LINGUISTICS - Chapter 4 (study guide)

What is an aspirated sound, and which of the following words would normally be pronounced with one? kill, pool, skill, spool, stop, top

An aspirated sound is when speaking a word, you feel a puff of air come out. The words with aspirated sounds are kill, pool, and top.

What is the difference between an open and a closed syllable?

An open syllable contains an onset and a nucleus but not coda, whereas a closed syllable contains the onset, nucleus and the coda. Essentially an open syllable ends in a vowel and a closed syllable ends in a consonant.

Which of the following words would be treated as minimal pairs? ban, fat, pit, bell, tape, heat, meal, more, pat, tap, pen, chain, vote, bet, far, bun, goat, heel, sane, tale, vet

Ban-bun fat-pat pit-pat tape-tap tape-tale meal - heel Chain - sane vote-goat bet-vet fat-far heat-heel vet-vote bell-bet

what is meant by the phonotactics of a language?

Phonotactics are arrangements of sounds that obey constraints on the sequence of phonemes in that specific language.

Which English phoneme has the features: -voice, +velar, +stop?

The English phoneme that has these features is /k/.

Is the nasal in the everyday pronunciation of I can go alveolar or velar?

The nasal of "I can go," is velar.

In the pronunciation of track, which sound(s) would be the nucleus?

The nucleus in the word "track", would be /a/ = /æ/.

In French, the words /bo/ for beau ("handsome") and /bо̃/ for bon ("good") seem to have different vowels. Are these two vowels allophones or phonemes in French?

This is an example of phonemes because phonemes are when subsisting one phoneme for another, results in a different word. For example, like /bo/, meaning handsome, and /bо̃/, meaning good. If these words were allophones, it would be the same meaning with a different pronunciation.

Does this phrase (big black bag) contain a minimal pair, a minimal set, or Neither?

This phrase contains one minimal pair, between "big" and "bag." The difference is clearly the vowels, /i/ and /a/.

Which segments in the pronunciation of the following words are most likely to be affected by elision? (i) government (ii) postman (iii) pumpkin (iv) sandwich (v) victory

i. government = /n/ ii. postman = /t/ iii. pumpkin = /p/ iv. sandwich = /d/ v. victory = /o/