Linguistic

Chapter5

Phonology is essentially the description of the systems and patterns of speech
sounds in a language.
Phoneme is the single sound type which came to be represented by a single written symbol.
Phonemic distinctions in a language can be tested via pairs and sets of words.
A syllable must contain a vowel (or vowel-like) sound. The most common type
of syllable in language also has a consonant (C) before the vowel (V) and is
typically represented as CV. Technically, the basic elements of the syllable are
the onset (one or more consonants) and the rhyme. The rhyme (sometimes
written as rime) consists of a vowel, which is treated as the nucleus, plus any
following consonant(s), described as the coda.
When two words such as pat and bat are identical in form except for a contrast
in one phoneme, occurring in the same position, the two words are described
as a minimal pair
When a group of words can be differentiated, each one from the others, by
changing one phoneme (always in the same position in the word), then we have
a minimal set. For example, one minimal set based on the vowel phonemes of
English could include feat, fit, fat, fate, fought, foot, and another minimal set
based on consonant phonemes could have big, pig, rig, fig, dig, wig.

The process of making one sound almost at the same
time as the next sound is called co-articulation. There are two well-known
co-articulation effects, described as assimilation and elision.
This process of not pronouncing a sound segment that
might be present in the deliberately careful pronunciation of a word in isolation
is described as elision.
When two sound segments occur in sequence and some aspect of one segment is
taken or copied by the other, the process is known as assimilation


1 What is the difference between an allophone and a phoneme?Substituting one phoneme for another changes the pronunciation and meaning and subsitituting one allophone for another changes the pronunciation for the same word
2 What is an aspirated sound?its a pronunciation with a stronger puff of air.
3 Which of the following words would be treated as minimal pairs?
ban bun, fat pat, fat far, pit pat, bell bet, tape tale, heat heel, meal heel,
chain sane, vote goat.
4 What is meant by the phonotactics of a language?It's a group of restrictions. and they are the permitted arrangements of sounds which obey constraints on the sequence and ordering of phonemes in a language.
5 What is the difference between an open and a closed syllable?Open syllables has an onset and nucleous but not coda is toy say finishes in vowel.A closed syllable has a coda and finishes in coda is toy say in consonant
6 Which segments in the pronunciation of the following words are most likely
to be affected by elision?
(a) government /n/(b) postman /t/(c) pumpkin /p/(d) sandwich/d/