linguistics test 2 - lecture quizzes

To make the sounds [k], [g], and [ŋ] ("-ng"), the tongue obstructs airflow at the velum.

true.

You are a linguist. You're working with people who speak an endangered language in an isolated place. The people don't like audio or video recording, so you must write down your descriptions of the language. 

 In your notes, you say that the language has a sound that is made:

• by releasing air through the lips, which are held close together but not fully closed

• by letting air rush noisily through the lips

• with vibrating vocal folds

Your note is more concise than this, however. Which of these descriptions does it use?

voiced bilabial fricative.

Imagine a language that allows CCV syllables. Which of the syllables below is most likely to be possible in the language? 

Keep in mind that in most language, the sounds closest to the nucleus tend to be the least obstructive to airflow. Sounds further from the nucleus tend to be more obstructive to airflow. (This is the Sonority Sequencing Principle).

[vjɑ]

If a loanword doesn't conform to the phonotactics of the borrowing language, some parts of the word must be deleted.

false.

Phonemes are the surface representation of our underlying, abstract representation of speech sounds.

false.

The two words "sow" and "sun" are a minimal pair in English.

false.

Look at this dataset from an artificial language. Which ONE of the word pairs below is a minimal pair?

1. [fnip] 'toy' and [fənip] 'carrot'

2. [toɾom] 'shield' and [todom] 'water'

3. [gʊluʔ] 'to try' and [gmuloʔ] 'always'

4. [hlɛfə] 'giggle' and [hɛlfə] 'paper'

[toɾom] 'shield' and [todom] 'water'

If two sounds can distinguish the meaning of two different words, they are:

phonemes.

We know that the voiced interdental fricative [ð] is an allophone of /d/ in Spanish because

[ð] only occurs between vowels, whereas [d] occurs in a wider range of environments.

A linguist is doing a phonemic analysis of a language. Her sounds of interest are [s] and [ʒ]. She examines a list of words containing these sounds and writes out the environments in which they occur. 

For the phone [s], how would the linguist notate the environments for these four words?

• [basim]

• [sigɛt]

• [fwʌsk]

• [bəʒɛg]

• a_i

• #_i

• ʌ_k

If two sounds of a language are in complementary distribution, they are allophones of the same phoneme.

true.

A first step in writing phonological rules is to list all the environments of the target sound(s) in the data.

true.

Imagine a dialect of English in which [v], [ð], [z] and [ʒ] only appear word-finally (i.e. at the ends of words).

Which of the following descriptions is the most parsimonious (i.e. maximally short while also capturing all the facts)?

Voiced fricatives appear word-finally.