Phonology

Question 1

Phonology

Answer 1

study of the abstract categories
that organize the sound system of a language

Question 2

spectrogram

Answer 2

graphic representation of the frequency distribution of the complex jumble of sound waves that
give the hearing impression of speech sounds

Question 3

phone

Answer 3

physical realization of a speech sounds like the voiceless or the
voiced alveolar approximant

Question 4

minimal pairs

Answer 4

pair of words which
differ in only one sound, but differ in meaning
wrap and lap or
wrap and map

Question 5

phoneme

Answer 5

basic distinctive units of speech sound by which morphemes, words, and sentences are represented

Question 6

aspirated stop

Answer 6

variant of /p/ that occurs in pin

Question 7

rhotic

Answer 7

r-sounds can occur in word-final position

Question 8

non-rhotic

Answer 8

, r-sounds do not
seem to occur in word-final position

Question 9

constituents

Answer 9

elements that make up a syllable

Question 10

syllabic consonants

Answer 10

Consonants which occupy the central part of the syllable

Question 11

nucleus

Answer 11

‘slot for a vowel’

Question 12

onset

Answer 12

‘slots for consonants’, the prevocalic slot

Question 13

coda

Answer 13

postvocalic slot

Question 14

vowel epenthesis

Answer 14

technical term for the insertion of vowels into syllables

Question 15

cognates

Answer 15

descended from the same language or form

Question 16

syllabification

Answer 16

. Assigning syllable structure to words

Question 17

Maximal Onset
Principle

Answer 17

a sequence of consonants and vowels, syllabification proceeds in such a way that as many consonants as possible end up in an onset, even
if the language allows codas

Question 18

sonority

Answer 18

the category that captures our acoustic impression
of ‘clear audibility

Question 19

Sonority Sequencing
Principle

Answer 19

sounds preceding the
nucleus (i.e. onsets) must rise in sonority, and sounds following the nucleus (i.e.
codas) must fall in sonority

Question 20

allophone

Answer 20

any of the members of a class of speech sounds that, taken together, are commonly felt to be a phoneme, as the t-sounds of toe, stow, tree, hatpin, catcall, cats, catnip, button, metal, city; a speech sound constituting one of the phonetic manifestations or variants of a particular phoneme

Question 21

narrow transcription

Answer 21

if we want to analyze allophones of a particular phoneme, it is
sometimes necessary to include additional articulatory details in the transcription

Question 22

distribution

Answer 22

different positions in which a speech sound can occur or cannot occur in the words of a language

Question 23

complementary distribution

Answer 23

Two sounds are distributed in such a way that one can only occur where the other cannot occur

Question 24

released consonant

Answer 24

air pressure released after voicing p

Question 25

unreleased consonant

Answer 25

air pressure not released after voicing p