Ch. 3 Vocab & Terms

Question 1

phonology

Answer 1

the study of the distribution of sounds in a language and the interactions between those different sounds

Question 2

phonotactic consonants

Answer 2

restrictions on possible combinations of sounds

Question 3

sound substitution

Answer 3

sounds that exist in a language a speaker knows are used to replace sounds that do not exist in that language when pronouncing the words of a foreign language

Question 4

phoneme

Answer 4

a class of speech sounds that seem to be variants of the same sound

Question 5

allophone

Answer 5

member of a particular phoneme class that corresponds to an actual phonetic segments produced by speaker

Question 6

distribution

Answer 6

set of phonetic environments in which it occurs

Question 7

contrastive distribution

Answer 7

two sounds occur in the same phonetic environment; using one rather than the other changes the meaning of the word

Question 8

minimal pair

Answer 8

a pair of words whose pronunciations differ by exactly one sounds and that have different meanings

Question 9

alternation

Answer 9

difference between two (or more) phonetic forms that you might otherwise expect to be related

Question 10

complementary distribution

Answer 10

the occurrence of sounds in a language such that they are never found in the same phonetic environment

Question 11

free variation

Answer 11

term used to refer to two sounds that occur in overlapping environments but cause no distinction in the meaning of their respective words

Question 12

overlapping distribution

Answer 12

sounds that can occur in the same environment

Question 13

phonological rules

Answer 13

allows him/her to translate phonemes into actual speech sounds; forms linguistic competence

Question 14

underlying form

Answer 14

the phonemic form of a word or morpheme before phonological rules are applied

Question 15

conditioning environment

Answer 15

neighboring sounds of a give sound that cause it to undergo a change

Question 16

obstruents

Answer 16

produced with an obstruction of the airflow

Question 17

sonorants

Answer 17

segments produced with a relatively open passage for the airflow

Question 18

assimilation

Answer 18

cause a sound or gesture to become more like a neighboring sound or gesture with respect to some phonetic property

Question 19

nasal placeassimilation

Answer 19

an alveolar nasal assimilates to the place of articulation of a following consonant

Question 20

palatalization

Answer 20

refers to a special type of assimilation in which a consonant becomes like a neighboring palatal

Question 21

vowel harmony

Answer 21

a back vowel becomes front when preceded by a front vowel in the same word

Question 22

dissimilation

Answer 22

cause two close or adjacent sounds to become less similr with respect to some property, by means of a change in one or both sounds

Question 23

manner of dissimilation

Answer 23

a stop becomes a fricative when followed by another stop

Question 24

insertion

Answer 24

cause a segment not present at the phonemic level to be added to the phonetic form of a word

Question 25

voiceless stop insertion

Answer 25

between a nasal consonant and a voiceless fricative, a voiceless stop with the same place of articulation as the nasal is inserted