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Chapter 2 Phonology

1. What are the two major media of communication? Of the two, which one is primary and why?

Two major media of communication are speech and writing, Of the two, speech is primary. The reasons are as follows.

1) From the point of view of linguistic evolution, speech is prior to writing. The writing

system of any language is always “invented’ by its users to record speech when the need arises.

2) In everyday communication, speech plays a greater role than writing in terms of the

amount of information conveyed.

3) 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.

4) For modern linguists, spoken language reveals more true features of human speech while

written language is only the “revised” record of speech.

2. What is voicing and how is it caused?

Voicing is a quality of speech sounds. It is caused by the vibration of the vocal cords.

3. Explain with examples how broad transcription and narrow transcription differ.

When we use a simple set of symbols in our transcription, it is called broad transcription. Narrow transcription is the use of more specific symbols to show phonetic details.

In broad transcription, the symbol [ l ] is used for the sound [ l ] in words leaf [ li:f] and feel [fi:l]. The [l] in [ li:f] , occurring before a vowel, is called clear [ l ]. The [ l ] in [fi:l] occurring in the end of a word or before another consonant , is called dark [ l ].And in narrow transcription the diacritic tilde [~] is used to indicate it.

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, it can be classified into stops, fricatives, affricates, liquids, glides and nasals. In terms of place of articulation, it can be classified into bilabial, labiodental, dental, alveolar, palatal, velar and glottal. 5. What criteria are used to classify the English vowels?

According to the place of the tongue, vowels can be distinguished as front, central and back. According to the openness of the mouth, vowels can be classified into four groups: 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 vowel can are unrounded vowels and all the back vowels are rounded

vowels.

6. Give the phonetic symbol for each of the following sound descriptions: 1) voiced palatal affricative [ d? ] 2) voiceless labiodental fricative [f ] 3) voiced alveolar stop [ g ] 4) front close short [ i ] 5) back semi-open long [ ?: ] 6) voiceless bilabial stop [ p ]

Give the phonetic features of each of the following sounds 1) [ d ] voiced alveolar stop 2) [ l ] voiced alveolar liquid 3) [ t? ] voiceless palatal affricate 4) [ w ] voiced bilabial glide 5) [ u ] back close short 6) [ ae ] front open

7. How do phonetics and phonology differ in their focus of study? Who do you think will be more interested in the difference between, say, clear [ l ] and dark [ l ] , aspirated [ p] and unaspirated [p] , a phonetician or a phonologist ? why?

Phonology and phonetics differ in their approach and focus. Phonology aims at discover how speech sounds in a language form patterns and how these sounds are used to convey meaning in linguistic communication. Phonetics is of a general nature and it is interested in all the speech sounds used in all human languages.

The difference between clear [l] and dark [ l ] is what the phoneticians are interested in . For the phonologists, these two sounds are fundamentally the same ,since they have one and the same function in communication , in distinguishing between words and meanings despite their difference in pronunciation.

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. A phoneme is a phonological unit. It is a unit that is distinctive , abstract and it is the smallest unit. The different phones which can represent a phoneme in different phonetic environments are called the allophones of that phoneme. For example, in the word leaf [ li:f] and the word deal [di:l] , / l / is one phoneme and the [l] in [li:f] is clear, the [ l ] in [di:l] is dark. They are all allophones of the phoneme /l/.

9. Explain with examples the sequential rule, the assimilation rule, and the deletion rule.

Sequential rules are the rules that govern the combination of sounds in a particular language. For example, if a word begins with a [ l ] or [ i ], then the next sound must be a vowel. Thus,

[ lbik ] [ ilkb ] are impossible 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 and team. This is because in all these sound combination the [ i:] sound is followed by a nasal [n ] or [ m].

The deletion rule tells us when a sound is to be deleted although it is orthographically represented. For example, in the pronunciation of such words sign, design, there is no [ g ] sound although it is represented in spelling by the letter g

10. What are the suprasegmental features ? How do the major suprasegmental features of English function in conveying meaning?

The phonemic features that occur above the level of the segments are called suprasegmental features. The main suprasemental features include stress, intonation and tone. The location of stress in English distinguishes meaning. Tones are pitch variations, which are caused by the differing rates of vibration of vocal cords. Intonation plays an important role in the conveyance of meaning in almost every language, especially in a language like English. Intonation has four tones.: the falling tone, the rising tone, the fall-rise tone, the rise-fall tone. When spoken in different tones, the same sequence of words may have different meanings.

杨晓娅 唐明 李克燕 谢江兰 李佳卉

2011级英语二班