Introduction to Phonetics

Phonetics Quiz

• "Phonetics" originates from the Greek word with meanings including both sound and voice.
• The objects of phonetic investigation include articulation, acoustics, and perception of speech sounds.
• Experimental, instrumental, and applied phonetics are types of special phonetics.
• Articulatory, acoustic, auditory, and experimental phonetics are branches considered methods of investigation.
• In English, types of allophones include free variation and complementary distribution allophones.
• The prosodic system of English consists of speech sounds, syllabic structure of words, word stress, and intonation.
• The way the sound-producing mechanism is invesigated is the articulatory aspect of speech sounds.
• Each sound is acoustically characterized by frequency, amplitude, duration, and quality (timbre).
• The auditory aspect describes how speech sounds are perceived by the human ear.
• The instrumental method uses special instruments.
• Ferdinand de Saussure stated that a national language is a historical category evolving from economic and political conditions.
• Dialects are distinguished by phonetic, lexical, and grammatical features.
• British, American, Canadian, and Australian English are types spoken in the English-speaking world.
• Standard American, General American and Southern American, and Southern American and AAVE are variants of English that are referred to as American-based.
• Daniel Jones is the author of the first edition of the English Pronouncing Dictionary.
• Received Pronunciation (RP) was a social marker and prestige accent of an Englishman in the 19th century.
• Major classes of sounds are traditionally distinguished by phoneticians and includes consonants and vowels.
• Vowels are speech sounds produced with no obstruction.
• Stops, fricatives, affricates, nasals, liquids, and semivowels are consonant classes in English, according to V.A. Vassiliyev.
• Noise consonants are subdivided into voiced and voiceless.
• Fricative sounds are produced with a fairly wide air passage between the two organs of speech.
• /t/, /d/, /s/, and /z/ are lingual consonants.
• Voiced consonants are produced with vibration of the vocal cords.
• /p/, /t/, /k/, /f/, /s/ are voiceless consonants.
• /m/, /n/, and /ŋ/ are nasal occlusive sonorants.
• /f/, /v/, /s/, /z/, /ʃ/, /ʒ/ are fricative consonants.
• English vowels are subdivided into monophthongs and diphthongs based on tongue position changes.
• Daniel Jones distinguished twenty vocalic phonemes in English.
• The word "bird" contains the sound /ɜ:/.
• Allophones are the possible variants of the same phoneme.
• The English phoneme [d] in "door" and "darn" is a voiced stop.
• Monophthongs are single, pure vowel sounds.
• Vowels can be rounded or unrounded, based on lip position.
• A phoneme serves as a basic unit of sound that distinguishes meaning.
• Initiation, phonation, and articulation are the stages of articulation in the pronunciation of every speech sound in isolation.
• "Me" is a vowel-consonant combination.
• Variations in articulation stages result in allophonic variations.
• Modifications of speech sounds are changes in articulation or environmental influences that affect pronunciation.
• Assimilation, elision, and linking are types of sound modifications that characterize consonants.
• Assimilation is the adaptive modification of a consonant under the influence of a neighboring vowel.
• Elision is characterized by a complete loss of sound in the word structure of connected speech.
• Epenthesis is a process of sound addition to the word structure.
• Reduction is the weakening or shortening of a sound, especially vowels.
• The decrease of vowel quantity is vowel reduction
• Vowel deletion is a synonym for vowel elision.
• Charles Hockett proposed the expiratory theory.
• Syllable formation in English is based on onset and nucleus.
• Open syllables end in a vowel sound.
• Closed syllables end in a consonant sound.
• M.A. Sokolova, V.D. Arakin, and other linguists define open, closed, and complex syllables.
• The vowel is the peak of the syllable, also known as the syllable's most prominent sound.
• The number of syllables varies in English words based on the number of vowel sounds present.
• Syllabic phonetics or prosody studies the rules of syllable division.
• Noam Chomsky and Morris Halle stated the theory of muscular tension.
• C.D. Pike investigated the acoustic level of the syllable in the sonority theory.
• "Me," "no," and "sea" have fully open syllables (V type).
• Consonants preceding the nucleus make up the onset.
• Consonants following the nucleus make up the coda.
• The rhyme is the combination of the nucleus and the coda.
• Initiation, phonation, and articulation are the stages of articulation a speech sound has in an isolated position.
• Primary is how stress is termed in an isolated word.
• According to H. Sweet, stress is connected with the relative loudness of a syllable.
• Dynamic stress is achieved by increasing the force of articulation.
• Oriental languages often feature tonal differences and syllabic structures.
• A plosive is a type of speech sound produced by completely blocking airflow before releasing it.
• High front vowels are represented as /i/ and /ɪ/ in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).
• A "voiced" sound indicates that it is produced with vocal cord vibration.
• In the acoustic phonetic system, sounds are categorized according to their physical properties.
• There are 14 vowel phonemes in General American English.
• Assimilation occurs when two neighboring sounds influence each other.
• Intonation indicates emotion and intent in speech.
• Allophonic variation refers to an alteration of a sound due to its phonetic context.
• Diphthongs are characterized as combinations of two vowel sounds within the same syllable.
• Phonemes carry meaning, while allophones do not, is the primary distinction between a phoneme and an allophone.

