phonemic contrast : two similar sounds occur in the same environment and distinguish meaning. E.g. [b] in [bit] and [p] in [pit] form phonemic contrast.
complementary distribution : allophones of the same phoneme and they don’t distinguish meaning but complement each other in distribution. E.g. clear [l] and dark [l] respectively in the pronunciation of light and feel.
minimal pair: two different forms are identical in every way except one sound and occurs in the same position. The two sounds are said to form a minimal pair. E.g. bat and bet are a minimal pair. 4. Some Rules in Phonology
1 sequential rules: The rules to govern the combination of sounds in a particular language.
2 assimilation rule: The rule assimilates one sound to another by copying a feature of a sequential phoneme, thus making the two phones similar.
3 deletion rule: The rule that a sound is to be deleted although it is orthographically represented. 5. Suprasegmental Features----stress, tone, intonation
suprasegmental features: The phonemic features that occur above the level of the segments----syllable, word, sentence are called suprasegmental features, which include stress, tone and intonation. 1 Stress:
Classification: word stress & sentence stress. Word Stress:
1 The location of stress in English distinguishes meaning.
A shift of stress may change the part of speech of a word from a noun to a verb although its spelling remains unchanged. E.g. ‘impott (n)----im’port (v), ‘record (n)-----re’cord (v) ‘blackbird (compound)-----‘black ‘bird (noncompound)
2 The meaning-distinctive role played by word stress is also manifested in the combinations of –ing forms and nouns. E.g. ’dining room(compound)----sleeping ’baby (noncompound) Sentence Stress:
Sentence stress: It refers to the relative force given to the components of a sentence.
he parts of speech that are normally stressed in an English sentence are: N, V, Adj., Adv., Numerals, demonstrative pronouns. E.g. He is driving my car.------He drive, my, car. 2 Tone:
tone: Tones are pitch variations, which are caused by the differing rates of vibration of the vocal cords.
Tone (pitch variation) can distinguish meaning in such languages as Chinese, but English is not a tone language. 3 Intonation:
intonation: When pitch, stress and sound length are tied to the sentence rather than the word in isolation, they are collectively known as intonation.
Intonation plays a very important role in the conveyance of meaning in almost every language, especially in a language like English. ------four basic types of intonation, namely, the falling tone, the rising tone, the fall-rise tone, the rise-fall tone.
The falling tone------what is said is a straight forward, matter-of-fact statement. The rising tone-------make a question of what is said.
The fall-rise tone----indicate that there is an implied message in what is said.
Chapter 3: Morphology
Part One: Morphology
1. Open class and closed class
open class: A group of words, which contains an unlimited number of items, and new words can be added to it.----content words. E.g. beatnik: a member of the Beat generation, or a person who rejects or avoids conventional behaviour.
closed class: A relatively few words, including conjunctions, prepositions and pronouns, and new words are not usually added to them.------function words. 2. Internal structure if words and rules for word formation
morphology: A branch of linguistics that studies the internal structure of words and rules for word formation.
Part Two: Morphemes----the minimal units of meaning
morpheme: The smallest unit of meaning of a language. It can not be divided without altering or destroying its meaning.
bound morpheme: Morpheme that can not be used alone, and it must be combined wit others. E.g. –ment.
free morpheme: a morpheme that can stand alone as a word.
affix: a letter or a group of letter, which is added to a word, and which changes the meaning or function of the word, including prefix, infix and suffix.
suffix: The affix, which is added to the end of a word, and which usually changes the part of speech of a word.
prefix: The affix, which is added to the beginning of a word, and which usually changes the meaning of a word to its opposite.
Part three: Derivational and inflectional morphemes
derivational morpheme: Bound morpheme, which can be added to a stem to form a new word. inflectional morpheme: A kind of morpheme, which are used to make grammatical categories, such as number, tense and case. E.g. –ed and –ing endings are inflectional morphemes.
inflection: the morphological process which adjusts words by grammatical modification, e.g. in The rains came, rain is inflected for plurality and came for past tense. Part Four: Morphological rules of word formation
morphological rules: The ways words are formed. These rules determine how morphemes combine to form words. Part Five Compounds
compound words: A combination of two or more words, which functions as a single word the noteworthy:
1 When two words are in the same grammatical category, the compound will be in this category: E.g. post box, landlady (n+n=n), blue-black, icy-cold (adj.+adj.=adj.)
2 In many cases, the two words fall into different categories, then the class of second or final word will be the grammatical category if the compound. E.g. under ‘take (v), in’action (n), up’lift (v)
3 It is often the case that compounds have different stress patterns from the noncompounded word sequence.