Study guide for the final exam, June 14 , 2010

1. What's the difference between phonetics and phonology?

2. The difference between phonetic (narrow) and phonemic (broad) transcription.
3. The position of vocal cords/vocal folds for voiced and voiceless sounds.
4. What's the difference between the voicing in sonorants and obstruents?
5. Know the phonetic symbols for the English sounds, be able to give at least one word in which the
sound occurs, as an example.
6. Given a phonetic symbol, be able to say if a given English consonant is voiced or voiceless (laterals,
rhotics, nasals, glides are always voiced by spontaneous voicing, remaining consonants may be
either voiced or voiceless), describe the manner of articulation and place of articulation.
7. Given a phonetic symbol, be able to say if a given English vowel is high/mid/low, front/central/back,
round/not round, short/long, tense/lax.
8. Understand the following terms: external intercostals, spontaneous voicing, voiced, voiceless,
bilabial, labio-dental, interental, alveolar, palato-alveolar, palatal, velar, glottal, stops, fricatives,
affricates, rhotics, liquids, laterals, trill, tap/flap, semivowel/approximant/glide, nasal stops/nasals.
9. Be able to decide if a given word category is usually stressed or not.
10. Be able to decide if a given word in a given sentence is typically realized in its strong or weak form.
11. Be able to mark obligatory aspiration of /p, t, k/, allophones of voiceless stops in word-final position
(preglottalized unreleased stop and glottal stop), devoicing of obstruents, complete devoicing of
sonorants (after a voiceless stop in a stressed syllable,etc), flapping in American English, lack of
release, lateral release, nasal release of stops, assimilation of bilabials to labiodentals, assimilation of
alveolars to dentals, /t,d, n/ retraction before /r/, fronting and retraction of velars in the context of
front/back vowels, dark/clear /l/, presence or absence of /r/ in non-rhotic dialects, realizations of
regular plural and past tense morphemes.
12. Say if two sounds in English are two separate phonemes or two allophones of one phoneme.
13. What is the phonemic principle?
14. What is the complementary distribution, parallel (overlapping) distribution, free variation? Be able
to give examples from English.
15. What is Canadian Raising, what is the environment for Canadian Raising?
16. Be familiar with terms: distribution, parallel/overlapping distribution, free variation, complementary
distribution, distinctive feature, natural class, coronal, anterior, continuant, delayed release, input,
output, trigger, rule context, rule environment, rule format, epenthesis/insertion.
17. Be able to say if two given sounds of English are in complementary or overlapping/parallel
distribution.
18. Be able to say if two given sound of English are two separate phonemes or two allophones of one
phoneme.
19. Be able to indicate minimal pairs.
20. Give examples of English sounds appearing in free variation.
21. Describe a natural class of sounds in terms of features - using provided feature tables.
22. Using distinctive features, how do you distinguish between:
- vowels and consonants
- nasals and other sonorant consonants
- laterals and other sonorant consonants
- rhotics and other sonorant consonants
- stops and affricates
- stops and fricatives
- alveolar and palatoalveolar sounds
- high, mid, and low vowels
23. Be able to indicate input, output, environment/trigger/context of a rule.
24. Be able to rewrite a rule stated in prose into a rule format.
25. Rule of nasal assimilation in English (negative prefix rule: what changes into what in which
environment and why do we assume that?)
26. Regular past tense generalization.
27. Flapping rule.
28. What is the sequence of the application of Flapping and Canadian Raising (the example we
discussed in class)
29. What are the criteria of rule ‘goodness’?
30. Nasal assimilation in English in the negative prefix in- (its UR, SR, the rule in terms of segments, the
environments).
31. Post-lexical Palatalization in English (be able to give examples; given examples, be able to name the
rule; what is the input, output and the environment of the rule in terms of phonemes?)
32. Lexical Palatalization in English (be able to give examples; given examples, be able to name the
rule; what is the input, output and the environment of the rule in terms of phonemes?)
33. J-deletion (given examples, be able to name the rule; what is the input, output and the environment
of the rule in terms of phonemes?)
34. Spirantization in English (be able to give examples; given examples, be able to name the rule; what
is the input, output and the environment of the rule in terms of phonemes?)
35. The interaction of Lexical Palatalization with Spirantization (given the examples, be able to identify
the necessary rules, postulate the UR and write out the derivation)
36. Velar Softening (be able to give examples; given examples, be able to name the rule; what is the
input, output and the environment of the rule in terms of phonemes?)
37. The interaction of Lexical Palatalization and Velar Softening (given the examples, be able to identify
the necessary rules, postulate the UR and write out the derivation)
38. N-deletion in “damn-damnation” and Non-coronal deletion in “bomb-bombing, long-longer” (give
examples; given example, be able to name the rule)
39. Constituents of the syllable (given a word, identify the onset, nucleus, rhyme and coda of the
syllable; pay special attention to the status of syllabic consonants)
40. What is Onset Maximization Principle?
41. Which sounds are most sonorous, which – least sonorous? (sonority scale)
42. The distribution of the dark and clear /l/ in terms of the syllable constituents.
43. The presence/absence of the realized rhotic in r-dropping (non-rhotic) dialects of English (in terms
of syllable constituents): be able to say when /r/ is pronounced and when not, and why.