The sounds [p] and [b] are identical in place and manner of articulation. The single feature that distinguishes them is which of the following?

Voicing, since [p] is voiceless and [b] is voiced

Place of articulation, since one of them is bilabial and the other is alveolar

Nasality, since one of them is an oral sound and the other is a nasal sound

Voicing, since [p] is voiceless and [b] is voiced

Manner of articulation, since one of them is a plosive and the other is a fricative

In phonetics, phonation refers to which of the following?

The activity of the vocal folds at the glottis, which produces voicing

The shaping of the sound by the tongue and lips above the larynx

The movement of air out of the lungs during ordinary speech

The recovery of the speech signal by the ear and the brain

Which of the following statements about speech production are correct? Select all that apply.

Most speech sounds use a pulmonic egressive airstream pushed out of the lungs

Voicing is produced by vibration of the vocal folds in the larynx

The place of articulation names where in the vocal tract the airflow is obstructed

Most speech sounds use a pulmonic egressive airstream pushed out of the lungs

Voicing is produced by vibration of the vocal folds in the larynx

The place of articulation names where in the vocal tract the airflow is obstructed

Vowels are classified by the same place and manner labels as consonants, such as bilabial, alveolar, plosive and fricative

In English, aspirated [pʰ] occurs at the start of a stressed syllable (as in pin) while unaspirated [p] occurs after /s/ (as in spin), and the two never occur in the same position. This shows that [pʰ] and [p] are which of the following?

Allophones of a single phoneme /p/, because they are in complementary distribution

Separate phonemes, simply because they are phonetically different sounds

In free variation, since either sound may appear in any position at all

Separate phonemes, because the presence of aspiration changes the meaning of the word

Allophones of a single phoneme /p/, because they are in complementary distribution

A linguist finds the minimal pair [tak] 'X' and [dak] 'Y', and separately finds that a nasalised vowel [ã] occurs only before nasal consonants while oral [a] occurs elsewhere. Which conclusions are correct? Select all that apply.

/t/ and /d/ are contrastive and are therefore separate phonemes

The distribution of the nasalised vowel can be stated as an environment: before nasal consonants

/t/ and /d/ are contrastive and are therefore separate phonemes

[ã] and [a] must be separate phonemes just because they sound different

The distribution of the nasalised vowel can be stated as an environment: before nasal consonants

A minimal pair is which of the following?

Two words that differ in meaning and in exactly one sound in the same position

Two words that share the same meaning but have different pronunciations

Two allophones of one phoneme that occur in the very same environment

Two sounds that can never occur in the same phonetic environment

Which statements about suprasegmental features and phonological processes are correct? Select all that apply.

Tone is a lexical use of pitch that can distinguish word meanings, as in Mandarin

Assimilation makes a sound take on a feature of a neighbouring sound

Stress, length and intonation are suprasegmental because they span more than a single segment

Tone is a lexical use of pitch that can distinguish word meanings, as in Mandarin

Assimilation makes a sound take on a feature of a neighbouring sound

Stress, length and intonation are suprasegmental because they span more than a single segment

Metathesis is the deletion of a sound from the end of a word

Which pairing of a phonological theory with its core idea is correct?

Autosegmental phonology — tones and features on separate tiers linked by association lines

Generative phonology (SPE) — ranked, violable constraints evaluated by GEN and EVAL

Autosegmental phonology — tones and features on separate tiers linked by association lines

Optimality Theory — ordered rewrite rules mapping underlying forms to surface forms

Lexical phonology — a single flat tier of feature bundles with no interaction with morphology

A theory does away with ordered derivational rules entirely, replacing them with a set of ranked, violable constraints; the grammar generates candidate outputs and selects the one that best satisfies the ranking. This describes which theory?

Optimality Theory, developed by Prince and Smolensky

Generative phonology as presented in Chomsky and Halle's The Sound Pattern of English

Autosegmental phonology, with its separate tiers and association lines

Optimality Theory, developed by Prince and Smolensky

Lexical phonology, with its ordered lexical strata

Which statement correctly distinguishes inflection from derivation?

