音系学answers

1、Phonetics ( Exercise 3)1. 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. (Cf. the answer to the question 4 in exercise 2.)2. What are the three branches of phonetics? How do they contribute to the s

2、tudy of speech sounds?The three branches of phonetics are: articulatory phonetics, acoustic phonetics and auditory phonetics. They study speech sounds from different perspectives. Articulatory phonetics studies the production of speech sounds, acoustic phonetics studies the physical properties of th

3、e sounds produced in speech and auditory phonetics studies the perception of speech sounds.3. Draw a picture for the speech organs of human beings. (cf. the figure on P . 33)4. Where are the articulatory apparatus of a human being contained? See the figure on P. 33.5. What is voicing and how is it c

4、aused?Voicing is producing a sound (usually a vowel or voiced consonant) by vibrating the vocal cords. 6. What criteria are used to classify English vowels?The criteria used to classify English vowels are:The height of the tongue raising: high, mid, and lowThe position of the highest part of the ton

5、gue: front, central, and backThe degree of lip rounding: rounded, un-roundedThe degree of tenseness/the length of sound: tense (long) or lax (short)The change of sound quality: pure(monophthong), gliding(diphthong)FrontCentralBacktens elaxtens elaxtens elaxHigh/clo se?u:uMide?:?:Low/op en?a:?7. What

6、 is the function of the nasal cavity? How does it perform the function?Nasal cavity is a resonating cavity which amplifies and further modifies sounds produced by the movement of the vocal cords. The soft palate may be lowered, as in the normal position for breathing, so that the air can go through

7、the nasal cavity. When the oral cavity is at the same time blocked, a nasal sound is produced.8. Describe the various parts in the oral cavity which are involved in the production of speech sounds? (See P35)9. Explain with examples how broad transcription and narrow transcription differ?Transcriptio

8、n refers to the method of writing down speech sounds in a systematic and consistent way. It serves as an aid to the description of speech sounds.There are two types of transcription: broad and narrow transcription.Broad transcription refers to the transcription to indicate those sounds, which are ca

9、pable of distinguishing one word from another in a given language. Two slashes are used, e.g. pet /pet/, bed /bed/.Narrow transcription is to symbolize all the possible speech sounds, including the minute shades, such as the transcription of /l/ in the following words:Let let, tell te?; peak p k, sp

10、eak sp k 10. How are the English consonants and vowels classified?There are basically two kinds of sounds, consonants and vowels.Consonants are sounds in the production of which there is obstruction of the air-stream at some point of the vocal tract. Vowels are sounds in the production of which no v

11、ocal organs come close together and the air-stream passes through the vocal tract without obstruction. The main difference between them is that the air flows freely in vowels, while all consonants involve some sortof interference of the air-stream in the mouth.following sound descriptions:11. Give t

12、he phonetic symbol for each of the(1) voiced palatal affricate: / ? /(2) voiceless labiodental fricative: /f/(3) 3) voiced alveolar stop: /d/(4) front close short: /i/(5) back semi-open long: / ?:/(6) 6) voiceless bilabial stop: /p/(7) front mid vowel: /e/(8) lateral liquid: /l/(9) lax high back vow

13、el: /u/(10 ) voiced bilabial oral stop: /b/(11) mid central lax vowel: / ? /(12 ) low front vowel: / ? /(13 ) palatal glide: /j/(14 ) voiced interdental fricative: / e /(15 ) voiced affricate: / ? /(16 ) velar nasal consonant: / V(17 ) low back vowel: / a: /(18 ) high back tense vowel: /u:/(19 ) mid

14、 back lax vowel: / ? /(20 ) voiceless interdental fricative: / /12. Give the phonetic features of each of the following sounds:d voiced, alveolar, stop;l voiced, alveolar,lateral;tvoiceless, post-alveolar, affricate; w voiced, bilabial, glide;u back, high, lax, rounded; ? front, low, lax,unrounded;b

15、 voiced, bilabial, stop;v voiced,labio-dental, fricative;a: back, low, tense, unrounded; m voiced, bilabial, nasal;口 voiced, alveolar, liquid;i: front, high,tense, unrounded.13. Draw a tongue chart for the basic English vowels.Front CentralBacksounds are produced.3. The unite of representation used

16、to transcribe the speech sounds is called segment.4. Classes of sounds that share a feature or features are called natural classes.VII. Manners of articulation refer to how the air stream is modified, whether it is completely blocked or partially obstructed. According to manners of articulation, con

