语言学第二章练习题

Chapter 2 Phonology 1 What are the two major media of communication Of the two which one is primary and why Two major media of communication are speech and writing Of the two speech is primary The reasons are as follows 1 From the point of view of linguistic evolution speech is prior to writing The writing system of any language is always invented by its users to record speech when the need arises 2 In everyday communication speech plays a greater role than writing in terms of the amount of information conveyed 3 Speech is always the way in which every native speaker acquires his mother tongue and writing is learned and taught later when he goes to school 4 For modern linguists spoken language reveals more true features of human speech while written language is only the revised record of speech 2 What is voicing and how is it caused Voicing is a quality of speech sounds It is caused by the vibration of the vocal cords 3 Explain with examples how broad transcription and narrow transcription differ When we use a simple set of symbols in our transcription it is called broad transcription Narrow transcription is the use of more specific symbols to show phonetic details In broad transcription the symbol l is used for the sound l in words leaf li f and feel fi l The l in li f occurring before a vowel is called clear l The l in fi l occurring in the end of a word or before another consonant is called dark l And in narrow transcription the diacritic tilde is used to indicate it 4 How are the English consonants classified English consonants can be classified in two ways one is in terms of manner of articulation and the other is in terms of place of articulation In terms of manner of articulation it can be classified into stops fricatives affricates liquids glides and nasals In terms of place of articulation it can be classified into bilabial labiodental dental alveolar palatal velar and glottal 5 What criteria are used to classify the English vowels According to the place of the tongue vowels can be distinguished as front central and back According to the openness of the mouth vowels can be classified into four groups close vowels semi close vowels semi open vowels and open vowels According to the shape of the lips all the front vowels and the central vowel can are unrounded vowels and all the back vowels are rounded vowels 6 Give the phonetic symbol for each of the following sound descriptions 1 voiced palatal affricative d 2 voiceless labiodental fricative f 3 voiced alveolar stop g 4 front close short i 5 back semi open long 6 voiceless bilabial stop p Give the phonetic features of each of the following sounds 1 d voiced alveolar stop 2 l voiced alveolar liquid 3 t voiceless palatal affricate 4 w voiced bilabial glide 5 u back close short 6 ae front open 7 How do phonetics and phonology differ in their focus of study Who do you think will be more interested in the difference between say clear l and dark l aspirated p and unaspirated p a phonetician or a phonologist why Phonology and phonetics differ in their approach and focus Phonology aims at discover how speech sounds in a language form patterns and how these sounds are used to convey meaning in linguistic communication Phonetics is of a general nature and it is interested in all the speech sounds used in all human languages The difference between clear l and dark l is what the phoneticians are interested in For the phonologists these two sounds are fundamentally the same since they have one and the same function in communication in distinguishing between words and meanings despite their difference in pronunciation 8 What is a phone How is it different from a phoneme How are allophones related to a phoneme A phone is a phonetic unit or segment A phoneme is a phonological unit It is a unit that is distinctive abstract and it is the smallest unit The different phones which can represent a phoneme in different phonetic environments are called the allophones of that phoneme For example in the word leaf li f and the word deal di l l is one phoneme and the l in li f is clear the l in di l is dark They are all allophones of the phoneme l 9 Explain with examples the sequential rule the assimilation rule and the deletion rule Sequential rules are the rules that govern the combination of sounds in a particular language For example if a word begins with a l or i then the next sound must be a vowel Thus lbik ilkb are impossible in English They have violated the restrictions on the sequencing of phonemes The assimilation rule assimilates one sound to another by copying a feature of a sequential phoneme thus making the two phones similar For example the i sound is nasalized in words like bean green and team This is because in all these sound combination the i sound is followed by a nasal n or m The deletion rule tells us when a sound is to be deleted although it is orthographically represented For example in the pronunciation of such words sign design there is no g sound although it is represented in spelling by the letter g 10 What are the suprasegmental features How do the major suprasegmental features of English function in conveying meaning The phonemic features that occur above the level of the segments are called suprasegmental features The main suprasemental features include stress intonation and tone The location of stress in English distinguishes meaning Tones are pitch variations which are caused by the differing rates of vibration of vocal cords Intonation plays an important role in the convey