NAME : NAMIRAH NURUL ILMI ACHMAD

ID NUMBER : A12119056

CLASS :B

‘MID SEMESTER TEST’ ENGLISH PHONOLOGY

Create a summary of the material 1-5.

A. Unit 1 [The concept of phoneme]

Surface representation of sound is the representation of individual speech sound (or segment)
precisely as what it is heard or uttered; while underlying representation of sound is the
representation of sound at the abstract level, which might be the same as (but might also be
different from) the surface representation. Surface representations of sounds are called phones;
while the underlying representations are called phonemes. Thus, a phone is an surface and
concrete representation of speech sound, while a phoneme is the underlying and abstract
representation of the phone. A phoneme is what we store in our mind, while a phone is what we
utter with our mouth (i.e. speech organs) or what we actually hear. If the one, two, or the three
phones can be proved to be derived from one phoneme, then they are said to be allophone(s) of a
phoneme. Phonemes and Minimal Pairs, a phoneme is defined as: the underlying representation
of a speech sound of a language, a minimal contrastive sound unit of a language, and the smallest
structural unit of speech sounds that differentiates meanings. Next, The term free variation refers
to a situation where two phonemes are interchangeable in particular words without changing the
meaning of the word.

B. Unit 2 [The concept of phoneme]

Phonemes are the underlying representations of speech sounds, while allophones are the
predictable surface representations of speech sounds. Allophones are also called phonetic
realizations or phonetic variants of a phoneme. A phoneme may have one or more allophones.
Allophones of a phoneme are in complementary distribution or mutually exclusive. By
complementary distribution or mutually exclusive we mean they never occur in exactly the same
phonological environment; that is, the surrounding segments are not the same. The surrounding
segments can be the preceding segments or the following segments, or both. Two allophones can
also be called in complementary distribution or mutually exclusive if they occupy different
positions in a word. The phonology problems are normally in the forms of determining the
phonemic status of two or more phonetically similar sounds (or suspicious pairs of segments).

C. Unit 3 [Distinctive features and phonological rules]

The articulatory activities with which speech sounds are produced are called features. The
features involved in the production of /d/ are place feature (the touching of the alveolar ridge by
the tongue), manner feature (the stopping of the airflow), and laryngeal feature (voice or
vibration of the vocal cords). Features are called distinctive because they differentiate meanings.
For example, when the tongue tip touches the alveolar reach, the airflow stops for a moment
before it is released, and the vocal cords do not vibrate, the resulting sound is /t/, not /d/.
Therefore we say that voice feature is distinctive because it differentiates meanings. Features are
also effective in identifying phonemes that belong to natural classes. Phonemes are called to
belong to a natural class if they share the same feature(s). Phonemes that belong to a natural class
can be identified by using smaller number of features compared with features needed to identify
each member of the class. One of the very basic separating lines among segments is the presence
of audible obstruction on the airflow at the time a segment is uttered. If a segment is uttered
without audible obstruction or impediment on the airflow, the segment will be a vowel. And if a
segment is uttered with audible obstruction on the airflow, the segment will be a consonant. The
obstruction of airflow is the basic phonetic characteristic of consonants.

D. Unit 4 [Distinctive features and phonological rules]

There are two levels of representation in phonological analysis; the abstract level or the
underlying representation or the phonemic level, and the concrete level or the surface
representation or the phonetic level. These two levels of representation are connected by
phonological rules. The phonological rules explain how a segment at the abstract level is realized
at the surface level. As we mentioned earlier, the phonemic form of a segment at the abstract
level can be the same as or different from its phonetic form at the surface level. It is the jobs of
the phonological rules to explain why this is so. Let us take a simple example to make the
discussion concrete. (deleted word-finally)- However, this rule is inefficient because it does not
draw a generalization about the class of segments that undergoes deletion. As mentioned earlier,
a phonological process normally occurs to a natural class of segments, rather than to individual
segments. To make the rule more general and efficient, we need to find a cover term for all the
segments that undergo deletion. This is the context where phonological features are needed.
There are four things that need to be included in a phonological rule. They are the segment that
undergoes the phonological process, the result of the process, the environment where the process
takes place, and the conditioning factor. The conditioning factor can be a segment or a linguistic
boundary. There are two kinds of phonological rules: context-sensitive rules and context-free
rules. A rule is called contextsensitive if it applies when the condition is met, while a rule is
called context-free if it applies irrespective of context. Features are effective in describing a
phonological process because they can make a generalization about the class of segments
involved in the process.

E. Unit 5 [Syllable and Syllabification]

A syllable is quite easy to identify, but it is not easy to define. The speaker of a language will
have no problems breaking up a word into syllables, but s/he might have troubles defining what a
syllable is. The way this word is syllabified leads us to the assumption that the number of
syllables in a word equals the number of vowels the word contains, and that a consonant on its
own does not count as a syllable. Let us suppose for the time being that this is indeed the case
(putting aside syllabic consonants for later discussion). The term syllable is not to be confused
with the term morpheme. Kreidler (1985) points out that a syllable is a unit of speech, while a
morpheme is a unit of language. The basic difference between the two lies in the notion of
meaning and/or grammatical function. A morpheme is the smallest unit that has a meaning or a
grammatical function out of which a (bigger) word can be formed, while a syllable is a unit of
speech that has no meanings or grammatical functions. The syllable boundary of a word may
coincide with the morpheme boundary, but there is no one-to-one relation between the two. As
such, a syllable boundary may or may not be aligned with a morpheme boundary. A word may
contain two morphemes (bi-morphemic), but it consists of only one syllable (i.e. monosyllabic),
Syllable type is determined by the phonotactics of the language. Phonotactics is the way
segments are ordered in a language. As we know, segments consist of vowels and consonants.
Vowels always occupy the nucleus node, while consonants occupy the onset and coda nodes.
The term syllable type then refers particularly to whether or not a syllable requires or allows
onsets and codas, and if it does, how many segments my occur in them. On the other hand, there
are also languages that have very complex syllable types where onsets and codas can be
occupied by more than two segments each. Languages also differ in the kind of segments that
may occupy onsets and codas.