17、sonants are classified into stops, nasals, fricatives, affricates, liquids, and gildes第二章习题答案I. 15 T F T T FII. . 15 b d a c aIII. 1. b bilabial voiced stop2. n alveolar nasal stop3. w bilabial glide4. v voiced labiodental fricative5. t voiceless alveolar stop6. i: high front tense vowel7. e voicele

18、ss interdental8. u: high back tense vowel9. ? low front vowel10. ?: central tense vowelIV. 1. b p m 2. d n 3. ? 4. m 5. A ?: ?6. s z 7. u: u8. u 9. j10 t/V. 1. voiceless alveolar2. voiced stop3. voiced fricatives4. palatals5. voiced bilabial6. voiced velar7. back tense vowels8. back round vowels9. f

19、ront high vowels10. sibilantsVI.1. Phonetics is the study of speech sounds.2. Voic ing refers to the vibrating of the vocal cords whenPhonology( Exercise 4)1. How do phonetics and phonology differ in their focus of study?Phonetics and phonology both study the same aspect of languagespeech sounds, th

20、ere is afair degree of overlap in what concerns the two subjects. Without the knowledge of speech sounds provided by phonetic studies, any study of the sound system of a particular language would have been almost impossible.However, the two subjects approach speech sounds from different points of vi

21、ew.A) Phonetics provides methods for the description, transcription of sounds for all languages; phonology studies the sound system of a particular language. Therefore, phonetics is general, descriptive, and classificatory; it is interested in all the speech sounds used in all human languages: how t

22、hey are produced, how they differ from each other, etc. phonological study is particular and functional. It is particular to one language and the conclusion we reach about the phonology of one language should not be generalized into the study of another language. Phonology deals with how human being

23、 use speech sounds to express meaning.B) The basis unit of phonetic study is phone, while that of phonological study is phoneme.C) A phonetic study is a static one, since it tells us how a sound of a language is made, transmitted and received, whereas a phonological study is a dynamic one, telling h

24、ow sounds are used to convey meaning.2. What is a phone? How is it different from a phoneme? How are allophones related to the phoneme?Phone refers to the speech sound we use when speaking a language. Phoneme is the smallest sound unit that can distinguish meaning. However, phoneme is an abstract un

25、it, i.e. it is not a sound, it is a collection of distinctive phonetic features. In actually speech, a phoneme is realized phonetically as a certain phone.A phoneme can be realized by one or more than one phone. The different phones which represent a phoneme in different phonetic environments are ca

26、lled the allophones of that phoneme. Allophones are actualizations of a phoneme in a particular language that never affect the meaning. 3. 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 expressions (words or

27、morphemes) of a language w ith different meanings that are distinguished by only one phoneme, e.g. pig: big; tip: dip; ship, sheep.Minimal set refers to more than two expressions of a language with different meanings that are distinguished by only one phoneme, such as said: says: set: sell; pat: bat

28、: mat.Contrasting minimal pairs is a basic procedure in establishing the phonemic inventory of a language.4. Explain with examples the sequential rule, the assimilation rule, and the deletion rule.The patterning of sounds in a particular language is governed by rules.1) Sequential rulesSpeech is a d

29、ynamic process and when human beings talk, they do not utter each and sound separately, but deliver a continuous flow of sounds. There are rules that govern the combination of sounds in a particular language, which are called sequential rules. For instance, in English, if three consonants should clu

30、ster together at the beginning of a word, the combination should obey the following three rules:a) the first phoneme must be /s/;b) the second must be /p/, /t/ or /k/;c) the third must be /l/, /r/ or /w/Examples: spring, string, sequential, splendid2) Assimilation rulesThe assimilation rules assimil

31、ates one sound to another by copying a feature of a sequential sound, thus making the two sounds more similar. Assimilation is caused by articulatory or physiological processes.give boats giv b utsgive peace gif pi:sThe sound /v/ ( voiced, labiodental, fricative) is influenced by following sound /p/

32、 (voiceless, bilabial, stop).3) Deletion rulesThe rule means that a sound is to be deleted although it is orthographically represented, e.g. the pronunciation of such words as sign, design, paradigm, there is no /g/ sound although it is represented in spelling by the letter. But in their correspondi

33、ng noun forms signature, designation, and paradigmatic, the /g/ represented is pronounced. The rule can be stated as: Delete a /g/ when it occurs before a final nasal consonant.5. State the functions of stress in a language with examples.Stress is the emphasis (shown by more forceful, louder, and hi

34、gher-pitched voice) given to some syllables (usually no more than one in each word). The result is that the stressed syllables sound louder than unstressed ones.According to the context, i.e. whether stress is considered in the context of the word in isolation or in the context of connected speech,

