Week 4, Phonetics Part 5

Question 1

Where is the jod [j] dropped in American English?

Answer 1

after a word intial alveolar consonant

Question 2

What did William Labov examine?

Answer 2

[r] pronounciation in NYC

Question 3

What factors did William Labov focus on when examing [r] prononuciation?

Answer 3

1. Social class
2. Attention to speech
3. Linguistic context of variation

Question 4

When does [r] get dropped in NYC dialect?

Answer 4

in the word final position and when the [r] precedes another consonant

Question 5

What is the view of [r] pronounciation in NYC?

Answer 5

[r] pronunication viewed as prestigious, while dropping the [r] is associated with lower social classes

Question 6

Explain William Labov’s study

Answer 6

Labov went to three different department stores: Saks (expensive), Macy’s (mid-range), and Klein’s (low prices)

At each store Labov asked for the location of something for sale on the fourth floor

In the word fourth, [r] precede another consonant and floor has [r] in word-final position– environment where the [r] is droppable in NYC

Examined how they pronounced it in two contexts: in casual speech and in careful speech

Did so by asking “excuse me” so they’d repeat it again more carefully

Question 7

What were the general findings of Labov’s study?

Answer 7

The dropping of [r] is a marker of the speech of people lower on the socioeconomic ladder, but is not better or worse than keeping the [r]

Question 8

What was Labov’s second experiment?

Answer 8

Looked at people from the upper middle, low middle, upper working, middle working, lower working, and lower class

Looked at the way [r] was realized in four contexts: casual speech, formal speech, reading style, word lists

Question 9

What were the findings of Labov’s second study?

Answer 9

For all class, the use of [r] increases as level of formality increases

For the lower working class and lower class, the realization of [r] before another consonant is almost at 0 (even in the most careful context, the [r] is not realization)

Question 10

What is received pronunciation (RP)?

Answer 10

RP is the prestige dialect in Great Britian, in which the [r] is dropped

opposite of NYC

Question 11

What did Peter Trudgill study and what were the results?

Answer 11

Looked at how people from different socioeconomic class pronounced [r] in England

Found relationship between realization of [r] and social class

Question 12

Phonology

Answer 12

the linguistic knowledge a speaker has of the sound patterns that are possible in a language (i.e. how speech sounds are organized in different languages)

Question 13

Example: Why is the word “pan” pronounced differntly when on its own versus the way it’s pronounced in “pancake” or “panbread”

Answer 13

1. In the word pancake, the final n immediately precedes a velar constant [k]
2. When pan is pronounced by itself, you get the alveolar nasal but becomes velar in in pancakes because it precedes a velar nasal
3. In pan bread, the final alveolar nasal of pan is realized as a bilabial nasal when it immediately precede a bilabial stop

Question 14

Does sign language have phonetics?

Answer 14

Yes, just like spoken languages differ in their phonetic inventories, sign languages differ in the hand shapes that are permissible

In spoken language, the individual sounds in a word are meaningless

The individual handshapes in sign language are meaningless

Question 14

Four features that distinguish signs

Answer 14

1. Handshape
2. Place of articulation
3. Movement
4. Palm orientation

Question 15

Features of phonology in sign language (4)

Answer 15

1. Direction
2. Repetition
3. Handshape
4. Placement

When certain signs occurs in certain phonetic environment, that affects the realization of that sign