Họ và tên: Cao Thị Sao Mai

Mã học viên: 22045257

ASSIGNMENT 1

1. Consider Charlie’s answer to the teacher in terms of phonetics and

spelling!
Teacher: Give me a sentence which includes the words defence, defeat,
detail.
Charlie: When a horse jumps over defence, defeat go first and then
detail.
Provide justifications for Charlie’s answer! What mistakes does he
commit in this response? (10 pts)
Response
I think that there is a problem with the spelling and pronunciation. Charlie
misunderstood what the teacher said and thought that it is “the fence, the feet,
the tail”. It is because of the similar phonic symbols of “defence” and “the
fence”; “defeat” and “the feet”; “detail” and “the tail”

2.
What causes problem to the man on the right? Why? (5 pts)
Response
The man on the right misunderstood the conveyed message as he mistook death
for deaf. As a result, he gave an unrelated answer. I think the cause to this
problem is because the ending sound of “death” - / θ/ and the ending sound of
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“deaf” /f/ are both fricative consonants that are made when we squeeze air
through a small hole or gap in our mouth. Or in another case, the Death forgets
to pronounce the ending souths of the word “death”, which leads to the man’s
confusion.

3. What is the mistake in the sign above? Correct it and justify your
correction! (5 pts)
Response
The mistake in the sign above lies in the line breaking, which leads to two
ways of interpretation. The first one is that vehicle is forbidden here. The
second one is this area is forbidden and vehicles can be parked here. Another
mistake is that the accent mark should be placed below the letter “a” in the
word "loại" because the accent should be placed in the main sound. These
are the spelling rules to apply when composing text
In order to correct the sign to announce its correct purpose, we do break the
line after the word “cấm”, but we can create a longer sign with full text or
break the line after the word “khu vực”

4. handkerchief is pronounced as /ˈhæŋkətʃɪf/. If isolated, hand is

pronounced as /hænd/ and kerchief as /kətʃɪf/. Why is handkerchief
pronounced as such? (5 pts)
Response
The pronunciation of “handkerchief” as /ˈhæŋkətʃɪf/ can be attributed to
the assimilation of the word. The word “hand” is pronounced as /hænd/
and “kerchief” is pronounced as /kətʃɪf/. As these two words are
combined, the ending sound /d/ of the word hand combining with the
initial sound /k/ of the word “kerchief” is assimilated to the velar sound
/g/. It is because /d/ is an alveolar sound and /k/ is a velar sound. And
when /n/ goes with /g/, the sound becomes /ŋ/.

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5. The word ga in Vietnamese is borrowed from drap, gare in French, and
gas in English, meaning bed sheet, (railway/subway) station or airport
terminal, and a kind of fuel or carbonate dissolved in some beverages,
respectively. Remember the letter ‘r’ in French represents the velar
fricative consonant [ʁ].
Why did those loan words merge as just one word ga in Vietnamese? In
this case, ga in Vietnamese is a polysemous word, or the same form of 3
homonyms? Why? (20pts)
Response
I think that the reason why those words merge as just one word ga in
Vietnamese is because there are no consonant cluster /dr/ and no word
ending with consonant /r/ in Vietnamese, so people just replace the
consonant cluster with /g/ sound and omit the ending /r/ sound. In my
opinion, those words are homonyms because there is no semantic
relations among them. Although they are pronounce the same but their
meanings are completely different.

6. Tell your students which one is the correct pronunciation of each of

these two verbs, including their stresses:
examine a. /ikzæmain/ b. /igzæmin/
determine c. /ditƏ:min/ d. /ditƏ:main/
Explain to your students the reason why these two words, including their
consonants and vowels, are pronounced as such, and why they are often
mispronounced! (Pay attention to strong and weak forms of pronunciation
in relation to stress!) (5 pts)
Response
These words are often mispronounced because they end with “mine”, which
is often pronounced as /main/ when standing alone. However, in these two
words. “mine” is not stressed so it must be pronounced in a weak form.

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 7. What do these words have in common: genocide, homicide, decide,
suicide, pesticide, insecticide, herbicide, linguicide, coincide, excide? What
does the shared element mean? Where do these words come from (i.e. how
are they formed and what are their meanings)? What parts of speech are
they? Are there any odd ones out? Why? What implications will you tell your
students from these examples in terms of English word formation and
meaning? (40 pts)
Response
As we can see, all of the words “genocide, homicide, decide, suicide, pesticide,
insecticide, herbicide, linguicide, excide” have the same element “cide” . For
“genocide, homicide, suicide, pesticide, insecticide, herbicide, linguicide”,
“cide”
plays the role of a suffix with the meaning of killing and destroying while
“cide” in decide, coincide and excide” is not the suffix but a fixed element of
these words. From my humble knowledge, “cide” comes from Latin, which is a
language that has contributed to English.
From these examples, I have learned that a new English word is created by
adding prefixes or suffixes into original words. Different prefixes or suffixes
make the meaning of the words change completely, and by looking at the
prefixes or suffixes, we can recognize the meaning of the words. For example,
the suffix “less” makes a word into the negative meaning: home -> homeless.
that English word formation is the process of creating new words by adding
prefixes
8. The bold, italicized and underlined words in the following sentences
are marked as emphatic information, and carry the sentence stress. These
sentences are definitely different in meaning. What do you think each of them
mean? (10 pts)
(i) I didn’t think John quit the job.
(ii)I didn’t think John quit the job.
(iii) I didn’t think John quit the job.
(iv) I didn’t think John quit the job.
(v) I didn’t think John quit the job.
(vi) I didn’t think John quit the job.
Response

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(i) In this sentence, “I” carries the sentence stress to emphasize the subject of
the sentence. It is my opinion that John wouldn’t quit the job but not somebody
else’s opinion.
(ii) In this sentence, “think” carries the sentence stress to emphasize the action.
The character “I” was not “sure” whether John quit the job or not
(iii) In this sentence, “John” carries the sentence stress to convey the meaning
that it’s John who quit the job, not somebody else.
(iv) In this sentence, “quit” carries the sentence stress to indicate that John
decided to quit the job on his own because he wanted to do it, not because he
was fired.
(v) In this sentence, “the” is emphasized to point out that John quit the job that
both the speaker and the listener know, not any other jobs.
(vi) In this sentence, “job” is stressed to mean that the thing John quit was the
JOB, not something else.