EXPECTED QUESTIONS OF PHONETICS

Note: The words written in red are expected to be the answers in the final exam.

Chapter One: Articulation and Acoustic

1. Phonetics is concerned with describing speech.

2. Most of speech sounds are the result of movements of the tongue and the lips.

3. When you talk, air from the lungs goes up the windpipe and into the larynx.

4. Air must pass between two small muscular folds called the vocal folds.

5. Sounds produced when the vocal folds are vibrating are said to be voiced.

6. Sounds produced when the vocal folds are apart are said to be voiceless.

7. The air passages above the larynx are known as the vocal tract.

8. The air passages that make up the vocal tract may be divided into the oral tract and
the nasal tract.

9. The oral tract is within the mouth and pharynx, and the nasal tract is within the nose.

10. Speech sounds such as [m] and [ n ] are produced with the vocal folds vibrating and
air going out through the nose.

11. The parts of the vocal tract that can be used to form sounds, such as the tongue and
the lips, are called articulators.

12. The airstream process includes all the ways of pushing air out.

13. The phonation process is the name given to the actions of the vocal folds.

14. The possibility of the airstream going out through the mouth, as in [v] or [z], or the
nose, as in [m] and [n], is determined by the oro-nasal process.

15. The movements of the tongue and lips interacting with the roof of the mouth and
the pharynx are part of the articulatory process.

16. The way in which we hear a sound depends on its acoustic structure.

17. The only permanent data that we can get of a speech event is an audio recording.

18. Speech sounds can differ from one another in three ways pitch, loudness, and
quality.

19. The sound [ f ] at the beginning of the word father has a low amplitude.
20. The articulators that form the lower surface of the vocal tract are highly mobile.

21. Behind the upper teeth is a small protuberance that you can feel with the tip of the
tongue. This is called the alveolar ridge.

22. The front part of the roof of the mouth is formed by a bony structure called hard
palate.

23. The soft palate (velum) is a muscular flap that can be raised to press against the
back wall of the pharynx and shut off the nasal tract, preventing air from going out
through the nose.

24. Velic closure is the action that separates the nasal tract from the oral tract so that
the air can go out only through the mouth.

25. At the lower end of the soft palate is a small appendage hanging down that is known
as the uvula.

26. The part of the vocal tract between the uvula and the larynx is the pharynx.

27. The tip and blade of the tongue are the most mobile parts.

28. Behind the blade is what is technically called the front of the tongue.

29. The front of the tongue lies underneath the hard palate when the tongue is at rest.

30. The remainder of the body of the tongue may be divided into the center, back and
the root.

31. the root of the tongue is opposite the back wall of the pharynx.

32. The epiglottis is attached to the lower part of the root of the tongue.

33. The primary articulators that can cause an obstruction in most languages are the
lips, the tongue tip and blade, and the back of the tongue.

34. Speech gestures using the lips are called labial articulations.

35. Speech gestures using the tip or blade of the tongue are called coronal articulations.

36. Speech gestures using the back of the tongue are called dorsal articulations.

37. Bilabial (made with two lips) /b,p,m/.

38. Labiodental (Lower lip and upper front teeth) /f,v/.

39. Dental (Tongue tip or blade and upper front teeth) / θ, ð/.

40. Sounds in which the tongue protrudes between the teeth may be called interdental.
41. Alveolar (Tongue tip or blade and the alveolar ridge) /t,d,s,z,n,l/.

42. Retroflex (Tongue tip and the back of the alveolar ridge) /r/at the ends of words
may also have retroflex sounds with the tip of the tongue raised in ire, hour, air.

