Midterm 2 Study Guide
I. IPA Given a word, you should be able to sound it out in your head and pick (from four choices) the best (standard american english) IPA transcription for that word.
Examples:
What is the best IPA transcription for the word ‘dog’: a) d̠ʒɔg c) dɔg b) dog d) ɖɔg
What is the best IPA transcription for the word ‘sing’: a) ʃing c) ʃɪŋ b) sing d) sɪŋ
Some key differences to know:
● Difference between /s/ and /z/ and /ʃ/ ● Difference between /ɪ/ and /i/ ● Difference between /θ/ and /ð/ ● Difference between /æ/, /o/, and /e/
II. Minimal Pairs
● A bit of explanation: Languages lump together certain sounds. In other words, they don’t make use of the fact that the sounds are different. For instance, you cannot h h create a new English word by replacing a /p/ with a /p / . If you said /æp l/ instead of /æpl/, people would still recognize the word as “apple”. By contrast, you *can* create a new English word by replacing a /p/ with a /k/--- if you say /ækl/ people would probably ask you what an “akkle” is. A minimal pair is a way of detecting that a language does in fact distinguish between two sounds.
● Crucial definition: A minimal pair is a pair of words which differ in meaning, but which differ in exactly ONE sound.
● Crucial warning: Do not be thrown off by spelling! “Few” and “view” form a minimal pair, but this isn’t obvious from the spelling! “Foot” and “boot” may look like a minimal pair from the spelling, but the vowel sounds are actually different!
● You should be able to recognize whether or not two words form a minimal pair.
● You should be able to explain what a minimal pair demonstrates.
h ● For example, if we give you the Hindi words /t aal/ (=”beat”) and /taal/ (=”plate”), you should be able to recognize that we have given you a minimal pair, since they have different meanings and differ only in the aspiration of the initial consonant. You should h also be able to tell us that this minimal pair shows that Hindi distinguishes /t/ and /t /. Midterm 2 Study Guide
III. Properties of Consonants
● There are three dimensions that make up the properties of a particular consonant: ○ Its place on the x-axis ■ examples: bilabial vs. dental ○ Its manner on the y-axis ■ examples: nasal vs. stop ○ Its voicing ■ voiced vs. voiceless ● Conceptually, we can change a word by changing one property at a time ● Let’s say we want to go from ‘bill’ to ‘tin’ we can do this in the following steps:
1. bill →voicing pill 2. pill → x-axis till 3. till → y-axis tin ● For the exam: you’ll be asked to come up with a process like this ● For example: ‘map’ to ‘cap’ ○ For example: ‘tan’ to ‘man’
tæn → x-axis pæn → voicing bæn → y-axis mæn
● Changing the x-axis from Coronal to Labial ● Changing the voicing from voiceless to voiced ● Changing the y-axis from Stop to Nasal ● You’ll be provided with an IPA chart
IV. Dialects
For the exam, we will be asking you about rhoticity: non-rhotic vs. rhotic varieties of English.
● In rhotic varieties of English, the /r/ sound is preserved in all pronunciation contexts. ○ Rhotic varieties of English examples: ■ Urban English ■ Pacific North/Southwestern English ■ Midland English ● In non-rhotic varieties of English, /r/ is pronounced only when it immediately precedes a vowel (so when it is immediately after a vowel and not followed by another vowel). This can be represented via the following rule: Midterm 2 Study Guide
○ Non-Rhotic Rule: /r/ → /ə/ ‘uh’, when no vowel comes after it. ○ Non-Rhotic varieties of English examples: ■ Boston English ■ Southern English ■ British English ● R-drop: only occurs when /r/ follows a vowel: e.g. ‘car’ ○ Saying the /r/ is dropped isn’t exactly true; it is actually transformed (rather then ‘dropped’) into a /ə/ or ‘uh’ sound: e.g. ‘poor’ isn’t pronounced a ‘poo’ but ‘poouh’ ○ R-retention: /r/ is retained in words like ‘parrot’ and ‘road’ because /r/ is followed by a vowel ● Intrusive-r: /r/ is inserted between two vowels which can be represented by the following rule: ○ # → r / V__V (where # means ‘null’ and V__V means between 2 vowels) ○ Examples: ■ /spa on/ → ‘spa(r) on’ ■ /cuba is/ → ‘cuba(r) is’
V. Language families
● Definitions you should know: 1. We say that languages are related when they share a common ancestor. 2. Language family = a group of related languages. 3. Isolate = a language which isn’t known to be related to any other
We will NOT ask you to classify languages based on data, i.e. nothing like that homework assignment. But we WILL ask you to demonstrate that you understand the crucial concepts. To do that, you should memorize some examples.
