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24.900 – Introduction to linguistics Quiz 2 – Phonetics and phonology April 20, 2005
Name: Section:
**1. Can you insert the head that is on the website? If you can, let's ask them to name five articulators.
- Identifying phones: Write the IPA symbol for the sound described:**
a. voiceless alveolar fricative /s/
b. voiced velar nasal /N/
c. high back rounded tense vowel /u/
d. voiceless alvelolar lateral liquid /l8/
e. voiceless velar stop /k/
f. voiced interdetnal fricative /T/
3. Transcription: Transcribe the following English words and names into IPA:
a. chemistry /kHEmIst®i/
b. Susan Hockfield /suwz´n hAkfi…d/
c. rushing /®√SIN/
d. questions /kw8ESn1s/
e. Tim the Beaver /tHIm D´ biv®1/
4. Transcription: Transcribe the following words in IPA into English.
a. DE® A® bEdb√gz In maj p´dZQm´z
there are bedbugs in my pajamas
b. T®i ´v Diz bER´® w´nz wI… du TQNk ju
three of these better ones will do, thank you
c. hi w´z k√v´®d wIT m√ltik√l´®d fET´®z
he was covered with multicolored feathers
d. dId ju b®IN D´ bejt Qnd D´ fIShUks
did you bring the bait and the fishhooks?
e. DIs wI… mowst lajkli sawnd st®ejndZ tu mEni lINgwIsts
this will most likely sound strange to many linguists
5. Define the following terms. Be brief but make sure you have fully defined the concept: (Use examples where you can)
a. phoneme A phoneme is a chunk of speech of conventional size (made in the image of a letter in alphabetic writing systems) that stands in meaningful (i.e., lexeme-differentiating) contrast to other chunks of speech of the same size in the same position. In English, for instance, the two chunks [b] and [p] are distinct phonemes, since they produce a meaning contrast in pairs such as “pet” vs. “bet”.
b. allophone:
An allophone is each of the different phonetic forms that a phoneme can take; for instance, [ l ] and
[ … ] are two allophones of the phoneme [ l ] in English that are in complementary distribution.
c. complementary distribution Two items are in complementary distribution if the sets of environments in which each occurs have a null intersection.
d. overlapping distribution Two items have overlapping distribution if they can both occur in the same environment (i.e., the intersection of the set of environments in which each occurs is non-null).
- ga˘lis ‘stocking’ 10. labahbet ‘catfish’
- odahsa ‘tail’ 11. sdu˘ha ‘a little bit’
- wisk ‘five’ 12. dZiks ‘fly’
- degeni ‘two’ 13. desda/n8 ‘stand up!’ (sg.)
- aplam ‘Abraham’ 14. de˘zekw8 ‘pick it up!’ (sg.)
It seems that [p t k] are in complementary distribution with [b d g], the latter occurring before
vowels, the latter elsewhere. The one apparent exception to this is [ dZiks ]; there are two ways out
of this: either [ dZ ] is treated as a single phone (an affricate), and thus is outside the scope of the
problem, or the environment for the voiced allophone has to be extended to include the position preceding voiced fricatives/obstruents.
8. Spanish voiced obstruents
In most dialects of Spanish, the voiced stops [b d g] alternate with fricatives [B D ƒ] (actually, for
most speakers these are pronounced as approximants, but disregard this). Based on the following data given in broad phonetic transcription, give a rule that states the process and the context in the most succinct manner possible, using distinctive features. Again, assume that the data are complete in the relevant respects.
- fweƒo ‘fire’ 10. gEra ‘war’
- saNgRe ‘blood’ 11. razƒaR ‘tear’
- aDa ‘fairy’ 12. mando ‘command’
- urƒaR ‘poke around’ 13. lERDo ‘sluggish’
- duRo ‘tough’ 14. aBa ‘flap’
- baro ‘mud’ 15. esDRuxulo ‘antepenult’
- ezBelto ‘slim’ 16. laRBa ‘larva’
- ambas ‘both’ 17. elBaro ‘the mud’
- laƒEra ‘the war’ 18. dosƒEras ‘two wars’
The voiced stops appear as fricatives if they are preceded by a vowel, or the consonants /r/ (both kinds – is there a difference or is this a typo?), /z/, /s/, /l/. They appear as stops after a homorganic nasal, and word-initially. The relevant environment for them to become fricatives seems to be whenever they follow a segment that has airflow through the oral tract; this is usually associated with the feature [+continuant].