35、stress can be divided into two types: word stress and sentence stress.1) Word stressThere are some factors which determine the placement of stress in such language.a) The syntactic class of a word provides some clue to the position of stress.Combine, convict, insult, abstract, greenhouseb) The morph

36、ological make-up of a word affects its stress pattern. For example, words ending with the following endings:-ity, -ion, -ian, -ic, -ify, -ible, -igible, -ish, (stress on the preceding syllable): exemplify, terrible, foolish, Verbs of three or more syllables ending in -ate, throw the stress back two

37、syllables: liberate, hibernate; whereas verbs of two syllables ending in -ate, place the stress on ate: narrate.2) Sentence stressSentence stress plays various roles in conveying meaning.a) Sentence stress depends on the relative importance of the word. The more important a word is, the stronger its

38、 stress is.b) Rhythmic considerations influence the placement of stress (such as in poetry). Stressed syllables tend to occur at regular intervals of time, the stress pattern is affected by the rhythm. e.g. She is fifteen years old. She is only fifteen.c) The syntactic structure of a sentence influe

39、nces its stress pattern, such as parenthetical phrases are often not stressed.6. What are suprasegmental features? How do the major suprasegmental features of English function in conveying meaning?Supra-segmental phonology refers to the study of phonological properties of units larger than phoneme,

40、such as the syllable, word, phrase, clause, or sentence. The principal features are stress, pitch (tone), and intonation.Meaning conveyed by these features:l) Stress (see the answer to the question 6)m) pitchDifferent rates of variation are, in acoustic term, different frequencies, and in auditory t

41、erms, are different pitches (degree of highness and lowness of sound or quality of sound). Pitch variations are called tones, and languages using tones are tone languages.Tone language is a language that distinguishes meanings among words of similar form by variations in pitch and tone. The best-kno

42、wn example is the Chinese dialects of Mandarin and Cantonese, such as the formmall has five tones with different meani顺网，嘛，马，骂.n) IntonationIntonation is the use of changing pitch to convey syntactic information, i.e. the rise or fall of the pitch in speaking, which could affect the meaning of what

43、is said.The grammatical functions of intonation:o) It may indicate different sentence types by pitch direction.p) It may indicate connotative meanings.I cannot eat anything. (I can eat nothing. I can only eat some particular ones)q) It may impose different structure on the sentence by dividing the s

44、entence into different intonation units.He didn ' t come because of Mary. Those who sold quickly made a profit.r) It may make part of a sentence prominent by placing the nucleus on the part concerned.s) It has attitudinal function, expressing the speaker' s feelings or attitudes.7. A phoneti

45、c symbol is actually a cover term II for a composite of distinct phonetic properties orfeatures. Define each of the symbols below by marking a- II for+eacogveneature: a+ II , if the property is present, a- II , if it is absent:Sound segments:uea:i?u:i:Phonetic featuresHigh+-+-+-Low-+-+-Back+-+-+-Ten

46、se-+-+Round+-+-Sound segmentsfngztlPhonetic featuresStop-+-+-Nasal-+-Voiced-+-+-+Labial+-Alveolar-+-+Velar-+-Liquid-+Fricative-+-Supplementary material: the phonetic features of English diphthongsAccording to the direction of gliding, diphthongs can be central or closing. According to the position o

47、f the more prominent element in the diphthong, we have divided diphthong into falling diphthongs (if the prominent element comes first) and rising diphthongs (if the less prominent comes first). Diphthongs can be wide (if the glide implies a more radical movement of the speech organs) and narrow (if

48、 the two vocalic elements occupy neighbouring positions on the vowel chart). Diphthongs can be opening (if the degree of aperture increases with the glide) or closing (if the less prominent vowel is closer than the first).CentringFallingNarrowOpening+-+-+-+-e-+-+-+-8. Distinguish and transcribe the

49、following sounds in groups.(1) p in pit , tip and spit(2) l in lesson and people(3) n in ten and tenth(4) k in key and scheme(5) t in team and steam9. Fill in the proper word according to the explanations.(1) the frequency of vibration in the musical sound of the voice. (pitch ).(2) a special emphas

50、is on a sound or a sound group. (stress).(3) the length of silence between parts of utterance. (pause).(4) the smallest structured sound unit made up of a rule-governed sequence of phonemes. (syllable).(5) 5) the phonetic process in which two phonemes ,adjacent to each other, become identical. (assimilation).第三章习题答案I. 1-5 T F F T TII. 1-5 b b c c d 6-10 c b d b dIII.1. Phonology is the study of so