43. Palato-Alveolar (Tongue blade and the back of the alveolar ridge) / ʃ, ʒ/.

44. Palato-Alveolar are also called post-alveolar.

45. Palatal (Front of the tongue and hard palate) / j /

46. Velar (Back of the tongue and soft palate) /k,g, ŋ/

47. Bilabial and labiodental can be classified as labial.

48. Dental, alveolar, retroflex, and palato-alveolar (postalveolar)are coronal

49. Velar is a dorsal articulation.

50. Palatal sounds are sometimes classified as coronal articulations and sometimes as
dorsal articulations.

51. Stop is a Complete closure of the articulators involved so that the airstream cannot
escape through the mouth.

52. There are two possible types of stop: oral stop and nasal stop.

53. Pressure in the mouth will build up and an oral stop will be formed.

54. When the articulators come apart, the airstream will be released in a small burst of
sound /p, b,t, d, k, g/.These sounds are called plosives.

55. If the air is stopped in the oral cavity but the soft palate is down so that air can go
out through the nose, the sound produced is a nasal stop.

56. Fricative is a close approximation of two articulators so that the airstream is

57. The higher-pitched sounds with a more obvious hiss, such as those in sigh, shy, are
sometimes called sibilants.

58. Approximant is a gesture in which one articulator is close to another, but without
the vocal tract being narrowed to such an extent that a turbulent airstream is produced.
/ ɹ, j,w/
59. Lateral (Approximant) is an obstruction of the airstream at a point along the center
of the oral tract, with incomplete closure between one or both sides of the tongue and
the roof of the mouth. /l/

60. Lateral approximants are usually called alveolar laterals.

61. Trill is sometimes called roll.

62. Tap is sometimes called flap.

63. Trills occur in some forms of Scottish English in words such as rye and raw.

64. Taps, in which the tongue makes a single tap against the alveolar ridge, occur in the
middle of a word such as pity in many forms of American English.

65. The kind of combination of a stop immediately followed by a fricative is called an

66. Words that start with a vowel in the spelling like (eek, oak, ark) are pronounced
with a glottal stop at the beginning of the vowel.

67. flee east has a glottal stop at the beginning of east.

68. The consonant at the beginning of the word sing is a (1) voiceless, (2) alveolar, (3)
central.

69. The consonant at the end of sing is a (1) voiced, (2) velar, (3) central.

70. The fricative [f] at the beginning of fish is a little less loud than the fricative at the
end of this word.

71. We can describe vowel sounds roughly in terms of the position of the highest point
of the tongue and the position of the lips.

72. Vowels in heed, hid, head, had are front vowels.

73. The vowel in heed is classified as a high front vowel.

74. The vowel in had is classified as a low front vowel.

75. The vowel in hid is a mid-high vowel.

76. The vowel in head is a mid-low vowel.

77. The vowels in father, good, food are classified as back vowels.

78. The vowel in food is called a high back vowel.

79. The vowel in father is called a low back vowel.

81. Lip gestures are generally closer together in the mid-high and high back vowels as
in good, food.

82. There is a movement of the lips in addition to the movement that occurs because of
the lowering and raising of the jaw in good and food. This movement is called lip
rounding.

83. Vowels may be described as being rounded (as in who’d) or unrounded (as in
heed).

84. The targets for vowel gestures can be described in terms of three factors: (1) the
height of the body of the tongue; (2) the front–back position of the tongue; and (3) the
degree of lip rounding.

85. Vowels have complex structures.

86. The overtone pitches give the vowel its distinctive quality.

87. The overtones are highest for the vowel in heed and lowest for the vowel in hawed,
hood, or who’d.

88. Another way of minimizing the sound of the vocal fold vibrations is to say the vowels
in a very low, creaky voice.

89. The vowels in heed, hid, head, had have a quality that clearly goes up in pitch.

90. The vowels in hod, hawed, hood, who’d have a declining pitch.

91. Vowel sounds may be said on a variety of notes (voice pitches).

92. The vowel with the lower pitch is called the first formant.

93.The vowel with the higher pitch is called the second formant.