Inflection marks grammatical categories without changing part of speech, whereas derivation builds new lexemes and may change it

Inflection always changes a word's part of speech, whereas derivation never changes it

Inflection creates entirely new lexemes with new meanings, whereas derivation only ever adds a purely grammatical ending to an already existing word

Both inflection and derivation always change the part of speech of the base word

Inflection marks grammatical categories without changing part of speech, whereas derivation builds new lexemes and may change it

In the words taller and teacher, the suffix spelt -er has two different functions. Which analysis is correct?

In taller it is inflectional (the comparative of an adjective), while in teacher it is derivational (forming a noun from a verb)

Both are derivational, since -er creates a brand-new word in each of the two cases

In taller it is inflectional (the comparative of an adjective), while in teacher it is derivational (forming a noun from a verb)

Both are inflectional, since -er is one and the same grammatical ending throughout

In taller it is a derivational suffix and in teacher it is an inflectional one, which is the exact reverse of the standard analysis of these two words

Which of the following statements about morphemes and allomorphs are correct? Select all that apply.

The English plural morpheme has the allomorphs /s/, /z/ and /ɪz/, chosen by the preceding sound

A free morpheme can stand alone as a word, while a bound morpheme must attach to something

Allomorphs are variant realisations of a single morpheme, not separate morphemes

The English plural morpheme has the allomorphs /s/, /z/ and /ɪz/, chosen by the preceding sound

A free morpheme can stand alone as a word, while a bound morpheme must attach to something

Allomorphs are variant realisations of a single morpheme, not separate morphemes

Every morpheme corresponds to exactly one syllable

Which attribution of a modern morphological framework is correct?

Distributed Morphology (Halle and Marantz) is non-lexicalist, building abstract morphemes in the syntax with phonological forms inserted late

Construction Morphology holds that the syntax builds words with late Vocabulary Insertion

Distributed Morphology is a strongly lexicalist theory that keeps all of word-formation inside the lexicon and entirely out of the syntax proper

Distributed Morphology (Halle and Marantz) is non-lexicalist, building abstract morphemes in the syntax with phonological forms inserted late

Construction Morphology denies that words can ever be treated as pairings of form and meaning

On a spectrogram, which acoustic property is correctly linked to the height of a vowel?

F1, the first formant, which is inversely related to vowel height, so that high vowels have a low F1

F1, the first formant, which is directly related to vowel height, so that high vowels have a high F1

F2, the second formant, which falls as vowel height rises, so that low vowels have a very high F2

Voice onset time, which is shortest for the highest vowels and longest for the lowest vowels

Sounds and Words: Phonetics, Phonology and Morphology

This chapter begins Section XH3.2 of XH3 Linguistics, one of the six optional sections of the Humanities and Social Sciences (XH) paper, chosen at the time of application. Section XH3.2, "Levels of Grammatical Analysis", names the primary components of grammar; this chapter covers its first two, A. Phonetics and Phonology (sounds) and B. Morphology (words). It teaches how speech sounds are produced, transcribed in the IPA and perceived; how languages organise sounds into a system of phonemes and allophones, read through contrastive and complementary distribution and described with distinctive features; segmental, suprasegmental and tonal processes; the main modern phonological theories (generative, autosegmental, lexical phonology and Optimality Theory); and then morphemes and allomorphs, inflection versus derivation, word-formation and its constraints, lexical and structural ambiguity, the morphology-phonology interface, the mental lexicon, and modern frameworks such as Distributed Morphology and Construction Morphology. The analysable questions ask you to read distribution from data, name the feature that separates two sounds, and segment words into morphemes.

