English Phonology and Morphology (MA) – BBK – Autumn 2012

BMNAN00100M/A

Courses website:

Facebook group: BBK PPKE 2012a

Assessment options:(1) oral exam (100%);

(2) in-class tests during the semester (50%) and oral exam (50%).

Exam topics

1.What are phonetics and phonology? What is the difference? Fundamentals of phonology: phonemes, allophones, complementary distribution, free variation.

2. The phonetics of English consonants. The three-term description. Active and passive articulators. The functions of the vocal cords in articulation.

3. The phonetics of English vowels. The three-term description. Explain the difference between the terms high and low as they characterize vowels, and the terms magas and mély as they are used to describe Hungarian vowel harmony.

4. Explain what binary phonological features are and how they model the internal structure of sound segments. What is a natural class? What is the difference between distinctive and redundant features?

5. What is autosegmentalism? What is the melodic tier? What is the timing tier (skeleton)? What evidence does compensatory lengthening provide of its existence?

6. The rules of phonology. Types of processes. The difference between lexical and post-lexical rules.Velar Softening, Spirantisation, Palatalisation, L-darkening, R-dropping, tapping/flapping.

7. The structure of phonological derivation. Lexical representation, phonemic representation and phonetic representation. Rule ordering.

8. Draw a simple tree diagram showing the standard representation of syllable structure. Give the names of the constituents and define them briefly. What are the major phonotactic restrictions constraining their structure? Syllable types, syllable weight.

9. What is the timing tier (skeleton)? What evidence does compensatory lengthening provide of its existence? List and exemplify all the theoretical possibilities of skeleton-melody association.

10.What is sonority, the sonority hierarchy/scale and sonority sequencing? Do we ever see (more or less systematic) violations to the basic principle?

11. What is the maximal structure of the syllable in Kristó (2004)? How does he derive it with reference to domination? What is the phonological Empty Category Principle?

12. Stress in English. Degrees of stress. Primary stress assignment in nouns and verbs. Affixes.

13. In what sense are words in languages signs (symbols)? Who does the idea originate from? Are onomatopoeic words included? Are composite signs different? Consider examples like doglike and football.

14. Problems with the definition of word. Lexeme, word form, paradigm, grammatical word, syncretism, inflection and word-formation.

15. Sources of words. Lexicalisation.

16. Root-level vs. word-level affixation. Analytic, non-analytic, monomorphemic and synthetic forms.

Reading:

  • Kristó, László (ms.) The English Word: An Introduction to Phonology and Morphology: Cimlap - Ch.1 - Ch.2 - Ch.3 - Ch.4 - Ch.5 - Ch.6 - Ch. 7 - Ch. 8. (downloadable from the Courses website)
  • Kristó, László (ms.)Internal word boundaries: analytic and non-analytic forms (downloadable from FB)

Slideshows:

  • 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 are downloadable from the Courses website
  • a single file containing topics 5-6-7-8 is downloadable from FB