● One CANNOT determine relatedness by looking at: 1. Influence/borrowing a. e.g. Yiddish (Indo-European family) is influenced by Hebrew (Afro-Asiatic family) 2. Geographical closeness a. e.g. English and Hindi (both Indo-European) are spoken far apart b. Spanish (Indo-European) and Basque (an isolate) are both spoken in Spain 3. Writing system a. e.g. Urdu (Indo-European) and Arabic (Afro-Asiatic) share a script, while Hindi (also Indo-European) has a completely different script
● If, hypothetically, a misguided animal were to claim that two languages are related because they share a writing system/are spoken near each other, you should be able to give examples of languages which show that this isn’t so!
Midterm 2 Study Guide
● You memorize the names of at least three language families and be able to give at least one example of a language from each of them. (You can reuse the examples that you memorize in order to be able to respond to fluffy animals.)
● For reference, here are a few language families that we think will be relatively easy to memorize. But there are lots of others on the slides which you are welcome to pick from. ○ Indo-European: You can remember this one because it includes most of the languages of Northern India and most of the languages of Europe.1 English, Hindi, and Urdu would be good examples to know, though there are many others in the lecture slides. ○ Sino-Tibetan: Here again, the name of the family can guide your memory. Examples include Mandarin and Cantonese. ○ Algonquian: This is one of the larger language families of North America. Examples include Ojibwe, Wampanoag, and Massachusett. ○ Afro-Asiatic: These languages are common in North Africa and the Middle East. Examples include Arabic, Hebrew, Somali, and Hausa.
● In addition to the above, you should also memorize a couple examples of language isolates, e.g. Basque and Ainu.
Just a point of clarification: You might be feeling confused if you’ve heard that Italian is a Romance language or that Arabic is a Semitic language. Why are we saying that Italian is Indo-European and Arabic is Afro-Asiatic? This is because Semitic is a subfamily of Afro-Asiatic and Romance is a subfamily of Indo-European.
VI. History of English ● Case: marking on nouns that reflects its role in a sentence. ● Old English vs. Contemporary English for Case ○ The four cases in Old English: ■ Nominative (associated with subjects) ● in Modern English: I/he/she jumped ■ Accusative (associated with objects) ● in Modern English: I/he/she saw me/him/her ■ Dative (associated with indirect objects) ● same as accusative in Modern English: I/she/he gave me/him/her a book ■ Genitive (associated with possessors) ● in Modern English: I/he/she saw my/his/her cat ○ Contemporary English do not distinguish between Accusative and Dative Cases ● Middle English vs Contemporary English for pronouns
1 WARNING: This is a useful memory trick but don’t forget that language family ≠ geography! Non-Indo-European languages are spoken in both India and Europe, and Indo-European languages are also spoken elsewhere (notably Iran and surrounding countries). Similar warnings apply to the other language families. Midterm 2 Study Guide
○ Middle English includes: thou, thee, thy pronouns, which are not in Contemporary English -- No 2nd person singular pronouns in Contemporary English ○ Contemporary English deals with this removal of 2nd person singular pronouns with the addition ‘you all’, ‘y’all’, etc. ● Number neutral ‘they’ ○ Not new: It's been used throughout the history of Modern English in situations when the gender of the referent was unknown. ○ ‘They’ used in Middle English: 1150 CE to around 1450 ○ What is new: using it in situations where speaker is aware of the gender of the referent but choose not to include that information in their utterance, instead saying “they”. ■ “I met with a friend for lunch today. They go to Hampshire.” ○ So the only change is a rather small semantic one; no new word needs to be learned.
VII. Writing Systems
● There is a lot of information on the slides that you don’t need to know for the exam. ● Absolutely crucial: writing ≠ language! ● You should be able to explain why writing ≠ language to a misguided fluffy animal, using examples. ● For instance, you should know that even though Hebrew writing has no symbols for vowels2, the language is still spoken with vowels. ● You should understand that there are different kinds of writing systems and you should memorize the following ones: 1. logographic/idiographic/pictographic writing: a writing system whose symbols represent whole words or morphemes3 2. phonographic writing: a writing system which represents pronounciation 3. alphabet: a phonographic system which includes vowels 4. abjad: a phonographic system which does NOT represent vowels (the reader has to deduce them) 5. abugida: a phonographic system which does NOT represent “default” (=predictable) vowels but DOES include others which a reader couldn’t easily deduce ● On the exam, we might ask you to use this knowledge. For instance, if we tell you that some language has a word pronounced /ibət/ which is written “ibt”, you should be able to recognize that this language is being written with an abugida whose default vowel is /ə/.
2 This is only really true of traditional Hebrew–– Modern Hebrew writing has some symbols for vowels. But you don’t need to worry about that for the exam. 3 Logograms, idiograms, and pictograms are not precisely the same thing but we’re not going to ask you about the differences. (A morpheme, by the way, is a word, prefix, suffix, etc).