File 3.2

Question 1

phonotactic restriction of english

Answer 1

• [ŋ] cannot occur at the beginning of a word

Question 2

when the voicing differences are MEANINGFUL

Answer 2

Changing the sound from voiced to voiceless (or vice versa) changes the word produced.
Because of this, we cannot predict where either of these sounds will occur in a word

Question 3

when the voicing differences are NOT meaningful

Answer 3

Changing which sound is produced will not change the meaning of the word
- [t], [ɾ], and [ʔ] sounds are not meaningful in English

Question 4

aspiration

Answer 4

• puff of air that occurs when saying a particular sound
• it is transcribed with a superscripted [ʰ]
• aspiration never makes a difference in the meanings of English words

Question 5

the difference between phonetics and phonology

Answer 5

physically (articulatorily and acoustically), there are four different sounds, but at some psychological level1 these are all the same sound to a native speaker

Question 6

noncontrastive

Answer 6

interchanging two sounds does not result in a change of meaning

Question 7

contrastive

Answer 7

replacing one sound with the other in a word can change the word’s meaning

Question 8

phoneme

Answer 8

A set of speech sounds that are perceived to be variants of the same sound

sound given in slashes (/t/) is a phoneme (a psychological category)

Question 9

allophone

Answer 9

Each member of a particular phoneme set is called an allophone, which corresponds to an actual phonetic segment produced by a speaker

that is, the various ways that a phoneme is pronounced are called allophones

a sound given in square brackets ([tʰ]) (a phonetic segment)

the allophones of a phoneme are directly observable in a stream of speech

Question 10

the distribution of a phone

Answer 10

is the set of phonetic environments in which it occurs, that is, the sounds that come before and after it in a word

Question 11

contrastive distribution

Answer 11

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

minimal pair

Question 12

minimal pair

Answer 12

two words (with different meanings) whose pronunciations differ by exactly one sound

If you find a minimal pair, you know that the two sounds that differ are contrastive in that language

Question 13

complementary distribution

Answer 13

sounds that are in complementary distribution do not occur in the same phonetic environments—their distributions complement each other

no minimal pair

Question 14

free variation

Answer 14

you can not predict exactly which sound will occur, but the choice does not affect the meaning of the word
- allophones of the same phoneme