Chapter 3 key terms

Question 1

phonetic inventories

Answer 1

the sounds that are produced as part of the language and suprasegmental features

Question 2

phonotactic constraints

Answer 2

the restrictions on possible combinations of sounds

Question 3

sound substitution

Answer 3

speakers use sounds of their native language to replace to replace non-native sounds when pronouncing the words of a foreign language

Question 4

noncontrastive

Answer 4

a term used to describe two sounds that are not used to differentiate words in a language

Question 5

contrastive

Answer 5

a term used to describe two sounds that can be used to differentiate words in a language

Question 6

phoneme

Answer 6

a set of speech sounds that are perceived to be variants of the same sound

Question 7

allophone

Answer 7

one set of noncontrastive realizations of the same phoneme; an actual phonetic segment

Question 8

phonetic environments

Answer 8

the sounds that come before and after a particular sound in a word

Question 9

free variation

Answer 9

term used to refer to two sounds that occur in overlapping environments but cause no distinction in the meaning of their respective words

Question 10

nasal place assimilation

Answer 10

an alveolar nasal assimilates to the place of articulation of a following consonant

Question 11

palatalization

Answer 11

refers to a special type of assimilation in which a consonant becomes like a neighboring palatal

Question 12

vowel harmony

Answer 12

a back vowel becomes front when preceded by a vowel in the same word

Question 13

dissimilation

Answer 13

rules cause two close or adjacent sounds to become less similar with respect to some property, by means of a change in one or both sounds

Question 14

manner dissimilation

Answer 14

a stop becomes a fricative when followed by another stop

Question 15

insertion

Answer 15

phonological rules of insertion cause a segment not present at the phonemic level to be added to the phonetic form of a word. example from English is voiceless stop insertion

Question 16

deletion

Answer 16

rules eliminate a sound that was present at the phonemic level. such rules apply more frequently to unstressed syllables and in casual speech

Question 17

CV metathesis

Answer 17

when three consecutive consonants occur, the first consonant trades places with the preceding vowel

Question 18

aspiration

Answer 18

voiceless stops become aspirated when they occur at the beginning of a stressed syllable

Question 19

weakening

Answer 19

also called lenition cause sounds to become weaker. The flapping rule of English is an example of weakening.

Question 20

Flapping

Answer 20

an alveolar oral stop is realized as [j] when it occurs after a stressed vowel and before an unstressed vowel

Question 21

implicational law

Answer 21

observation about language universals that takes the form of an implication. ex: if A then B, meaning that if a language has feature A then we can expect it to have feature B

Question 22

maximally distinct consonants and vowels

Answer 22

the consonants have very few qualities in common with the vowels, and the vowels are likewise very different from the consonants

Question 23

basic allophone

Answer 23

the allophone of a phoneme that is used when none of the change inducing conditions are fulfilled. Of a set of allophones, it is generally least limited in where it can occur; also termed the elsewhere allophone.

Question 24

Restricted allophone

Answer 24

an allophone of a phoneme that appears in a more limited set of phonetic environments

Question 25

near minimal pair

Answer 25

similar to minimal pair, but whereas the words in a minimal pair are identical apart from the contrastive sounds, the words in a near-minimal pair are only almost identical apart from the contrastive sounds