1. Speech production, phonation and articulation

Most speech sounds use a pulmonic egressive airstream: air pushed out of the lungs through the vocal tract (larynx, pharynx, oral and nasal cavities). Phonation is what the vocal folds (in the larynx, at the glottis) do to that airstream: when they vibrate the sound is voiced (as in [z], [b], and normally all vowels); when they are apart and still, it is voiceless (as in [s], [p]). Articulation shapes the sound above the larynx, described by place (where the obstruction is — bilabial, labiodental, dental, alveolar, palatal, velar, glottal) and manner (how the air is obstructed — plosive/stop, fricative, affricate, nasal, approximant, trill, tap). Vowels are described by tongue height, backness and lip rounding.

Beyond production, phonetics has two further branches. Acoustic phonetics studies the sound wave itself — fundamental frequency (perceived as pitch), the formants that identify vowels, and duration — usually read from a spectrogram. Auditory/perceptual phonetics studies how the ear and brain recover sounds, including perceptual cues (for example, voice-onset time cues the voiced/voiceless contrast) and categorical perception, by which a continuous acoustic range is heard as discrete categories.

Two standard acoustic correlates are worth knowing. Vowels appear on a spectrogram as bands of energy called formants: the first formant (F1) is inversely related to vowel height (high vowels such as [i] and [u] have a low F1, low vowels such as [a] a high F1), while the second formant (F2) tracks frontness (front vowels have a high F2) and is lowered by lip rounding. Voicing in stops is cued by voice onset time (VOT), the interval between the release of the closure and the start of vocal-fold vibration. On the perception side, sound passes from the outer ear to the eardrum, through the three middle-ear bones (malleus, incus, stapes) to the cochlea, where the basilar membrane responds to different frequencies at different places (tonotopic organisation); the auditory nerve then carries the signal to the brain.

⚠️ Phonetics is physical; phonology is systemic

Phonetics studies the physical sounds of all languages (production, acoustics, perception); phonology studies how a particular language organises those sounds into a contrastive system. The same physical [pʰ] is one thing to a phonetician and, to an English phonologist, merely a variant of the phoneme /p/.

2. The IPA: transcribing sounds

The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) gives one symbol per distinct speech sound, so a transcription is independent of spelling: English cat is [kæt], thought is [θɔːt], ship is [ʃɪp]. A consonant is fixed by the triple (voicing, place, manner): [t] is a voiceless alveolar plosive, [z] a voiced alveolar fricative, [m] a (voiced) bilabial nasal, [ŋ] a velar nasal. Square brackets [ ] mark a narrow phonetic transcription (actual sounds); slashes / / mark a phonemic transcription (the abstract contrastive units). The distinction matters: English /p/ is realised as aspirated [pʰ] in pin but unaspirated [p] in spin.

Some English consonants by voicing, place and manner
Symbol	Voicing	Place	Manner
[p]	Voiceless	Bilabial	Plosive
[z]	Voiced	Alveolar	Fricative
[ŋ]	Voiced	Velar	Nasal
[tʃ]	Voiceless	Post-alveolar	Affricate

3. Phonemes, allophones, distribution and distinctive features

A phoneme is an abstract contrastive sound unit of a language; its physically different realisations are its allophones. Two sounds are contrastive (separate phonemes) if swapping one for the other can change meaning — shown by a minimal pair, two words differing in just one sound: English pin /pɪn/ versus bin /bɪn/ proves /p/ and /b/ are distinct phonemes. Two sounds are in complementary distribution (allophones of one phoneme) if each occurs only where the other cannot, so they never contrast: English aspirated [pʰ] appears at the start of a stressed syllable and unaspirated [p] after /s/, so they are allophones of /p/. Where sounds occur in the same slot with no change of meaning, they are in free variation.

Distinctive features break sounds into the smaller binary properties ([±voice], [±nasal], [±continuant], [±sonorant], and place features) on which contrasts and natural classes are stated. A natural class is a group of sounds sharing features that pattern together in rules. The feature system lets us say precisely how two sounds differ: [p] and [b] differ only in [±voice] — a single feature — while [p] and [n] differ in several features at once (among them [±voice], [±nasal] and place). The binary, acoustically grounded feature system comes from Roman Jakobson (with Fant and Halle, 1952); Chomsky and Halle recast it in articulatory terms in The Sound Pattern of English (1968).

