Study questions

1 What is the difference between a phoneme and an allophone?

2 What is an aspirated sound and which of the following words would normallybe pronounced with one:kill, pool, skill, spool, stop, top?

3 Which of the following words would be treated as minimal pairs?ban, fat, pit, bell, tape, heat, meal, more, pat, tap, pen, chain, vote, bet, far, bun,goat, heel, sane, tale, vet

4 What is meant by the phonotactics of a language?

5 What is the difference between an open and a closed syllable?

6 Which segments in the pronunciation of the following words are most likely tobe affected by elision?(i)government(ii)postman(iii)pumpkin(iv)sandwich(v)victory

Tasks

A What are diacritics and which ones were used in this chapter to identifysounds?

B In the phonology of Hawaiian there are only open syllables. Using this information,can you work out how English “Merry Christmas” became “Mele Kalikimaka”for people in Hawai’i? Also, based on this slender evidence, which two Englishconsonants are probably not phonemes in Hawaiian?

C The wordcentralhas a consonant cluster (-ntr-) in the middle and two syllables.What do you think is the best way to divide the word into two syllables (ce+ntral,centr+al,cen+tral,cent+ral) and why?

D Individual sounds are described as segments. What are suprasegmentals?

E The English wordslessonandlittleare typically pronounced with syllabicconsonants.

(i) What exactly is a syllabic consonant and how would it appear in aphonetic transcription?

(ii) Which of these words would most likely be pronounced with a syllabicconsonant:bottle, bottom, button, castle, copper, cotton, paddle, schism,wooden?

F A general distinction can be made among languages depending on theirbasic rhythm, whether they have syllable-timing or stress-timing. How are thesetwo types of rhythm distinguished and which type characterizes thepronunciation of English, French and Spanish?