Chapter 2 (2.6-2.8): Phonetics

Question 1

simple vowels

Answer 1

do not show a noticeable change in quality during articulation (set, cat, but)

Question 2

diphthongs

Answer 2

exhibit a change in quality within a single syllable, transcribed as vowel-glide sequences

Question 3

major diphthongs

Answer 3

change in articulation is extreme (buy, boy, now)

Question 4

minor diphthongs

Answer 4

change in position of articulators is less dramatic (say, grow)

Question 5

tense vowels

Answer 5

produced with greater vocal tract constriction than non-tense vowels (heat, shoot, lock)

Question 6

lax vowels

Answer 6

has the same tongue position as tense vowels but with less constricted articulation (hit, met, should)

Question 7

schwa

Answer 7

lax, reduced, vowel, briefer vowel than any other

Question 8

metathesis

Answer 8

• process that reorders a sequence of segments to typically make it easier to articulate
• often used by children to make words easier to say

Question 9

vowel reduction

Answer 9

the articulation of vowels moving to a more central position when the vowels are unstressed, typically outcome of vowel reduction is a schwa

Question 10

pitch

Answer 10

• auditory property of a sound that goes on a scale of low to high
• combination of tensed vocal folds and greater air pressure results in higher pitch on vowels and sonorant consonants, vise versa for lower pitch

Question 11

tone

Answer 11

• Not absolute but relative pitches
• A language is said to have tone or be a tone language

Question 12

register tones

Answer 12

level tones that signal different meanings (2 or 3 is the norm in most languages)

Question 13

contour tones

Answer 13

moving pitches that signal different meanings

Question 14

intonation

Answer 14

Pitch movement in spoken utterances that are not related to differences in word meaning

Question 15

terminal contour

Answer 15

falling intonation at the end of an utterance

Question 16

nonterminal contour

Answer 16

rising or level intonation often signals incompleteness

Question 17

downdrift

Answer 17

maintaining the distinction among the pitch registers even as the overall pitch of the utterance falls

Question 18

length

Answer 18

many languages have vowels and consonants whose articulation takes longer relative to that of other vowels and consonants

Question 19

stress

Answer 19

cover term for the combined effects of pitch, loudness, and length
Primary (most prominent, marked by an acute accent) and secondary stress (marked by a grave accent)

Question 20

coarticulation

Answer 20

when more than one articulator is active

Question 21

processes

Answer 21

articulatory adjustments that occur during the production of connected speech
They change the nature of the individual segment

Question 22

assimilation

Answer 22

result from the influence of one segment on another, always results in a sound becoming more like another nearby sound

Question 23

regressive assimilation

Answer 23

the nasality moving backward to a preceding segment, the preceding segment taking on the nasality of the following consonant

Question 24

progressive assimilation

Answer 24

the nasality moving forward from the nasal consonant

Question 25

devoicing

Answer 25

kind of assimilation bc the vocal folds are not set in motion immediately after the release of the voiceless consonant closure

Question 26

flapping

Answer 26

process where a dental or alveolar stop articulation changes to a flap articulation

Question 27

dissimilation

Answer 27

results in two sounds becoming less alike in articulatory or acoustic terms

Question 28

deletion

Answer 28

process that removes a segment from certain phonetic contexts

Question 29

epenthesis

Answer 29

process that inserts a syllabic or nonsyllabic segment within an existing string of segments