🧠 Reading distribution from data

To test two sounds in a data set: look for a minimal pair. If one exists, the sounds contrast and are separate phonemes. If none exists and the environments of the two sounds never overlap, they are in complementary distribution and are allophones of one phoneme. State the conditioning environment in features, not single sounds.

4. Phonological processes and modern theories

Segmental processes change individual sounds: assimilation (a sound takes on a neighbour's features, as in English in- becoming [ɪm] before bilabials in impossible), dissimilation, deletion/elision, epenthesis (insertion), and metathesis (reordering).
Suprasegmental (prosodic) features span more than one segment: stress, length, intonation (sentence-level pitch) and tone (lexical pitch that distinguishes word meanings, as in Mandarin). Tonal processes such as tone spreading and downstep operate on these; in Mandarin, for example, a third tone becomes a rising (second) tone before another third tone, a process called tone sandhi.

Modern phonological theories and their core ideas
Theory	Core idea	Associated with
Generative phonology (SPE)	Ordered rewrite rules map underlying to surface forms; linear feature matrices	Chomsky & Halle (1968)
Autosegmental phonology	Tones and features on separate tiers linked by association lines (non-linear)	John Goldsmith (1976)
Lexical phonology	Morphology and phonology interleaved in ordered strata; lexical vs postlexical rules	Kiparsky, Mohanan (1982)
Optimality Theory (OT)	Ranked, violable constraints; GEN produces candidates, EVAL picks the optimal one	Prince & Smolensky (1993)

ℹ️ Rules versus constraints; linear versus non-linear

SPE is rule-based and linear (a flat string of feature bundles). Autosegmental phonology is non-linear, spreading a feature across a tier. OT replaces ordered rules altogether with ranked, violable constraints weighing markedness against faithfulness. Prosodic morphology (McCarthy and Prince) applies such prosodic structure to templates and reduplication.

5. Morphemes, allomorphs, inflection and derivation

A morpheme is the smallest unit that carries meaning or grammatical function; cats has two, {cat} + {plural -s}, and unhappiness has three, {un-} + {happy} + {-ness}. A morpheme's context-dependent variant forms are its allomorphs: the English plural is /s/ after voiceless sounds (cats), /z/ after voiced (dogs) and /ɪz/ after sibilants (horses) — one morpheme, three phonologically conditioned allomorphs. Morphemes are free (can stand alone: dog, run) or bound (only attach: un-, -ness, -ed), and a word has a root plus affixes (prefixes, suffixes, and in some languages infixes inside the root and circumfixes around it). A clitic is phonologically dependent on a host yet syntactically word-like (the 's in John's gone), and a zero morph marks a category with no overt form (sheep as a plural).

Inflection versus derivation is the central split in word structure. Inflectional affixes mark grammatical categories without changing the word's part of speech or core meaning: English has a small, closed set (plural -s, past -ed, 3rd-sg -s, comparative -er, etc.). Derivational affixes build new lexemes, often changing the part of speech or adding substantial meaning: -ness makes nouns from adjectives (happy → happiness), -ize makes verbs, un- reverses meaning. Other word-formation processes include compounding (blackboard), conversion (noun google → verb to google), clipping, blending and acronymy.

Inflection versus derivation
Property	Inflection	Derivation
Part of speech	Never changed	Often changed
Productivity	Fully regular, applies broadly	Often limited, with gaps
Position	Outside derivation (peripheral)	Closer to the root

6. Ambiguity, interfaces, the mental lexicon and modern theories

Words can be ambiguous in two ways. Lexical ambiguity is one form with unrelated meanings (bank = riverside or financial institution). Structural (morphological) ambiguity is one string with two internal structures: unlockable is either [[un+lock]+able] 'able to be unlocked' or [un+[lock+able]] 'not able to be locked'. Constraints limit word-formation: affixes select for a base of a given category (-ness attaches to adjectives), and blocking prevents a regular form when a stored word already fills its slot (stealer is blocked by thief in the relevant sense).

