1. An approximate parallel between phonemes and letters was first established by the Greek
alphabet.
2. In 1755, Samuel Jonson’s dictionary was published, which contributed to the setting of
English spelling.
3. Distinctively American spellings such as color, center, traveller, were proposed in 1828 by
Noah Webstern.
4. Broad and narrow transcriptions correspond to what we call phonemic and phonetic
transcriptions.
5. The character of Prof. Higgins (a pronunciation instructor) appears in G.B. Shaw’s play
Pigmalion.
6. Daniel Johns and A.C. Gimson are the two leading British phoneticians of the XXth Century.
7. From a structuralist point of view, the phoneme is an abstract distinctive unit of speech
which many produce functional contrastive pairs.
8. The alternative realizations of the same phoneme in different environments are called
allophones.
9. Give me an example of a minimal pair: heel/feel- pull/poll
10. Right/Write and brake/break are homophones whereas heel/feel and pull/poll are minimal
pairs.
11.Example of two sounds which produce minimal pairs in English but not in Spanish.
12.Spanish learners often show epenthetic /e/ in the pronunciation of words like Spanish or
stop.
13. Transcribe how a Spanish speaker would typically produce these words, showing two
problems of each one: squash-castle-island-texts-empty-vegetable.
14. Two or more consonant phonemes with no vowel between them in one syllable are known
as clusters.
15. The letters RP stand for Received Pronunciation.
16. Dialectal borders are represented on maps by means of lines called isoglosses.
17. A typically GenAm pronunciation of dance, knew would be/dæns/, /nu:/.
18. Those accents with postvocalic /r/ sounds in far or birth are considered rhotic accents.
19. Give two examples of non-rhotic geographic accents: RP, NRP, Estuary English.
20. As opposed to vowels, consonants are not the nucleus of syllables. Give two exceptions
(not /j/, /w/): bottle, button, little.
21. Transitions from one vocalic sound to another (including the approximants /j,w/) are in
general called glides.
22. Give three examples of centric diphthongs in RP: /ɪə/, / eə/, /ʊə/.
23. Speech sounds as physical phenomenon, isolated from articulation, are dealt with by
acoustic phonetics.
24. Intonation, stress, tempo and other prosodic features are suprasegmental elements of
analysis.
25. The amplitude of vibration, perceived as stress or prominence (or “volume”) is called
loudness.
26. In auditory terms, Spanish learners of English vowels have to exercise different degrees of
tolerance.
27. The perception of our own organs in articulation is called kinesthetic information.
28. A spectrogram is a graph used in acoustic phonetics reflecting frequencies of sounds,
which is a basic tool in the development of speech synthesis and voice recognition.
29. We lower the soft palate for the articulation of nasal sounds.
30. Those diagrams showing the fold of vocal cords are called parametric diagrams.
31. Locate the following speech organs in the pictures below: upper lip, alveolar ridge, soft
palate, glottis, uvula, tongue tip.
31. Those sounds which are produced without vibration in the vocal folds are called voiceless
sounds.
32. Fortis voiceless plosive consonants tend to shorten preceding vowels. This is called prefortis clipping.
33. In final position, the voiced/voiceless contrast between /p-b/ “rope-robe”, /k-g/ pick-pig,
/t-d/ heart-hard often becomes neutralized, and we rather need the fortis/lenis one,
because those consonants are unreleased.
34. The signs added to phonemic symbols indicating length, nasalization, etc, are called
diacritics.
35. Many speakers, particularly in GenAm, drop the /j/ in reduce or news. This is called yod
dropping.
36. The frequent presence of centring diphthong before /l/ and /r/ is due to a process called
breaking.
37. Phonemes do not happen just anywhere or randomly. The way they can be joined and
located is ruled by phonotactics.
38. Locate the following speech organs in the pictures below: upper lip, alveolar ridge, soft
palate, glottis, uvula, tongue tip.
39. Say which RP vocalic sounds are reflected in the diagram above.
40. Define /ʊ/ using 4 features: short, central-back / back, close – close mid, rounded.
41. Define /ɑ:/ using 4 features: long, back, open, unrounded.
42. Transcribe the vocalic sound in
Blood /˄/
Priest /i:/
Newer /jʊ/ /ə/
Bush /ʊ/
Father /ɑ:/ /ə/
Though /əʊ/
Sew /əʊ/
Wolf /ʊ/
Beard /ɪə/
Earth /ɜ:/
During /ʊə/
43. Consonants are called plosives, affricates, approximants, etc. according to their manner of
articulation.
44. Initial voiceless/fortis plosives (/ph/ /th/ /kh/ are often said to be aspirated.
45. Give phoneme corresponding to the articulatory description:
Voiced postalveolar frictionless continuant: /r/
Voiced/lenis dental fricative: /ð/
Voiceless glottal fricative: /h/
Voiced/lenis palato-alveolar fricative: /ʒ/
Voiceless/fortis velar plosive: /k/
Voiced labio-velar approximant: /w/
Voiceless/fortis alveolar fricative: /s/
46. Write the symbols of an alveolar tap and a glottal stop. [ɾ] [ʔ]
47. Give the symbols of the consonant phonemes corresponding to the underlined letters:
Laugh /f/
Pleasure /ʒ/
Suggest /dʒ/
Nature /tʃ/
Piece /s/
Lose /z/
Sure /ʃ/
Vision /ʃ/
Machine /ʃ/
Climb /m/
49. What happens in the pronunciations brown /ŋ/ car, bright /k/ color is assimilation.
50. The omission as a result of weakening of some phonemes in police, memory, text book is
called elision.
51. RP does have postvocalic /r/ in better indeed. This is termed linking r.
52. The /ir/ in Africa(r) and Asia or draw(r)ing has been called intrusive r.
53. The consonants in a syllable which appear before the peak are the onset.
54. According to some authors, peak and coda give us rhythm.
55. We need to understand the concept of juncture to explain the subtle difference between
once cared and one scared.
56. Following the Maximum Onsets Principle, we break down ambisyllabic words such as extra
like /’ek-strə/.
57. Intonation, loudness, speed and other prosodic features are suprasegmental elements of
phonological analysis.
58. Intonation is provided by variations of speed, loudness and, most often, pitch.
59. In an utterance or stretch of speech that we call IPs there is one change of tone (nucleus or
tonic syllable)
60. The 3 Ts are tonality, tonicity and tone.
61. Tonicity will tell us where the nucleus or tonic syllable is located.
62. Tonality will tell us how to divide the speech chain into chunks of intonations, as a kind of
spoken syntax.
63. The attitudinal function of intonation is conveyed by different choices of tone.
64. By default, we tend to place the nucleus on the stressed syllable of the last meaningful
word. That is referred to as broad focus, meaning that the whole utterance is the focus of
interest.
65. When the change of tone happens in any other syllable (not the stressed one in the last
meaningful word), we say that there is contrastive focus.
66. The tone normally used in English to express reservation or limited agreement is fall rise.
67. The most neutral, conclusive tone, which is preferred in normal statements, is low fall.
68. Apart from intonation, other suprasegmentals can be speed or loudness.
69. A geographical referent of RP is the accent heard in the London area.
70. A typically Northern English (and also Irish) pronunciation of sun, come, money is with /ʊ/
instead of /ʌ/.