Phonetics Quiz (Additional Questions)

• Unstressed syllables have weak or reduced stress.
• Word stress helps identify the accentual pattern and the meaning of a word.
• Word stress distinguishes meaning through contrastive stress.
• The accentual types [' ˈ _ '] and ['' _ ' ˈ' _] are found in the rhythmic patterns of language, especially in stressed syllables.
• O'Connor and Arnold worked out the grammatical approach to the study of intonation.
• The falling tone of any level and range expresses finality or completeness.
• A rising tone expresses a question or uncertainty.
• Tempo implies the speed of speech, which can be fast or slow.
• The rate of speech can be variably fast or slow depending on factors like clarity, emphasis, and emotional state.
• A syllable is a unit of sound that can contain a vowel alone or with surrounding consonants.
• Consonants can act as an onset or coda of a syllable.
• The vowel sound or syllable's most prominent sound is a syllable's peak.
• Open syllable is the term for a syllable with no coda.
• Closed syllables consist of a vowel followed by one or more consonants.
• A complex syllable has both an onset and a coda with at least one consonant.
• Sonority is the relative loudness of a sound in relation to other sounds.
• Languages use sonority to distinguish syllables by using the sonority of sounds to structure syllables, placing more sonorous sounds towards the vowel position.
• A diphthong is a complex vowel sound that begins with one vowel and glides into another.
• Assimilation is a process where a sound changes to become more like a neighboring sound in phonetics.
• "Linking" involves the process of inserting a glide between words where a consonant ends a word and a vowel begins the next word in connected speech.
• The main purpose of studying prosody in linguistics is to analyze the rhythm, stress, and intonation patterns in speech.
• A high pitch indicates excitement or questioning in the context of communicative intention.
• Vowels may be shortened or centralized during vowel reduction in unstressed syllables.
• A voiceless sound is a speech sound produced without any vibration of the vocal cords.
• Rime is the term for the combination of a nucleus and coda in a syllable.
• Pitch can change a sentence's meaning through intonation patterns.
• Languages determine syllable boundaries by phonological rules.
• In English phonology, complex nuclei consist of a vowel plus a glide or a diphthong.
• The presence of turbulence in the airflow distinguishes fricative sounds from other consonants.
• During elision in connected speech, sounds are deleted or omitted.
• A method of writing speech sounds using symbols defines a phonetic transcription.
• The purpose of a spectrogram in phonetics is to visually represent the frequency and amplitude of sounds.
• The sound /g/ is a voiced velar plosive.
• Different stress patterns can change meanings of words.