Chapter 2：Phonology

Supplementary Exercises

Chapter 2：Phonology

I. Decide whether each of the following statements is Tr u e or False:

1.Voicing is a phonological feature that distinguishes meaning in both

Chinese and English.

2.If two phonetically similar sounds occur in the same environments

and they distinguish meaning, they are said to be in complementary distribution.

3. A phone is a phonetic unit that distinguishes meaning.

4.English is a tone language while Chinese is not.

5.In linguistic evolution, speech is prior to writing.

6.In everyday communication, speech plays a greater role than writing

in terms of the amount of information conveyed.

7.Articulatory phonetics tries to describe the physical properties of

the stream of sounds which a speaker issues with the help of a machine called spectrograph.

8.The articulatory apparatus of a human being are contained in three

important areas: the throat, the mouth and the chest.

9.Vibration of the vocal cords results in a quality of speech sounds

called voicing.

10.English consonants can be classified in terms of place of articulation

and the part of the tongue that is raised the highest.

11.According to the manner of articulation, some of the types into which

the consonants can be classified are stops, fricatives, bilabial and alveolar.

12.Vowel sounds can be differentiated by a number of factors: the

position of tongue in the mouth, the openness of the mouth, the shape of the lips, and the length of the vowels.

13.According to the shape of the lips, vowels can be classified into close

vowels, semi-close vowels, semi-open vowels and open vowels.

14.Any sound produced by a human being is a phoneme.

15.Phones are the sounds that can distinguish meaning.

16.Phonology is concerned with how the sounds can be classified into

different categories.

17. A basic way to determine the phonemes of a language is to see if

substituting one sound for another results in a change of meaning.

18.When two different forms are identical in every way except for one

sound segment which occurs in the same place in the strings, the two words are said to form a phonemic contrast.

19.The rules governing the phonological patterning are language

specific.

20.Distinctive features of sound segments can be found running over a

sequence of two or more phonemic segments.

II.Fill in each of the following blanks with one word which begins with the letter given:

21． A ____ refers to a strong puff of air stream in the production of speech sounds.

22．A___________ phonetics describes the way our speech organs work to produce the speech sounds and how they differ.

23．The four sounds /p/,/b/,/m/ and /w/ have one feature in common, i.e, they are all b_______ sounds.

24．Of all the speech organs, the t ____ is the most flexible, and is responsible for varieties of articulation than any other.

25．English consonants can be classified in terms of manner of articulation or in terms of p_______ of articulation.

26．When the obstruction created by the speech organs is total or complete, the speech sound produced with the obstruction audibly released and the air passing out again is called a

s________.

27．S_________ features are the phonemic features that occur above the level of the segments. They include stress, tone, intonation, etc.

28．The rules that govern the combination of sounds in a particular language are called s ____ rules.

29．The transcription of speech sounds with letter-symbols only is called broad transcription while the transcription with

letter-symbols together with the diacritics is called n_________ transcription.

30．When pitch, stress and sound length are tied to the sentence rather than the word in isolation, they are collectively known as

i_________.

31．P___________ is a discipline which studies the system of sounds of a particular language and how sounds are combined into meaningful units to effect linguistic communication.

32．The articulatory apparatus of a human being are contained in three important cavities: the pharyngeal cavity, the o_______ cavity and the nasal cavity.

33．T_______ are pitch variations, which are caused by the differing rates of vibration of the vocal cords and which can distinguish meaning just like phonemes.

34．Depending on the context in which stress is considered, there are two kinds of stress: word stress and s_________ stress.

III.There are four choices following each of the statements below. Mark the choice that can best complete the statement:

35．Of all the speech organs, the _______ is/ are the most flexible.

A. mouth

B. lips

C. tongue

D. vocal cords

36．The sounds produced without the vocal cords vibrating are ____ sounds.

A. voiceless

B. voiced

C. vowel

D. consonantal

37．__________ is a voiced alveolar stop.

A. /z/

B. /d/

C. /k/

D./b/

38．The assimilation rule assimilates one sound to another by “copying” a fe ature of a sequential phoneme, thus making the two phones ____________.

A. identical

B. same

C. exactly alike

D. similar

39．Since /p/ and /b/ are phonetically similar, occur in the same environments and they can distinguish meaning, they are said to be ___________.

A. in phonemic contrast

B. in complementary distribution

C. the allophones

D. minimal pair

40．The sound /f/ is _________________.

A. voiced palatal affricate

B. voiced alveolar stop

C. voiceless velar fricative

D. voiceless labiodental fricative

41.A ____ vowel is one that is produced with the front part of the tongue

maintaining the highest position.

A. back

B. central

C. front

D. middle

42.Distinctive features can be found running over a sequence of two or

more phonemic segments. The phonemic features that occur above the level of the segments are called ____________.

A. phonetic components

B. immediate constituents

C. suprasegmental features

D. semantic features

43.A(n) ___________ is a unit that is of distinctive value. It is an

abstract unit, a collection of distinctive phonetic features.

