Phonology

Question 1

what is a phoneme?

Answer 1

basic unit of sound in a particular language

Question 2

what is a phone?

Answer 2

any distinct speech sound

Question 3

what is a allophone?

Answer 3

variants of a phoneme

Question 4

examples of allophones?

Answer 4

the t in “hit”, “the”, and “little”
- phonemically they are considered to be the same sound although they are different phonetically in terms of aspiration

Question 5

what are phonetics (phonology)?

Answer 5

the sounds patterns of language

Question 6

what are the distinctions among consonants?

Answer 6

• place of articulation
• manner of articulation
• voicing

Question 7

what are articulatory phonetics?

Answer 7

study of how speech sounds are
produced

Question 8

what is the place of articulation?

Answer 8

the point at which the tongue or lower lip is closest to the top of the vocal tract

Question 9

what is the manner of articulation?

Answer 9

the way in which the airflow is restricted

Question 10

what is voicing?

Answer 10

(do vocal cords vibrate?) the presence or absence of vocal vibration during speech sound production
voiced = vocal cord vibrate
voiceless = no vocal cord vibrations

Question 11

what is voice onset time (VOT)?

Answer 11

the time between the release of the constriction of airflow when we produce a consonant and when the vocal cords start to vibrate

Question 12

Psychological reality of phonetic features?

Answer 12

which pair of words sound more similar?
pa v. ga or pa v. ka
dill v. mill or dill v. bill
* distinctive features have psychological realities

Question 13

what is orthography?

Answer 13

the representation of the sounds of a language by written or printed symbols

Question 14

what is the international phonetic alphabet? (IPA)

Answer 14

it is a system for transcribing speech sounds
- consistent

Question 15

what is the goal of IPA?

Answer 15

device a system for transcribing speech sounds that are independent of any particular language (applicable to all languages)

Question 16

what has IPA been used to do?

Answer 16

• in dictionaries to indicate pronunciation of words.
• in foreign language textbooks to transcribe sounds of languages written with non-Latin alphabets.
• as a basis for creating new writing systems for previously unwritten languages.

Question 17

what are endangered languages?

Answer 17

language that is at risk of disappearing as its speakers die out or shift to speaking other languages.

Question 18

why do people care about endangered languages?

Answer 18

• people’s identity & culture are intimately tied to their language
• Each language is uniquely rich
• When we lose a language, we lose valuable information that may contribute to generalizations about languages
• Also lose knowledge about the world (e.g., descriptive names for plants or practices known only to a local area)

Question 19

another example of an allophone?

Answer 19

[pʰ] as in pin and [p] as in spin are allophones for the phoneme /p/ because they cannot distinguish words

Question 20

example of phoneme?

Answer 20

the word ‘hat’ has 3 phonemes – ‘h’ ‘a’ and ‘t’

Question 21

example of voicing?

Answer 21

accounts for the difference between the pair of sounds associated with the English letters “s” and “z”