94. Vowels and consonants can be thought of as the segments of which speech is
composed.

95. Vowels and consonants form the syllables that make up utterances.

96. Superimposed on the syllables are other features known as suprasegmentals.

97. Suprasegmentals include variations in stress , pitch and length.

98. In the nouns, the stress is on the first syllable, but in the verbs, it is on the last.

99. Stress can be used for contrastive emphasis.

101. Frequency is a technical term for an acoustic property of a sound.

102. The pitch of a sound is an auditory property that enables a listener to place it on a
scale going from low to high.

103. The pitch pattern in a sentence is known as the intonation.

104. In the sentence (this is my father ) the highest pitch will occur on the first syllable
of father and the lowest on the second. (Is this your father?) The first syllable of father
is a lower pitch than the second one.
 EXPECTED QUESTIONS OF PHONETICS

Note: The words written in red are expected to be the answers in the final exam.

Chapter Two: Phonology and Phonetic Transcription

1. A phonetician is a person who can describe speech, who understands the mechanisms
of speech production and speech perception.

2. Phonetic transcription is a useful tool that phoneticians use in the description of

3. The citation style of speech is the style of speech you use to show someone how to
pronounce a word.

4. Transcriptions of citation style are particularly useful in language documentation and

5. A kind of difference in articulation which does not affect the meaning of the word is
called broad transcription.

6. Phonology is the description of the systems and patterns of sounds that occur in a
language.

7. When two sounds can be used to differentiate words, they are said to belong to
different phonemes.

8. The n in ten is usually alveolar.

9. the n in tenth is dental.

10. Phonemic transcription records all the variations between sounds that cause a
difference in meaning.

11. A set of words in which each differs from all the others by only one sound is called a
minimal set.

12. The letters ng [ ŋ ] does not occur at the beginning of a word.

13. [ θ ] is a voiceless dental fricative.

14. [ ʃ ] is voiceless palato-alveolar fricative.

15. [ʒ ] occurs in the middle of words such as vision, measure, leisure and at the
beginning of foreign words such as Jean, gendarme.

16.The difference between white shoes and why choose is one of the timing of the
articulations involved.
17. [tS] is never said with glottal stop.

18. [ʔ ] is a symbol of glottal stop.

19. Glottal stop only occurs word initially before vowels in American English.

20. In London Cockney, glottal stop also appears between vowels in words like butter
and button.

21. In most forms of British English, [r] can occur only before a vowel.

22. Most speakers of British English distinguish the words here, hair, hire by using
different diphthongs.

23. Diphthongs are movements from one vowel to another within a single syllable.

24. The vowels in words such as hay, bait, they are transcribed with a sequence of two
symbols[ eI].

25. The vowel in hoe, dough, code is a diphthong.

26. /ə/ is called schwa.

27. [∧]is sometimes called wedge.

28. /ə/ is the most common unstressed vowel.

29. /ə/ is at the end of words such as sofa, soda , in the middles of words such as
emphasis, demonstrate, and at the beginnings of words such as around, arise.

30. In British English, /ə/ is usually the sole component of the -er part of words such as
brother, brotherhood, simpler.

31. [p] is voiceless bilabial stop .

32. [l] is voiced alveolar lateral approximant.

33. The symbol [w] is articulated with both a narrowing of the lip aperture.

34. [i] is used for a high front vowel.

35. [ u ] is used for a high back vowel.

36.[ɪ] is used for a midhigh front vowel.

37.[e] is used for mid-front vowel.

38. [ɛ] is used for a mid-low vowel.

40. The consonants have twenty three different symbols, but only eleven basic gestures
of the tongue and lips.

41. Vowels have fourteen symbols.

42. The airstream process involves pushing air out of the lungs for all the sounds of
English.

43. The phonation process is responsible for the gestures of the vocal folds that
distinguish voiced and voiceless sounds.

44. The oro-nasal process is active in raising and lowering the velum so as to distinguish
nasal and oral sounds.

45. /t/ in tap is a voiceless alveolar stop.

