What is a phone? How is it different from a phoneme? How are allophones related to a phoneme? (31)Phone a speech sound we use when speaking a language, it is a phonetic unit or segment.Phoneme a collection of abstract sound features, a phonological unit.Allophones the different phones which can represent a phoneme in different phonetic environments are called the allophones of that phoneme. ( actual realizations of a phoneme in different phonetic contexts).E.g. the phoneme /l/ in English can be realized as dark t, clear l, etc, which are allophones of the phoneme /l/.12. What is a minimal pair and what is a minimal set? Why is it important to identify the minimal set in a language?Minimal pair refers to two sound combinations identical in every way except in one sound element that occurs in the same position. That is, minimal pairs are word forms that differ from each other only be one sound. pill and till, till and kill, kill and dill, and dill and gill. According, we can conclude that p, b, t, d, k, g are phonemes in English. Then all these sound combinations together constitute a minimal set, they are identical in form except for the initial consonant, this also applies to the vowels. The pronunciations of the following words are identical except for the vowel: beat, bit, bet, bat, ect.By identifying the minimal pairs of the minimal set of a language, a philologist can identify its phonemes.13. Explain with examples the sequential rule, the assimilation rule, and the deletion rule.Sequential rule rule governing the combination of sounds in a particular language.E.g. If a word begins with a l or a r, then the next sound must be a vowel.Assimilation rule rule assimilating one sound similar to the following one by copying a feature of a sequential phoneme, thus making the tow phones similar.E.g. impossible is the negative form of possible, as the n sound is assimilated to m.）Deletion rule rule governing the deletion of a sound in a certain phonetic context although it is represented in spelling. E.g. delete a g when it occurs before a final nasal consonant.14. What are suprasegmental features? How do the major suprasegmental features of English function in conveying meaning?Suprasengmental features phonological features above the sound segment level, these are the phonological properties of such units as the syllable, the word and the sentences. The major suprasegmental features in English are stress (word stress and sentence stress) intonation and tone;1、 Stress: When a certain syllable of a word is stressed, it means that the syllable is pronounced with greater force than the other or others. The shift of stress changes the meaning or the part of speech of a word and the meaning of a sentence. E.g. from n to v. import to import.2、 Intonation: pitch variation is known as intonation. More specific, when pitch, stress and length variations are tied to the sentence rather than to the word, they are collectively known as intonation. The three most frequently used intonations are the fall, the rise and the fall-rise. When spoken in different tone, the same sequence of words may have different meaning, e.g. the falling intonation conveys a straight-forward fact, the rising intonation indicates a question; and the fall-rise intonation always conveys some implication.3、 Tone: Tone refers to the pitch variation which is caused by the differing rates of vibration of the vocal cords. It is an important feature for some languages, such as Chinese, it distinguishes meaning just like phonemes.15. Explain the following terms, using one or two examples for illustration1) Phoneme (05).A phoneme is a phonological unit. It is an abstract notion instead of a concrete sound. A phoneme consists of a collection of features, and can be realized as different speech sounds in different phonetic contexts called allophones. E.g /l/ can be pronounced as clear l or darl l depending on where