Phonetics Exercises

English 336: Introduction to Linguistics
Requirement for Phonetics Exercises

Assignment on Phonetics to be Counted as a Quiz Grade:
Complete exercises in chapter 6 1-13 and no. 1 in chapter 7. Grades will be assigned as follows.

F—complete exercises not submitted by 3/28
D—complete exercises submitted by 3/28, with major errors throughout answers
C—complete exercises submitted by 3/28, with a variety of errors present
You may then turn in corrections and do these supplementary exercises to raise a C or D grade.
Resubmit your original exercises with the supplementary ones by 4/4.
B—minor errors in first set of exercises or very few errors in second supplementary set, all completed by 4/4
A—very few errors (one or two in each of several exercises) in first set, completed by 3/28, or supplementary set
(If you have only a few errors in exercises from the book, correcting those errors is sufficient; you don’t have to do these supplementary exercises.)

Supplementary Exercises

1. Write the phonetic symbol for the first sound in each word, according to your pronunciation.

a. chasm
b. psalm
c. eager
d. knife
e. philosophy
f. carol
g. thinker
h. central
i. use
j. justice

2. Write the phonetic symbol for the last sound in each word, according to your pronunciation.

a. wires ________		g. moth ________
b. following ________		h. mash ________
c. baked ________		i. she ________
d. language ________		j. idea ________
e. catch ________		k. pass ________
f. Mac ________		l. filth ________

3. Write the following words in phonetic transcription, according to your pronunciation.

a. eats
b. shoes
c. mast
d. cut
e. lick
f. look
g. opened
h. songs
i. wreathe
j. helped
k. fastened
l. oceans
m. joyful
n. mine
o. clown
p. around
q. laundry
r. itchy
s. dry
t. beauty
u. stayed
v. ground

4. Write the symbol that corresponds to each of the following phonetic descriptions; then give an English word that contains this sound.

a. voiced bilabial stop
b. high front tense vowel
c. voiced velar glide
d. central mid unstressed vowel
e. voiceless velar stop
f. alveolar nasal stop

5. In each of the following pairs of words, the bold italicized sounds differ by one or more phonetic properties (features). State the differences, and, in addition, state what properties they have in common.

Example: phone—phonic The o in phone is mid, tense, round.
The o in phonic is low, unround. Both are back vowels.
a. race—amaze
b. heat—help
c. under—umbrella
d. catch—judge
e. you—watch
f. catch—palm

SEE THE HARD COPY DISTRIBUTED IN CLASS IF YOU NEED TO DO THE FOLLOWING EXERCISES.

6. For each group of sounds listed below, state the phonetic feature or features which they all share.

Example: [p] [b] [m] Features: labial, stop, consonant.

a. [f] [q] [s] [s]
b. [I] [i] [e] [æ] [e]
c. [k] [h] [w] [g] [ ]
d. [b] [d] [g]
e. [j] [w]

7. Match the sounds under column A with one or more phonetic properties from column B as illustrated in the first one.

A		B
a. [o] ____3____ ___6_____ ____5____		1. velar
b. [z] ________ ________ ________		2. nasal
c. [k] ________ ________ ________		3. rounded
d. [r] ________ ________ ________		4. stop
e. [h ] ________ ________ ________		5. voiced
f. [b] ________ ________ ________		6. back
g. [U] ________ ________ ________		7. liquid
		8. labial

8. Write the phonetically transcribed sentences in the following dialogue in regular English spelling.
THE IPA SYMBOLS ARE NOT ALL CORRECT HERE. YOU WILL NEED TO GET ANOTHER COPY IF YOU NEED THIS EXERCISE.