46. /t / in eighth is called a voiceless dental stop.. (/t/ before /θ/ is a dental stop)

47. /t/ in bitten is accompanied by a glottal stop.. (/t/ before a word final /n/ is a glottal
stop)

48. the / t / in catty symbolizes a voiced. .(/t/ after a vowel and before an unstressed
vowel is a voiced stop)

49. The symbols /l/ and /r/ in ply and try are voiceless.

50. In most forms of American English/t/ becomes voiced when it occurs immediately
after a vowel and before an unstressed vowel ( pity, matter, utter, divinity )

51. the mark [◌̪ ] represents a dental articulation .

52. The transcriptions are placed between square brackets [ ] as they are phonetic
transcriptions.

53. Small marks that can be added to a symbol to modify its value are known as
diacritics. .

54. Diacritics provide a useful way of increasing the phonetic precision of a

55. [ ˳ ] a small circle beneath a symbol, can be used to indicate that the symbol
represents a voiceless sound.
56. The phonology is the set of rules or constraints that describe the relation between
the underlying sounds.

57. When we transcribe a word in a way that shows none of the details of the
pronunciation that are predictable by phonological rules, we are making a phonemic
transcription.

58. The variants of the phonemes that occur in detailed phonetic transcriptions are
known as allophones.

59. In American English / t / has a voiced allophone when it occurs between a stressed
vowel and an unstressed vowel.

60. / I/ and /i:/ represents a longer sound.

61. Upside-down r [ ɹ ] represents a approximant.

62. [ r ] indicates a trilled r.

63. Most speakers of American English, there is no [ t ] sound in letter. Instead,

64. [ ſ ] represents alveolar tap sound.

65. The term broad transcription is often used to designate a transcription that
uses the simplest possible set of symbols.

66. Narrow transcription shows more phonetic detail.

67. A broad transcription of please and trip would be /pliz / and /trIp/.

68. . A narrow transcription of please and trip could be /pli:z / and /trIp/.

69. A transcription that implies the existence of rules accounting for allophones
and shows all the rule-governed alternations among the sounds is called a
systematic phonetic transcription.

70. When writing down an unknown language or when transcribing the speech of a
child or a patient not seen previously, one does not know what rules will apply. In
these circumstances, the symbols indicate only the phonetic value of the sounds.
This kind of transcription is called an impressionistic transcription.
 EXPECTED QUESTIONS OF PHONETICS

Note: The words written in red are expected to be the answers in the final exam.

Chapter Three: The Consonants of English

1. Both stop consonants in pie or buy are essentially voiceless.

2. In pie, after the release of the lip closure, there is a moment of aspiration.

3.You may not be able to feel the burst of air in tie and kye because these stop closures are
made well inside the mouth cavity.

4.pie, tie, kye has aspirated stops.

5. buy, dye, guy has (perhaps voiced) unaspirated stops.

6. Most speakers of English have no voicing during the closure of voiced stops in
sentence initial position, or when they occur after a voiceless sound as in that boy.

7. In tie, there is a spike indicating the burst of noise that occurs when the stop
closure is released.

8. The major difference between tie and die is the increase in time between the
release of the stop and the start of the vowel.

9. In sty, there is no sound after / s / because there is a complete stop for the / t /.

10./ b, d, g /in nab, mad, nag have very little voicing and might also be called
voiceless.

11. The vowel is much shorter before the voiceless consonants / p, t, k / (cap, cat,
back).

12. The vowel is less shorter before the voiced consonants / b,d,g / (cab, cad, bag).

13. The major difference between /p,t,k/ and /b,d,g/ is in the vowel length.

14. The vowel in mad is longer than the vowel in mat.(voiceless and voiced)

15. The vowel is much shorter in cap than in cab. (voiceless and voiced)

16. The consonant / p / in cap is slightly longer than the consonant / b / in cab.

17. Syllable final voiceless consonants are longer than the corresponding voiced
consonants after the same vowel.

18. Final stops are unreleased when the next word begins with a nasal. (cap now –
cab now)
19. Final stops are unreleased when the next word begins with a stop.(cat
pushed)(or within a word:apt,act)

20. The stop closure in white teeth is much longer than the stop in why teeth.

21.The first /t/ in white teeth is unreleased.

