语言学第二章作业

Unit 2 The Sounds of English

I. Decide whether each of the following statements is true or false:

1 Of the three phonetics branches, the longest established one, and until recently

the most highly developed, is acoustic phonetics

2. Phones are the sounds that can distinguish meaning.

3 sound(p)in the word “spit” is an inspirited stop

4. Phonology is concerned with how the sounds can be classified into different categories.

5 super segmental phonology refers to the study of phonological properties of units

larger than the segment-phoneme, such as syllable, word and sentence

6. A basic way to determine the phonemes of a language is to see if substituting one

sound for another result in a change of meaning.

7 The airstream provided by the lungs has undergo a number of modification to acquire

the quality of a speech sound

8. When two different forms are identical in every way except for one sound segment

which occurs in the same place in the strings, the two words are said to form a phonemic contrast.

9 Two sounds are in free variation when they occur in the same environment and do

not contrast, namely, the substitution of one for the other does not produce different word, but merely a different pronunciation

10. The rules governing the phonological patterning are language specific.

11. Distinctive features of sound segments can be found running over a sequence of

two or more phonemic segments.

12. [i:] and [i] are allophones of the same phoneme.

13. Not all English phonemes have allophones.

Note: /N/ and /j/ occur in one single position and therefore do not have allophones.

14. The same set of vowels is used in all languages.

15. All syllables must contain at least one vowel.

Note: Some syllables may contain no vowels. They may, instead, employ some syllabic consonant, as in people and muscle.

16. The marking of word stress is arbitrary for the most part in English.

17. English is a tone language.

Note: Chinese is a tone language.

II. Fill in each of the following blanks with one word which begins with the letter given:

1 When pitch, stress and sound length are tied to the sentence rather than the word

in isolation, they are collectively known as i_________.

2 A _________ phonetics studies the movement of the vocal organs of producing the

sounds of speech

3 P___________ is a discipline which studies the system of sounds of a particular

language and how sounds are combined into meaningful units to effect linguistic communication.

4 speech takes place when the organs of speech move to produce patterns of sound.

There movements have an effect on the a__________ coming from the lungs

5 The articulatory apparatus of a human being are contained in three important

cavities: the pharyngeal cavity, the o_______ cavity and the nasal cavity.

6 Consonant sounds can be either v ________ or v________, while all vowel sounds are

v__________

7 T_______ is pitch variations, which are caused by the differing rates of vibration

of the vocal cords and which can distinguish meaning just like phonemes.

8 The qualities of vowels depend upon the position of the t _________and the lips

9 Depending on the context in which stress is considered, there are two kinds of