[h] glottal fricative
[r] alveolar approximant
2.5 Vowels
2.5.1 The criteria of vowel description
1. The part of the tongue that is raised – front, center, or back.
2. The extent to which the tongue rises in the direction of the palate. Normally, three or four degrees are recognized: high, mid (often divided into mid-high and mid-low) and low.
3. The kind of opening made at the lips – various degrees of lip rounding or spreading.
4. The position of the soft palate – raised for oral vowels, and lowered for vowels which have been nasalized.
2.5.2 The theory of cardinal vowels
[Icywarmtea doesn’t quite understand this theory.]
Cardinal vowels are a set of vowel qualities arbitrarily defined, fixed and unchanging, intending to provide a frame of reference for the description of the actual vowels of existing languages.
By convention, the eight primary cardinal vowels are numbered from one to eight as follows: CV1[i], CV2[e], CV3[Z], CV4[a], CV5[B], CV6[C], CV7[o], CV8[u].
A set of secondary cardinal vowels is obtained by reversing the lip-rounding for a give position: CV9 – CV16. [I am sorry I cannot type out many of these. If you want to know, you may consult the textbook p. 47. – icywarmtea]
2.5.3 Vowel glides
Pure (monophthong) vowels: vowels which are produced without any noticeable change in vowel quality.
Vowel glides: Vowels where there is an audible change of quality.
Diphthong: A vowel which is usually considered as one distinctive vowel of a particular language but really involves two vowels, with one vowel gliding to the other.
2.5.4 The vowels of RP
[i:] high front tense unrounded vowel
[u] high back lax rounded vowel
[E] central lax unrounded vowel
[C] low back lax rounded vowel
2.6 Coarticulation and phonetic transcription
2.6.1 Coarticulation
Coarticulation: The simultaneous or overlapping articulation of two successive phonological units.
Anticipatory coarticulation: If the sound becomes more like the following sound, as in the case of lamp, it is known as anticipatory coarticulation.
Perseverative coarticulation: If the sound displays the influence of the preceding sound, as in the case of map, it is perseverative coarticulation.
Nasalization: Change or process by which vowels or consonants become nasal.
Diacritics: Any mark in writing additional to a letter or other basic elements.
2.6.2 Broad and narrow transcriptions
The use of a simple set of symbols in our transcription is called a broad transcription. The use of more specific symbols to show more phonetic detail is referred to as a narrow transcription. The former was meant to indicate only these sounds capable of distinguishing one word from another in a given language while the latter was meant to symbolize all the possible speech sounds, including even the minutest shades of pronunciation.
2.7 Phonological analysis
Phonetics is the study of speech sounds. It includes three main areas: articulatory phonetics, acoustic phonetics, and auditory phonetics. On the other hand, phonology studies the rules governing the structure, distribution, and sequencing of speech sounds and the shape of syllables. There is a fair degree of overlap in what concerns the two subjects, so sometimes it is hard to draw the boundary between them. Phonetics is the study of all possible speech sounds while phonology studies the way in which speakers of a language systematically use a selection of these sounds in order to express meaning. That is to say, phonology is concerned with the linguistic patterning of sounds in human languages, with its primary aim being to discover the principles that govern the way sounds are organized in languages, and to explain the variations that occur.
2.8 Phonemes and allophones
2.8.1 Minimal pairs
Minimal pairs are two words in a language which differ from each other by only one distinctive sound and which also differ in meaning. E.g. the English words tie and die are minimal pairs as they differ in meaning and in their initial phonemes /t/ and /d/. By identifying the minimal pairs of a language, a phonologist can find out which sound substitutions cause differences of meaning.
2.8.2 The phoneme theory
2.8.3 Allophones
A phoneme is the smallest linguistic unit of sound that can signal a difference in meaning. Any of the different forms of a phoneme is called its allophones. E.g. in English, when the phoneme /p/ occurs at the beginning of the word like peak /pi:k/, it is said with a little puff of air, it is aspirated. But when /p/ occurs in the word like speak /spi:k/, it is said without the puff of the air, it is unaspirated. Both the aspirated [ph] in peak and the unaspirated [p=] in speak have the same phonemic function, i.e. they are both heard and identified as /p/ and not as /b/; they are both allophones of the phoneme /p/.
2.9 Phonological processes
2.9.1 Assimilation
Assimilation: A process by which one sound takes on some or all the characteristics of a neighboring sound.
Regressive assimilation: If a following sound is influencing a preceding sound, we call it regressive assimilation.
Progressive assimilation: If a preceding sound is influencing a following sound, we call it progressive assimilation.
Devoicing: A process by which voiced sounds become voiceless. Devoicing of voiced consonants often occurs in English when they are at the end of a word.
2.9.2 Phonological processes and phonological rules
The changes in assimilation, nasalization, dentalization, and velarization are all phonological processes in which a target or affected segment undergoes a structural change in certain environments or contexts. In each process the change is conditioned or triggered by a following sound or, in the case of progressive assimilation, a preceding sound. Consequently, we can say that any phonological process must have three aspects to it: a set of sounds to undergo the process; a set of sounds produced by the process; a set of situations in which the process applies.