22. The final consonants in rap, rat, rack are unreleased.

23. The tongue tip is up throughout the word tit.

24. The tongue tip ,in pip and kick, stays behind the lower front teeth.

25. In pip the lip gestures affect the entire vowel.

26. A glottal stop is the sound that occurs when the vocal folds are held tightly
together.

27. Glottal stops frequently occur as allophones of / t /.

28. Most Americans and many British speakers have a glottal stop followed by a
syllabic nasal in words such as beaten, kitten, fatten.

29. London Cockney and many forms of Estuary English have a glottal stop between
vowels as in butter, kitty, fatter.

30. Many speakers in Britain and America have a glottal stop just before final
voiceless stops in words such as rap, rat, rack.

31. When a voiced stop and a nasal occur in the same word as in hidden the stop is
not released .

32. The air pressure built up behind the stop closure is released through the nose by
the lowering of the soft palate for the nasal consonant.
This is called nasal plosion.

33. Nasal plosion is normally used in pronouncing words such as sadden, sudden,
leaden.

34. Nasal plosion also occurs in the pronunciation of words with [ t ] followed by [ n ],
as in kitten for those people who do not have a glottal stop
instead of the [t].

35. The majority of speakers of English pronounce kitten word with a glottal stop.

36. Most British and American English speakers make a glottal stop at the end of the
vowel, before making an alveolar closure.
37. If the speakers lower the velum before making the alveolar closure, there is only
[ˀn ] and no [t].

38. If the speakers make the alveolar closure first, we could say that there is [ˀtn ],
but there would not be any nasal plosion.

39. Nasal plosion occurs only if there is no glottal stop, or if the glottal stop is
released after the alveolar closure has been made and
before the velum is lowered.

40. When two sounds have the same place of articulation, they are said to be
homorganic.

41. [d] and [n] which are both articulated on the alveolar ridge are homorganic.

42. For nasal plosion to occur within a word, there must be a stop followed by a
homorganic nasal.

43. Many forms of English do not have any words with a bilabial stop [ p ] or [ b ]
followed by the homorganic nasal [m] at the end of the
word.

44. There are not words in which the velar stops [k] or [g] are normally followed by
the velar nasal [ŋ ].

45. Both bilabial and velar nasal plosion are less common than alveolar nasal
plosion in English.

46. When talking in a rapid conversational style, many people pronounce the word
open as ["oʊpm` ], particularly if the next word begins with
[m] as in open my door.

47. A phenomenon that takes place when an alveolar stop [t] or [d] occurs before a
homorganic lateral [l], as in little, ladle. The air pressure
built up during the stop can be released by lowering the
sides of the tongue; this effect is called lateral plosion.

48. Many people (particularly British speakers) maintain the tongue contact on the
alveolar ridge through both the stop and the lateral as in
middle.

49. Most Americans pronounce a very short vowel in the second syllable in the
word middle.
50. For those who have lateral plosion, no vowel sound occurs in the second
syllables of little, ladle.

51. The final consonants in little and ladle are syllabic.

52. There may also be lateral plosion in words such as Atlantic.

53. There is a general rule in American English that whenever / t / occurs after a
stressed vowel and before an unstressed syllable other than
[ n`], it is changed into a voiced sound.

54. For many speakers, including most Americans, the consonant between the
vowels in words such as city, better, writer is not really a
stop but a quick tap.

55. Many Americans also make the tap when / d / occurs after a stressed vowel and
before an unstressed vowel.

56. Some Americans maintain a distinction between latter and ladder by having a
shorter vowel in words such as latter that have a voiceless
consonant .

57. Vowels are shorter before voiceless consonants.

58. In the oral plosion the closure in the mouth entirely removed.

59. The vowel is shorter in strife, teeth,; rice, mission.

60. Stops and fricatives are the only English consonants that can be either voiced or
voiceless.

61.A voiceless stop at the end of a syllable (as in hit) is longer than the corresponding
voiced stop (as in hid).