The morphology-phonology interface is where word structure and sound meet: the plural allomorphs above are chosen by phonology, and some phonological rules apply only within certain morphological domains. The mental lexicon is the speaker's stored inventory of lexical items; a central debate is storage versus computation — whether complex and especially irregular words (went, mice) are stored whole while regular ones (walked) are built on the fly by rule, a dual-route view much studied in psycholinguistics.

Distributed Morphology (Halle and Marantz, 1993): there is no separate word-building component; syntax assembles abstract morphemes and phonological material is inserted late by Vocabulary Insertion — a non-lexicalist, 'syntax all the way down' view.
Lexicalist versus paradigm-based approaches: lexicalism keeps word-formation in the lexicon, separate from syntax; paradigm-based (word-and-paradigm) theories treat inflection as filling cells of a paradigm by realisation rules rather than by concatenating morphemes.
Construction Morphology (Booij): words and word-formation schemas are constructions — conventional pairings of form and meaning at the word level, parallel to syntactic constructions.

Key takeaways

Speech uses a pulmonic egressive airstream; phonation (vocal-fold vibration) sets voicing, and consonants are fixed by voicing, place and manner. Phonetics is the physical study of sound (articulatory, acoustic, auditory); phonology is how one language organises sound into a contrastive system.
A minimal pair proves two sounds are contrastive phonemes; complementary distribution (no overlapping environments, no minimal pair) means they are allophones of one phoneme; free variation is same slot, no meaning change. Distinctive features state contrasts and natural classes: [p] and [b] differ in [±voice] alone.
Processes are segmental (assimilation, deletion, epenthesis, metathesis) or suprasegmental (stress, length, intonation, tone). Theories: generative SPE (ordered rules, linear) — Chomsky & Halle; autosegmental (tiers) — Goldsmith; lexical phonology (strata) — Kiparsky/Mohanan; Optimality Theory (ranked violable constraints) — Prince & Smolensky.
A morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit; allomorphs are its conditioned variants (English plural /s/, /z/, /ɪz/). Inflection marks grammar without changing word class and is regular and peripheral; derivation builds new lexemes, often changing class, and sits closer to the root.
Lexical ambiguity is one form with unrelated senses; structural ambiguity is one string with two structures (unlockable). Blocking and category selection constrain word-formation; the mental lexicon raises the storage-versus-computation debate (irregulars stored, regulars built).
Modern morphology: Distributed Morphology (Halle & Marantz) is non-lexicalist with late Vocabulary Insertion; lexicalist and paradigm-based theories differ on whether word-building sits in the lexicon or realises paradigm cells; Construction Morphology (Booij) treats words as form-meaning constructions.

Practice questions (17)

Attempt each one before opening the answer. Every explanation names the tempting wrong option as well as the right one, because that is where marks are lost.