We can represent the process by mans of an arrow: voiced fricative → voiceless / __________ voiceless. This is a phonological rule. The slash (/) specifies the environment in which the change takes place. The bar (called the focus bar) indicates the position of the target segment. So the rule reads: a voiced fricative is transformed into the corresponding voiceless sound when it appears before a voiceless sound.
2.9.3 Rule ordering
[No much to say, so omitted – icywarmtea]
2.10 Distinctive features
Distinctive feature: A particular characteristic which distinguishes one distinctive sound unit of a language from another or one group of sounds from another group.
Binary feature: A property of a phoneme or a word which can be used to describe the phoneme or word. A binary feature is either present or absent. Binary features are also used to describe the semantic properties of words.
2.11 Syllables
Suprasegmental features: Suprasegmental features are those aspects of speech that involve more than single sound segments. The principal suprasegmental features are syllables, stress, tone, and intonation.
Syllable: A unit in speech which is often longer than one sound and smaller than a whole word.
Open syllable: A syllable which ends in a vowel.
Closed syllable: A syllable which ends in a consonant.
Maximal onset principle: The principle which states that when there is a choice as to where to place a consonant, it is put into the onset rather than the coda. E.g. The correct syllabification of the word country should be /kQn-tri/. It shouldn’t be /kQ-ntri/ or /kQnt-ri/ according to this principle.
2.12 Stress
Stress refers to the degree of force used in producing a syllable. In transcription, a raised vertical line [5] is used just before the syllable it relates to.
End of Chapter 2
Chapter 3 Lexicon
3.1 What is word?
1. What is a lexeme?
A lexeme is the smallest unit in the meaning system of a language that can be distinguished from other similar units. It is an abstract unit. It can occur in many different forms in actual spoken or written sentences, and is regarded as the same lexeme even when inflected. E.g. the word “write” is the lexeme of “write, writes, wrote, writing and written.”
2. What is a morpheme?
A morpheme is the smallest unit of language in terms of relationship between expression and content, a unit that cannot be divided into further smaller units without destroying or drastically altering the meaning, whether it is lexical or grammatical. E.g. the word “boxes” has two morphemes: “box” and “es,” neither of which permits further division or analysis shapes if we don’t want to sacrifice its meaning.
3. What is an allomorph?
An allomorph is the alternate shapes of the same morpheme. E.g. the variants of the plurality “-s” makes the allomorphs thereof in the following examples: map – maps, mouse – mice, ox – oxen, tooth – teeth, etc.
4. What is a word?
A word is the smallest of the linguistic units that can constitute, by itself, a complete utterance in speech or writing.
3.1.1 Three senses of “word”
1. A physically definable unit
2. The common factor underlying a set of forms
3. A grammatical unit
3.1.2 Identification of words
1. Stability
Words are the most stable of all linguistic units, in respect of their internal structure, i.e. the constituent parts of a complex word have little potential for rearrangement, compared with the relative positional mobility of the constituents of sentences in the hierarchy. Take the word chairman for example. If the morphemes are rearranged as * manchair, it is an unacceptable word in English.
2. Relative uninterruptibility
By uninterruptibility, we men new elements are not to be inserted into a word even when there are several parts in a word. Nothing is to be inserted in between the three parts of the word disappointment: dis + appoint + ment. Nor is one allowed to use pauses between the parts of a word: * dis appoint ment.
3. A minimum free form
This was first suggested by Leonard Bloomfield. He advocated treating sentence as “the maximum free form” and word “the minimum free form,” the latter being the smallest unit that can constitute, by itself, a complete utterance.
3.1.3 Classification of words
1. Variable and invariable words
In variable words, one can find ordered and regular series of grammatically different word form; on the other hand, part of the word remains relatively constant. E.g. follow – follows – following – followed. Invariable words refer to those words such as since, when, seldom, through, hello, etc. They have no inflective endings.
2. Grammatical words and lexical words
Grammatical words, a.k.a. function words, express grammatical meanings, such as, conjunctions, prepositions, articles, and pronouns, are grammatical words.
Lexical words, a.k.a. content words, have lexical meanings, i.e. those which refer to substance, action and quality, such as nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs, are lexical words.
3. Closed-class words and open-class words
Closed-class word: A word that belongs to the closed-class is one whose membership is fixed or limited. New members are not regularly added. Therefore, pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions, articles, etc. are all closed items.
Open-class word: A word that belongs to the open-class is one whose membership is in principle infinite or unlimited. Nouns, verbs, adjectives and many adverbs are all open-class items.
4. Word class
This is close to the notion of parts of speech in traditional grammar. Today, word class displays a wider range of more precisely defined categories. Here are some of the categories newly introduced into linguistic analysis.
(1) Particles: Particles include at least the infinitive marker “to,” the negative marker “not,” and the subordinate units in phrasal verbs, such as “get by,” “do up,” “look back,” etc.
(2) Auxiliaries: Auxiliaries used to be regarded as verbs. Because of their unique properties, which one could hardly expect of a verb, linguists today tend to define them as a separate word class.
(3) Pro-forms: Pro-forms are the forms which can serve as replacements for different elements in a sentence. For example, in the following conversation, so replaces that I can come.
A: I hope you can come.
B: I hope
