Homework 7: Phonetic features

Posted Wednesday October 22nd; due Tuesday October 28th.

1. More phonetic transcription

Transcribe the following sentences using the IPA. Use the phonetic symbols given in Fromkin & Rodman's textbook, and be careful to avoid being misled by the English spellings!

 

a. The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.

b. The University of Delaware is located in Newark.

c. Wilmington is on this side of Philadelphia.

d. Socks is the first cat, and performs many official functions.

2. Phonetic features

Fromkin & Rodman: Exercises 5 & 6 (p.213)

3. English plural & past tense allomorphs revisited

Recall from our discussion of morphology that there are 3 allomorphs of the English plural morpheme (-s) and three allomorphs of the English past tense morpheme (-ed). When we discussed these before we gave fairly imprecise descriptions of when the different allomorphs are used. Now, with a little phonetics under your belt, you should be able to give a much more precise account of when the different allomorphs are used.

• What are the different allomorphs of the English plural and past tense morphemes? Write the allomorphs using the IPA. (i.e. 2 morphemes x 3 allomorphs each = 6 forms)
• Give two examples of words containing each of the allomorphs, again writing them using the IPA. (i.e. 6 allomorphs x 2 forms = 12 words)
• For each of the two morphemes /-s/ and /-ed/, give a description of when the different allomorphs are used. Take advantage of the phonetic terminology that you have learned, and try to be as precise as possible. Note: in order to do this, you will need to think up a number of different words that use each of the allomorphs, pay attention to the phonetic features of their final sound, and attempt to construct a generalization based on this. Once you have come up with a generalization, you will be in a position to test it on some new words. If the generalization doesn't give the correct result, then you'll need to try again.
• Finally, you will have noticed that your descriptions of when the past tense allomorphs are used and when the plural allomorphs are used are quite similar, but not exactly the same. What is the difference, and why do you think there is this difference.

4. Extra Credit: Speech Demonstrations on the Web

Visit the following two web-sites, which contain instructional demonstrations of how speech sounds are produced and perceived. You will need to use a computer which can play sound-files. All Macintoshes will be able to do this; some, but not all, Windows PCs will be able to do this.

 

San Francisco Science Museum (Exploratorium): Vocal Vowels

 

Haskins Laboratories (New Haven, CT): Sine-Wave Speech

 

The Exploratorium demonstration gives an illustration of how vocal tract shape determines vowel sounds; the Haskins Labs demonstration shows how a (crude) version of a spoken utterance can be created by the combination of a number of different tone 'whistles' (pay particular attention to the 'Tone Combinations' page.

 

Write a brief description of what the demonstrations show, and what you learned from them.