A. phone

B. sound

C. allophone

D. phoneme

44． The different phones which can represent a phoneme in different phonetic environments are called the ____ of that phoneme.

A. phones

B. sounds

C. phonemes

D. allophones

IV. Define the terms below:

45. phonology 46. phoneme 47.allophone

48. international phonetic alphabet

49. intonation 50. phonetics 51. auditory phonetics

52. acoustic phonetics 53. phone 54. phonemic contrast 55. tone 56. minimal pair

V. Answer the following questions as comprehensively as possible. Give examples for illustration if necessary:

57.Of the two media of language, why do you think speech is more basic

than writing?

58.What are the criteria that a linguist uses in classifying vowels?

59.What are the major differences between phonology and phonetics?

60.Illustrate with examples how suprasegmental features can affect

meaning.

61.In what way can we determine whether a phone is a phoneme or not?

Suggested answers to supplementary exercises

Chapter 2 Phonology

:

I. Decide whether each of the following statements is Tr u e or False:

l.T 2.F 3.F 4.F 5.T 6.T 7.F 8.F 9.T

10.F

11.F 12.T 13.F 14.F 15.F 16. F 17. T 18. F 19. T

20. T

II.Fill in each of the following blanks with one word which begins with the letter given:

21. Aspiration 22.Articulatory 23. bilabial 24. tongue 25. place

26. stop 27. Suprasegmental 28. sequential 29. narrow 30. intonation

31. Phonology 32. oral 33. Tone 34. sentence

III.There are four choices following each of the statements below. Mark the choice that can best complete the statement:

35.C 36.A 37.B 38.D 39.A 40.D 41.C 42.C 43.D

44.D

IV. Define the terms below:

45. phonology: Phonology studies the system of sounds of a particular

language; it aims to discover how speech sounds in a lang u age form patterns and how these sounds are used to convey meaning in linguistic communication.

46.phoneme: The basic unit in phonology is called phoneme; it is a unit

of distinctive value. But it is an abstract unit. To be exact, a phoneme is not a sound; it is a collection of distinctive phonetic features.

47.allophone: The different phones which can represent a phoneme in

different phonetic environments are called the allophones of that phoneme.

48.international phonetic alphabet: It is a standardized and

internationally accepted system of phonetic transcription.

49.intonation: When pitch, stress and sound length are tied to the

sentence rather than the word in isolation,they are collectively known as intonation.

50.phonetics: Phonetics is defined as the study of the phonic medium of

language; it is concerned with all the sounds that occur in the world' s languages

51.auditory phonetics: It studies the speech sounds from the hearer's

point of view. It studies how the sounds are perceived by the hearer.

52.acoustic phonetics: It studies the speech sounds by looking at the

sound waves. It studies the physical means by which speech sounds are transmitted through the air from one person to another.

53.phone : Phones can be simply defined as the speech sounds we use when

speaking a language. A phone is a phonetic unit or segment. It does not necessarily distinguish meaning.

54.phonemic contrast: Phonemic contrast refers to the relation between

two phonemes. If two phonemes can occur in the same environment and distinguish meaning, they are in phonemic contrast.

55.tone: Tones are pitch variations, which are caused by the differing

rates of vibration of the vocal cords.

56.minimal pair: When two different forms are identical in every way

except for one sound segment which occurs in the same place in the strings, the two words are said to form a minimal pair.

V. Answer the following questions as comprehensively as possible. Give examples for illustration if necessary:

57.Of the two media of language, why do you think speech is more basic

than writing?

1)In linguistic evolution, speech is prior to writing.

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 at school.

58.What are the criteria that a linguist uses in classifying vowels?

1)Vowels may be distinguished as front, central and back in terms

of the position of the tongue in the mouth.

2)According to how wide our mouth is opened, we classify the vowels

into four groups: close vowels, semi-close vowels, semi-open vowels, and open vowels.

3)According to the shape of the lips, vowels are divided into rounded

vowels and unrounded vowels.

4)The English vowels can also be classified into long vowels and short

vowels according to the length of the sound.

59.What are the major differences between phonology and phonetics?

They differ in their approach and focus. Phonetics is of a general nature; it is interested in all the speech sounds used in all human languages: how they are produced, how they differ from each other, what phonetic features they possess, how they can be classified. Phonology, on the other hand, is interested in the system of sounds of a particular language; it aims to discover how speech sounds in a language form patterns and how these sounds are used to convey meaning in linguistic communication.

60.Illustrate with examples how suprasegmental features can affect

meaning.

1)The location of stress in English distinguishes meaning, such as

`import and im`port. The similar alternation of stress also occurs between a compound noun and a phrase consisting of the same elements.

A phonological feature of the English compounds, is that the stress

of the word always falls on the first element and the second element receives secondary stress, for example: `blackbird is a particular kind