In IPA terms, the sound [p] is best described as which of the following?
1. A voiced bilabial plosive
2. A voiceless bilabial plosive
3. A voiceless alveolar fricative
4. A voiced velar nasal
Show answer
Answer: B — A voiceless bilabial plosive
[p] is made with the lips (bilabial), with complete closure then release (plosive), and with the vocal folds apart (voiceless). The voiced bilabial plosive is [b]; the voiceless alveolar fricative is [s]; the voiced velar nasal is [ŋ].
The sounds [p] and [b] are identical in place and manner of articulation. The single feature that distinguishes them is which of the following?
1. Place of articulation, since one of them is bilabial and the other is alveolar
2. Nasality, since one of them is an oral sound and the other is a nasal sound
3. Voicing, since [p] is voiceless and [b] is voiced
4. Manner of articulation, since one of them is a plosive and the other is a fricative
Show answer
Answer: C — Voicing, since [p] is voiceless and [b] is voiced
Both are bilabial plosives, so place and manner are identical; they differ only in [±voice] — [p] voiceless, [b] voiced. The distractors falsely assert a difference in place, nasality or manner, but on all three features [p] and [b] agree.
In phonetics, phonation refers to which of the following?
1. The activity of the vocal folds at the glottis, which produces voicing
2. The shaping of the sound by the tongue and lips above the larynx
3. The movement of air out of the lungs during ordinary speech
4. The recovery of the speech signal by the ear and the brain
Show answer
Answer: A — The activity of the vocal folds at the glottis, which produces voicing
Phonation is the behaviour of the vocal folds at the glottis: vibration gives voicing, an open glottis gives voicelessness. Shaping above the larynx is articulation; air from the lungs is the airstream mechanism; recovery by ear and brain is auditory/perceptual phonetics.
Which of the following statements about speech production are correct? Select all that apply.
1. Most speech sounds use a pulmonic egressive airstream pushed out of the lungs
2. Voicing is produced by vibration of the vocal folds in the larynx
3. The place of articulation names where in the vocal tract the airflow is obstructed
4. Vowels are classified by the same place and manner labels as consonants, such as bilabial, alveolar, plosive and fricative
Show answer
Answer: A — Most speech sounds use a pulmonic egressive airstream pushed out of the lungs; B — Voicing is produced by vibration of the vocal folds in the larynx; C — The place of articulation names where in the vocal tract the airflow is obstructed
The airstream, voicing and place statements are all standard. The false statement concerns vowels: vowels are classified by tongue height, backness and lip rounding, not by the consonant place and manner labels (bilabial, alveolar, plosive and so on), so it does not belong.
The English word thought is pronounced /θɔːt/. Counting every segment (phoneme) in this transcription, how many phonemes does it contain? Give your answer as a whole number.
Numerical answer — type the value.
Show answer
Answer: 3
The transcription /θɔːt/ has three segments: the consonant /θ/, the long vowel /ɔː/ (a single vowel phoneme, the length mark is not a separate segment), and the consonant /t/. The spelling has seven letters, which is the trap: phonemes are counted from the sounds, not the letters, so the answer is 3.
In English, aspirated [pʰ] occurs at the start of a stressed syllable (as in pin) while unaspirated [p] occurs after /s/ (as in spin), and the two never occur in the same position. This shows that [pʰ] and [p] are which of the following?
1. Separate phonemes, simply because they are phonetically different sounds
2. In free variation, since either sound may appear in any position at all
3. Separate phonemes, because the presence of aspiration changes the meaning of the word
4. Allophones of a single phoneme /p/, because they are in complementary distribution
Show answer
Answer: D — Allophones of a single phoneme /p/, because they are in complementary distribution
Because each sound appears only where the other cannot, there is no minimal pair and no meaning contrast: they are in complementary distribution and are allophones of /p/. Phonetic difference alone does not make separate phonemes, aspiration does not change meaning in English, and the distribution is strictly conditioned, not free.
A linguist finds the minimal pair [tak] 'X' and [dak] 'Y', and separately finds that a nasalised vowel [ã] occurs only before nasal consonants while oral [a] occurs elsewhere. Which conclusions are correct? Select all that apply.
1. /t/ and /d/ are contrastive and are therefore separate phonemes
2. [ã] and [a] are in complementary distribution and are allophones of one vowel phoneme
3. [ã] and [a] must be separate phonemes just because they sound different
