English assignment on: linguistic competence
1. Part of linguistic competence involves the ability to recognise whether novel utterances are acceptable. Consider the following English sentences. Put a tick (√) after those which are grammatical. Put a star (*) after those that you think are ungrammatical and state why you think so. (5 marks)
a. John told Lucy that tomorrow he is going to move to China. √
b. To get not arrested under such circumstances is a miracle. *
(The sentence construction is wrong. The correct sentence is– it is a miracle to not get arrested under such circumstances)
c. I saw the street John used to live. *
(The determiner is missing in the sentence. The correct sentence is – I saw the street in which John used to live.)
d. My first attempt to write this article was terrible, my second even worse. √
e. Who do you think John says Mary likes? *
(Whom is the exact pronoun which shall be used instead of ‘who’ as it is the object of the preposition.) (TalkEnglish.com 2012)
2. Write in phonetic representation (i.e. in [ ]) the following sounds: (5 marks)
a. Palatal voiced continuant {ʝ}
b. Velar nasal stop {ᵑ˚}, {ᵑ }
c. Postalveolar voiceless affricate {ʧ}
d. High central rounded vowel {ʏ}
e. Low front spread vowel {æ} (Pierrehumbert, J 1990)
3. Name the single feature that distinguishes the following pairs of sounds: (5 marks)
a. [p] [b] [+b] is {+voiced}
b. [m] [u] [+m] is {+nasal}
c. [ʌ] [ɔ] [ɔ] is {+ rounded}
d. [s] [ʃ] [s] is {+alveolar, +anterior}
[ʃ] is {+palatal}
e. [i] [ɑ] [i] is {+high, +tense}
[ɑ] is {+low, +back } (Brinton, L and Brinton, D n.d.)
4. Find the errors in the phonetic transcription of the following words. Make a correct transcription in the space provided after the word. (5 marks)
a. Think [sɪnk] should be [ɵɪŋk]
b. Button [‘bʌttn] should be [‘bʌtn ]
c. Machine [‘məʃɪn] should be [mə’ʃi:n ]
d. Linguistics [lɪŋ’ɡɪstɪsk] should be [lɪŋ’ɡwistɪsks ]
e. Flight [flit] should be [flaɪt] (About.com 2012)
5. Transcribe phonemically the following English utterances as you would say them in careful speech. (5 marks).
Send toast to ten tense stout saints’ ten tall tents.
/send təʊst tu: ten tens staʊt seints ten tɔ:l tents /
6. Compare the careful speech and casual, rapid speech pronunciations of the following English phrases and name the process/processes (assimilation, deletion, addition/epenthesis, etc.) that make the rapid speech pronunciation different from the careful speech. (5 marks)
Careful speech Rapid speech Process
a. Ten bucks [təɴ bʌks] [təm bʌks] Assimilation
b. She Looked particularly interesting
[ʃi lʊkt pə’tɪkjələli ‘ɪntrəstɪŋ] [ʃi lʊk pə’tɪklɪ ‘ɪntrstɪŋ] Elision
c. Fifth [fɪfθ] [fɪft] Assimilation
d. In fear of [in fɪə əv] [in fɪər əv] Epenthesis
e. I see him [aɪ si hɪm] [aɪ si ɪm] Deletion (Marlett, S 2001)
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