62. The voiceless fricatives are longer than their voiced fricatives as in safe, lace.

63. The voicing that occurs during the final [ z ] in ooze does not last throughout the
articulation but changes in the last part to a voiceless sound
like [s].

64.Voiced fricatives at the end of a word, as in prove, smooth, choose, rouge are
voiced only when they are followed by another voiced
sound as in prove it. (the [ v ] is fully voiced).

65.In prove two where the [ v ] is followed by a voiceless sound [t] or by, it is not
fully voiced.
66. Fricatives and stops are called obstruents.

67. Fricatives differ from stops in that they sometimes involve actions of the lips that
are not immediately obvious.

68. Most people find that their lips move slightly in any word containing /s/ (sin,
kiss) and quite considerably in any word containing / S /
(shin, quiche).

69. There is no lip action in words containing / θ/ (thin, teeth).

70. There is no lip action in the voiced sound / ð / as in teethe.

71. labialization is the action of the lips added to another articulation.

72. The English fricatives / ʃ , ʒ / are strongly labialized, and the fricatives / s, z / are
slightly labialized.

73. An affricate is simply a sequence of a stop followed by a homorganic fricative. [ tʃ

74. Nasals together with [r, l] can be syllabic when they occur at the end of words.

75. Vowels are always syllabic.

76. No English word can begin with [ŋ ].

77. [ŋ ] cannot be syllabic except in slightly unusual pronunciations, such as in bacon.

78. The voiced approximants are / w, r, j, l / as in whack, rack, yak, lack.

79. / w, r, j / are central approximants.

80. / l / is a lateral approximant.

81.The articulation of each approximant varies slightly depending on the articulation

82. The approximants occur in consonant clusters with stop consonants as in pray,
bray, tray, dray, Cray, gray, twin, dwell, quell, Gwen, play,
blade, clay, glaze.

83. The approximants are largely voiceless when they follow one of the voiceless
stops / p, t, k / as in play, twice, clay.

84. The approximant / j / occur in similar consonant clusters as in pew, cue, tune.
85. The arching upward of the back of the tongue forms a secondary articulation
which is call velarization.

86. In most forms of American English, all examples of / l / are velarized, except
those that are syllable initial and between high front
vowels, as in freely.

87. . In British English, / l / is usually not velarized when it is before a vowel, as in

88.In British English, /l/ it is velarized when word final or before a consonant, as in
ball or filled.

89. Most people don’t have a velarized / l / in kill it because the it in kill it acts like a
suffix.

90. In many accents of English, / h / can occur only before stressed vowels or before
the approximant / j / as in hue.

91. [ʍ]occurs in whether.

92. Articulatory positions characterize the movements of the articulators.

93.Stops are slightly rounded when they occur in clusters in which / w / is the second
element as in twice, dwindle, quick.

94. The kind of gestural overlapping, in which a second gesture starts during the first
gesture, is sometimes called anticipatory coarticulation.

95. Coarticulation between sounds will always result in the positions of some parts
of the vocal tract.

96. A phoneme is an abstract unit that may be realized in several different ways.

97. Sometimes, the differences between the different allophones of a phoneme can
be explained in terms of targets and overlapping gestures.

98. Sometimes, the differences between allophones are the result of overlapping
gestures, producing what is called intrinsic allophones.

99. sometimes, the differences between allophones involve different gestures, which
may be called extrinsic allophones.

100. All gestures for neighboring sounds overlap.

- Here are some important diacritics: -

1. [ʰ] represents aspiration.

2. [ ˺ ] represents unreleased consonant.

3. [ ˀ ] represents a glottal stop.

4. [ ˌ ] represents a syllabic consonant.

5. [ ſ ] represents alveolar tap sound.

6. [ ˳ ] represents a voiceless sound.

7. [ -] represents velarization.

8. [ʍ]represents voiceless approximant.

9. [ ̪ ] represents dental.