Vocabulary 3

Question 1

phonotactic constraints

Answer 1

restriction on possible combinations of sounds, often in particular environments

Question 2

What is the minimum requirement for ASL syllables?

Answer 2

A monosyllabic sign can’t consist of just one hand shape, location, and orientation; one of the three have to change in order to form a grammatical syllable.

Question 3

Sound substitution

Answer 3

process whereby sounds that already exist in a language are used to replace sounds that do not exist in the language when borrowing or when a speaker is trying to pronounce a foreign word

Question 4

allophone

Answer 4

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

Question 5

phoneme

Answer 5

class of speech sounds identified by a native speaker as the same sound; a mental entity (or category) related to various allophones by phonological rules; are written between slashes (i.e., /t/)

Question 6

noncontrastive

Answer 6

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

Question 7

contrastive distribution

Answer 7

the occurrence of sounds in a language such that their use distinguishes between the meanings of the words in which they appear, indicating that those sounds are phonemes of the language in question

Question 8

complementary distribution

Answer 8

the occurrence of sounds in a language such that they are never found in the same phonetic environment

Question 9

overlapping distribution

Answer 9

occurrence of sounds in the same phonetic environments

Question 10

free variation

Answer 10

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

Question 11

phonological rules

Answer 11

description of a relationship between a phoneme and its allophones and the conditioning environment in which the allophone appears

Question 12

underlying form

Answer 12

the phonetic form of a word or morpheme before phonological rules are applied

Question 13

conditioning environment

Answer 13

neighboring sounds of a given sound that cause it to undergo a change

Question 14

natural class

Answer 14

group of sounds in a language that satisfy a given description to the exclusion of other sounds in that language

Question 15

Flowchart for identifying the type of distribution two or more sounds in a language have

Answer 15

Start: Identify the sounds you are interested in investigating –> List the phonetic environments in which the sounds in question appear –>
Do the sounds occur in the same environment? –> (Yes) The Sounds are overlapping –> No prediction is possible. –> Do the words have the same meaning –>
If yes, the sounds are in free variation. If no, the words form a (near) minimal pair –> The sounds are in a contrastive distribution. –> The sounds are allophones of different phonemes. //

Do the sounds occur in the same environment? (No) The sounds are in complementary distribution. –> Prediction is possible. –> The sounds are allophones of the same phoneme.

Question 16

near-minimal pairs

Answer 16

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

Question 17

restricted allophone

Answer 17

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

Question 18

The steps to do a phonemic analysis

Answer 18

1. Look at the environments to find natural classes.
2. Look for complimentary gaps in the environments.
3. State a generalization about the distribution of each of these sounds.
4. Determine the identity of the phoneme and its allophones

Question 19

What is the goal of a phonemic analysis?

Answer 19

To draw conclusions about the psychological organization of a language, which isn’t necessarily observable.

Question 20

maximally distinct

Answer 20

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

Question 21

implicational law

Answer 21

observation about language universals that takes the form of an implication (e.g., If A then B, meaning that if a language has feature A, then we can expect it to have feature B).

Question 22

Observations related to more common and less common sounds

Answer 22

Sound inventories, frequency & distribution, acquisition of sounds, sound change

Question 23

Obligatory English rules include what? (4)

Answer 23

Aspiration, vowel nasalization, vowel lengthening, and liquid and glide devoicing

Question 24

Optional rules are responsible and depend on what?

Answer 24

Responsible for variation in speech and depends on rate and style of speech

Question 25

Obstruents and sonorants are the segments that describe what?

Answer 25

Natural classes