语言学chapter2

Chapter 2 phonology1,what are the two major media of communication? Of the two, which one is primary and why? The two major media of communication are speech and writing. Speech is more basic than writing. Because the writing system of any language is always “invented” by its users to record speech when the need arises, and in everyday communication, speech plays a greater role than writing in terms of the amount of information conveyed, 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.2.What is voicing and how is it caused?Vibration of the vocal cords results in a quality of speech sounds that is called voicing. It is caused by vocal cords which may also be held together tightly so that the air stream vibrates hem at different speeds .3.Explain with examples how broad transcription and narrow transcription differ.Broad transcription is the transcription with letter-symbols only. Narrow transcription is the transcription with letter-symbols together with the diacritics,which are added to the letter-symbols to bring out the finer distinctions than the letters alone can possible do. For example, in broad transcription, the symbollis used for the soundlin the four words leafli:f,feelfi:l, buildbild,and healthhel. As a matter of fact, the sound lin all these four sound combination differ slightly. The linli:f, occurring before a vowel, is called clearl, and no diacritic is need to indicate it; the l infi:landbild occurring at the end of a word or before another consonant, is pronounced differently from the clear 1 as in “leaf”. It is called dark and in narrow transcription the diacritic is used to indicate it. Then in the sound combination hel, the sound l is followed by the English dental sound , its pronunciation is somewhat affected by the dental sound that follows it. It is thus called a dental l, and in narrow transcription the diacritic 、 is used to indicate it. It is transcribed as hel. Another example is the consonant p. In the word pit, the sound p is pronounced with a strong puff of air, but in spit the puff of air is withheld to some extent. In the case of pit, the p sound is said to be aspirated and in the case of spit, the p sound is unaspirated. This difference is not shown in broad transcription, but in narrow transcription, a small raised “h” is used to show aspiration, thus pit is transcribed as pht and spit is transcribed as spt.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 the English consonants can be classified into the following types: stops, fricatives, affricates, liquids, nasals and glides. In terms of place of articulation, it can be classified into following types: bilabial, labiodental, dental, alveolar, palatal, velar and glottal.5.What criteria are used to classify the English vowels?Vowel sounds are differentiated by a number of factors: the position of the tongue in the mouth , the openness of the mouth, the shape of the lips, and the length of the vowels. According to which part of the tongue is held highest, vowels may be distinguished as front, central, and back. And according to the openness of the mouth, vowels can be classified into 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 vowels are unrounded vowels, and all the back vowels, with the exception ofa:,are rounded vowels. According to the length of the sound, vowels can be classified into tense and lax vowels.6. Give the phonetic symbol fro each of the following sound descriptions:(1)voiced palatal affricate: (2)voiceless labiodental fricative: f(3)voiced alveolar stop: d (4)front, close, short: i(5)back, semi-open, long: : (6)voiceless, bilabial stop: pGive the phonetic features of each of the following sounds:(1)d: voiced alveolar stop (2)l: voiced alveolar liquids(3): voiceless palatal affricate (4) w: voiced bilabial glides (5) : back, close, short (6) : front, open, short7. 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 , ph and p, a phonetician or a phonologist? Why?Phonetics is of a general nature, it is interested in all the speech sounds used in all human languages. Phonology aims to discover how speech sounds in a language form patterns and how these sounds are used to convey meaning in linguistic communication.The difference between these sounds is what the phonetician are interested in. Because phonology is concerned with the sound system of a particular language, but phonetician is interested in how they are produced, how they differ from each other, what phonetic features they possess. 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. The speech sounds we hear and produce during linguistic communication are all phones. A phoneme is a phonological unit, it is a unit that is of distinctive value. It is an abstract unit. It is not particular sound, but rather it is represented or realized by a certain phone in a certain phonetic context. Allophones are the different phones which can represent a phoneme in different phonetic environments.9. Explain with examples the sequential rule, the assimilation rule, and the deletion rule.Sequential rules refer to the ways the phonemes can be combined. Sequential rules regulate which phonemes can begin a word, end a word, and follow each other. They are rules that govern the combination of sounds in a particular language. For example, if a word begins with a l or a r, then the next sound must be a vowel. That is why lbik lkbi are impossible combinations 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, team, and scream. This is because in all these sound combinations the i: sound is followed by a nasal n or m.Deletion rule is when a sound is to be deleted although it is orthographically represented. In the pronunciation of such words as sign, design, and paradigm, there is no g sound although it is represented in spelling by the letterg. But in their corresponding forms signature, designation, and paradigmatic, the g represented by the letter g is pronounced. The rule can be stated as: Delete a g when it occurs before a final nasal consonant. 10. What are suprasegmental features? How do the major suprasegmental features of English function in conveying meaning?Suprasegmental features refer to the phonemic features that occur above the