Phonetics（Exercise 3）
1. What are the two major media of communication? Of the two, which one is primary and why?
The two major media of communication are speech and writing. (Cf. the answer to the question 4 in exercise 2.)
2. What are the three branches of phonetics? How do they contribute to the study of speech sounds?
The three branches of phonetics are: articulatory phonetics, acoustic phonetics and auditory phonetics. They study speech sounds from different perspectives. Articulatory phonetics studies the production of speech sounds, acoustic phonetics studies the physical properties of the sounds produced in speech and auditory phonetics studies the perception of speech sounds.
3. Draw a picture for the speech organs of human beings. (cf. the figure on P. 33)
4. Where are the articulatory apparatus of a human being contained? See the figure on P. 33.
5. What is voicing and how is it caused?
Voicing is producing a sound (usually a vowel or voiced consonant) by vibrating the vocal cords.
6. What criteria are used to classify English vowels?
The criteria used to classify English vowels are:
The height of the tongue raising: high, mid, and low
The position of the highest part of the tongue: front, central, and back
The degree of lip rounding: rounded, un-rounded
The degree of tenseness/the length of sound: tense (long) or lax (short)
The change of sound quality: pure(monophthong), gliding(diphthong)
Front
Central
Back
tense
lax
tense
lax
tense
lax
High/close
¡:
¡
u:
u
Mid
e
əminimal:
ə
ɔ:
Low/open
æ
ʌ
ɑ:
ɔ
7. What is the function of the nasal cavity?  How does it perform the function?
    Nasal cavity is a resonating cavity which amplifies and further modifies sounds produced by the movement of the vocal cords. The soft palate may be lowered, as in the normal position for breathing, so that the air can go through the nasal cavity. When the oral cavity is at the same time blocked, a nasal sound is produced.
8. Describe the various parts in the oral cavity which are involved in the production of speech sounds? (See P.35)
9. Explain with examples how broad transcription and narrow transcription differ?
Transcription refers to the method of writing down speech sounds in a systematic and consistent way. It serves as an aid to the description of speech sounds.
There are two types of transcription: broad and narrow transcription.
Broad transcription refers to the transcription to indicate those sounds, which are capable of distinguishing one word from another in a given language. Two slashes are used, e.g. pet /pet/, bed /bed/.
    Narrow transcription is to symbolize all the possible speech sounds, including the minute shades, such as the transcription of /l/ in the following words:
Let [let], tell  [teł]; peak [p k], speak [sp k]
10. How are the English consonants and vowels classified?
There are basically two kinds of sounds, consonants and vowels.
Consonants are sounds in the production of which there is obstruction of the air-stream at some point of the vocal tract. Vowels are sounds in the production of which no vocal organs come close together and the air-stream passes through the vocal tract without obstruction. The main difference between them is that the air flows freely in vowels, while all consonants involve some sort of interference of the air-stream in the mouth.
11. Give the phonetic symbol for each of the following sound descriptions:

（1）voiced palatal affricate: /ʤ / 
（2）voiceless labiodental fricative: /f/
（3）voiced alveolar stop: /d/
（4）front close short: /i/
（5）back semi-open long: /ɔ:/
（6）voiceless bilabial stop: /p/
（7）front mid vowel: /e/
（8）lateral liquid: /l/
（9）lax high back vowel: /u/
（10）voiced bilabial oral stop: /b/
（11）mid central lax vowel: / ə /
（12）low front vowel: / æ /
（13）palatal glide: /j/
（14）voiced interdental fricative: / ð /
（15）voiced affricate: / ʤ /
（16）velar nasal consonant: /η/
（17）low back vowel: / a: /
（18）high back tense vowel: /u:/
（19）mid back lax vowel: / ɔ /
（20）voiceless interdental fricative: /θ/

版权声明：本站内容均来自互联网，仅供演示用，请勿用于商业和其他非法用途。如果侵犯了您的权益请与我们联系QQ:729038198，我们将在24小时内删除。