4. The distribution of the nasalised vowel can be stated as an environment: before nasal consonants
Show answer
Answer: A — /t/ and /d/ are contrastive and are therefore separate phonemes; B — [ã] and [a] are in complementary distribution and are allophones of one vowel phoneme; D — The distribution of the nasalised vowel can be stated as an environment: before nasal consonants
The minimal pair proves /t/ and /d/ contrast. The nasalised and oral vowels never share an environment, so they are in complementary distribution — allophones of one phoneme, with the nasalised one conditioned before nasal consonants. The claim that they must be separate phonemes merely because they differ phonetically is exactly the error complementary distribution rules out.
A minimal pair is which of the following?
1. Two words that differ in meaning and in exactly one sound in the same position
2. Two words that share the same meaning but have different pronunciations
3. Two allophones of one phoneme that occur in the very same environment
4. Two sounds that can never occur in the same phonetic environment
Show answer
Answer: A — Two words that differ in meaning and in exactly one sound in the same position
A minimal pair is two words differing in meaning and in a single sound at the same position (pin/bin), which proves that the two sounds are contrastive phonemes. Same-meaning variants are not a minimal pair; allophones in the same environment describe free variation; sounds that never co-occur are in complementary distribution.
Which statements about suprasegmental features and phonological processes are correct? Select all that apply.
1. Tone is a lexical use of pitch that can distinguish word meanings, as in Mandarin
2. Assimilation makes a sound take on a feature of a neighbouring sound
3. Stress, length and intonation are suprasegmental because they span more than a single segment
4. Metathesis is the deletion of a sound from the end of a word
Show answer
Answer: A — Tone is a lexical use of pitch that can distinguish word meanings, as in Mandarin; B — Assimilation makes a sound take on a feature of a neighbouring sound; C — Stress, length and intonation are suprasegmental because they span more than a single segment
Tone (lexical pitch), assimilation (feature copying from a neighbour) and the suprasegmental status of stress, length and intonation are all correct. The false statement misdefines metathesis, which is the reordering of sounds, not deletion.
Which pairing of a phonological theory with its core idea is correct?
1. Generative phonology (SPE) — ranked, violable constraints evaluated by GEN and EVAL
2. Autosegmental phonology — tones and features on separate tiers linked by association lines
3. Optimality Theory — ordered rewrite rules mapping underlying forms to surface forms
4. Lexical phonology — a single flat tier of feature bundles with no interaction with morphology
Show answer
Answer: B — Autosegmental phonology — tones and features on separate tiers linked by association lines
Autosegmental phonology's hallmark is tones/features on separate tiers joined by association lines. The other three deliberately swap definitions: ranked violable constraints belong to Optimality Theory, ordered rewrite rules to generative phonology (SPE), and morphology-phonology interleaving in strata to lexical phonology.
A theory does away with ordered derivational rules entirely, replacing them with a set of ranked, violable constraints; the grammar generates candidate outputs and selects the one that best satisfies the ranking. This describes which theory?
1. Generative phonology as presented in Chomsky and Halle's The Sound Pattern of English
2. Autosegmental phonology, with its separate tiers and association lines
3. Optimality Theory, developed by Prince and Smolensky
4. Lexical phonology, with its ordered lexical strata
Show answer
Answer: C — Optimality Theory, developed by Prince and Smolensky
Replacing ordered rules with ranked, violable constraints evaluated over candidate outputs is the defining move of Optimality Theory (Prince and Smolensky, 1993). SPE is exactly the rule-based system OT reacts against; autosegmental and lexical phonology retain derivational rules.
How many morphemes are there in the word unhappiness, treating happy as a single root? Give your answer as a whole number.
Numerical answer — type the value.
Show answer
Answer: 3
The word segments as un- + happy + -ness: the prefix {un-}, the free root {happy}, and the suffix {-ness}, giving three morphemes. Splitting -ness into two pieces, or missing un-, are the usual slips; the answer is 3.
Which statement correctly distinguishes inflection from derivation?
1. Inflection always changes a word's part of speech, whereas derivation never changes it
2. Inflection creates entirely new lexemes with new meanings, whereas derivation only ever adds a purely grammatical ending to an already existing word
3. Both inflection and derivation always change the part of speech of the base word
4. Inflection marks grammatical categories without changing part of speech, whereas derivation builds new lexemes and may change it
Show answer
Answer: D — Inflection marks grammatical categories without changing part of speech, whereas derivation builds new lexemes and may change it
Inflection marks grammatical categories (plural, tense) without changing the part of speech; derivation creates new lexemes and often changes the category. The distractors reverse the two or wrongly claim both always change the part of speech, which inflection never does.
In the words taller and teacher, the suffix spelt -er has two different functions. Which analysis is correct?
1. Both are derivational, since -er creates a brand-new word in each of the two cases
2. In taller it is inflectional (the comparative of an adjective), while in teacher it is derivational (forming a noun from a verb)
3. Both are inflectional, since -er is one and the same grammatical ending throughout
4. In taller it is a derivational suffix and in teacher it is an inflectional one, which is the exact reverse of the standard analysis of these two words
Show answer
Answer: B — In taller it is inflectional (the comparative of an adjective), while in teacher it is derivational (forming a noun from a verb)
Comparative -er on an adjective (tall → taller) is inflectional: same part of speech, a grammatical category. Agentive -er on a verb (teach → teacher) is derivational: it builds a new noun from a verb. The two -er suffixes are homophonous but functionally distinct, so the single-function answers are wrong.
Which of the following statements about morphemes and allomorphs are correct? Select all that apply.
1. The English plural morpheme has the allomorphs /s/, /z/ and /ɪz/, chosen by the preceding sound
2. A free morpheme can stand alone as a word, while a bound morpheme must attach to something
3. Allomorphs are variant realisations of a single morpheme, not separate morphemes
4. Every morpheme corresponds to exactly one syllable
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Answer: A — The English plural morpheme has the allomorphs /s/, /z/ and /ɪz/, chosen by the preceding sound; B — A free morpheme can stand alone as a word, while a bound morpheme must attach to something; C — Allomorphs are variant realisations of a single morpheme, not separate morphemes
The plural allomorphy, the free/bound distinction and the definition of allomorphs are all correct. The false claim is that a morpheme equals one syllable: morphemes may be smaller than a syllable (the plural -s) or larger (the two-syllable root water), so there is no one-to-one match.
Which attribution of a modern morphological framework is correct?
1. Construction Morphology holds that the syntax builds words with late Vocabulary Insertion
2. Distributed Morphology is a strongly lexicalist theory that keeps all of word-formation inside the lexicon and entirely out of the syntax proper
3. Distributed Morphology (Halle and Marantz) is non-lexicalist, building abstract morphemes in the syntax with phonological forms inserted late
4. Construction Morphology denies that words can ever be treated as pairings of form and meaning
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Answer: C — Distributed Morphology (Halle and Marantz) is non-lexicalist, building abstract morphemes in the syntax with phonological forms inserted late
Distributed Morphology (Halle and Marantz, 1993) is non-lexicalist: syntax manipulates abstract morphemes and phonological material is inserted late by Vocabulary Insertion. The other options misattribute that late-insertion idea to Construction Morphology, wrongly call Distributed Morphology lexicalist, or deny Construction Morphology's own form-meaning view of words.
On a spectrogram, which acoustic property is correctly linked to the height of a vowel?
1. F1, the first formant, which is inversely related to vowel height, so that high vowels have a low F1
2. F1, the first formant, which is directly related to vowel height, so that high vowels have a high F1
3. F2, the second formant, which falls as vowel height rises, so that low vowels have a very high F2
4. Voice onset time, which is shortest for the highest vowels and longest for the lowest vowels
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Answer: A — F1, the first formant, which is inversely related to vowel height, so that high vowels have a low F1
F1 is inversely related to vowel height: high vowels such as [i] and [u] have a low F1 and low vowels such as [a] a high F1. The tempting distractor reverses the direction of this relationship. F2 tracks frontness rather than height, and voice onset time is a cue to the voicing of stops, not to vowel quality.