Phonological Midterm

Take-Home Midterm

LS 560

(150 Points)

Instructor’s Name: Mary Hughes

Student Name: _______________________________

BU email: ___________________________________

DUE: Upload to Blackboard as a Word Doc by Tuesday, November 10, 2020 by midnight/end of day

NO LATE WORK WILL BE ACCEPTED!!!

Directions: Please type up all answers and include this title page with an electronic signature. Answer each question briefly, but completely. Be sure to read each question and all directions carefully before answering.

Read the following carefully!

PLAGIARISM: All work on this exam should be your own and should not be discussed with any other student in LS 560 or any other courses. Anything that is directly taken from texts or the internet without proper citation or anything copied from another student will be considered plagiarism and will result in an automatic zero (0) on the exam. Moreover, any instances of cheating or plagiarism on this exam will be reported to the appropriate university officials and may have further consequences. If you are still unclear about what is considered plagiarism, then refer to Boston University’s Conduct Code at

http://www.bu.edu/academics/resources/academic-conduct-code/.

I understand and will adhere to the exam and university guidelines as stated above.

Student Signature _________________________________________

A. Multiple Choice Questions (30 Points; answer all 10; 3 points each)

Please be sure to explain your answer.

1. The term competence refers to

A. an native speaker’s perfect inner/mental knowledge of a language and all its grammatical rules

B. the ability to read, write, speak, or listen, as the occasion demands

C. knowledge of how to analyze a language, to diagram sentences and recognize parts of speech

D. the ability to speak in a fluent and effective manner

Explain your answer:

2. A researcher wants to know whether 8-month-old English-acquiring infants can discriminate the sounds of German, a language closely related to English, from those of Thai, an unrelated language. Which method is the best one to use?

A. high-amplitude sucking procedure

B. conditioned head-turn procedure

C. preferential looking procedure

D. kicking rate procedure

Explain your answer:

3. Consider the two English words cattle and castle. Which of the following is FALSE?

A. The words differ in terms the place and manner of articulation of one sound

B. The words differ in terms of the manner of articulation and presence or absence of voicing of one sound

B. The words differ in spelling and sound

C. The words are a minimal pair

Explain your answer:

4. The words and, if, and the would be considered

A. closed class words

B. open class words

C. content words

D. conjunctions

Explain your answer:

5. Which of the following best describes infants’ learning of the sounds of their languages?

A. Infants come into the world being unable to perceive most speech sounds, and must gradually learn to hear the differences between sounds in their native language

B. Because infants can hear in utero, they come into the world being able to perceive only those speech sounds in their native language (and not perceiving nonnative contrasts)

C. Infants come into the world being able to perceive most possible speech sounds, and gradually lose the ability to distinguish sounds that do not occur in their native language

D. Infants, like adults, can naturally distinguish nearly all of the important speech sounds for the various languages of the world, and this ability does not change with age

Explain your answer:

6. One criterion for believing that a baby is engaging in intentional communication is that

A. she no longer uses gestures to accompany her vocalizations

B. her mother thinks that she is communicating

C. she vocalizes while reaching for objects

D. she persists in attempts to communicate if she is not understood

Explain your answer:

7. Human language has been said to be biologically innate because

A. children produce limitless and novel utterances although their input is limited

B. children will learn language even if no one speaks to them

C. very young children use vocalizations to make their wishes known

D. children’s first words are related to bodily functions

Explain your answer:

8. Given the following vocalizations from pre-verbal infants, who do you think is the oldest ?

A. Infant A: [m], [i], [a]

B. Infant B: [bamima]

C. Infant C: [dada], [bibibibi], [mʌmʌmʌ]

D. Infant D: cries only

Explain your answer:

9. Riley is an 11-month-old being raised in an English-speaking home. A discrimination test

reveals that she cannot discriminate between Hindi dental vs. retroflex stops. This is most

likely because

A. Riley has Specific Language Impairment.

B. Riley has learned that this contrast is not phonemic in English.

C. Hindi has a more difficult phonological system than English.

D. Riley’s mother is not maternally responsive in their interactions.

Explain your answer:

10. Children’s overextensions may reflect

A. problems with lexical retrieval

B. differences between child and adult concepts

C. use of language for analogy

D. all of the above

Explain your answer:

B. Phonetics – IPA Transcription (20 Points): Transcribe the following words into IPA. Remember to use brackets for IPA. Then circle the consonant clusters in the IPA transcription for each word.

1. chipping _____________________

2. yellow _____________________

3. thesis _____________________

4. joyful _____________________

5. squirrels _____________________

6. wreath _____________________

7. mission _____________________

8. wondrous _____________________

9. hanger _____________________

10. crime ____________________

C. Phonological Development (20 points): For each of the following words produced by a child (3;0), clearly identify the phonological change that is occurring, and give the name of the process. You do not need to account for order of the processes. [Note: some words will have two processes.] Please use IPA when showing phonological change. Adult Child Target Pronunciation Phonological change (in IPA) Type of error (name of process) Example: spook [pu] [sp] --> [p] consonant cluster reduction [k] --> [ø] final consonant deletion

1. lights [wajts]

2. another [nʌdər]

3. purple [pʌpu]

4. skin [kɪn]

5. spoon [bun]

6. cucumber [kukʌbər]

D. Semantic overextension (20 points): Consider the following examples of overextension. What is the semantic basis of each overextension?

First word Referent Overextensions

EX. ________any furry item______________ bow-wow dog sheep, rabbit fur,

Cookie Monster puppet, horse, cat

1. mooi moon cake, round shapes in books, the letter ‘O’

2. sizzo scissors nail file, knife, screwdriver, spoon

3. fireworks fireworks matches, light, cigarette

4. fly fly bread crumbs, specks of dirt, small insects

E. True or False (10 points)

Circle T or F according to whether the statement is true or false.

1. Voiced and voiceless sounds are distinguished by whether or not the vocal folds vibrate.	T	F
2. The environment plays no role in nativist/innatist theories of language acquisition.	T	F
3. Among members of the animal kingdom, only humans communicate with each other.	T	F
4. In most individuals, language is localized in the right temporal lobe.	T	F
5. Towards the end of their first year of life, infants who are too young to communicate verbally can still do so nonverbally.	T	F

F. Short Answer Questions (50 points): Choose two (2) of the following questions (25 points each) and write a short response (about 3 paragraphs per question).

1. Although an infant of seven months may produce something that sounds like mama, linguists and psycholinguists would be hesitant to say that the infant uses this form as a word. Why? What might this be instead? Why might a parent confuse this for a first word? In other words, what are the criteria for a first word and what form do they take? How would you argue that this is not a communicative utterance?

2. The latest research shows that before babies begin to speak, they are already engaged in complex cognitive and communicative behavior. Describe some of the early cognitive precursors that exist in infants and some of the communicative behaviors that babies engage in with their caregivers that show communicative intention? Give at least three examples.

3. What are the five stages of pre-linguistic speech that infants go through in terms of speech production? Name and thoroughly describe the characteristics of each stage and the approximate age that it occurs. During this same time period (the first year), describe what is happening in speech perception for infants. Give at least two examples.

4. Describe one of the theories of language acquisition that you have learned about. Give some evidence to support this theory? Give some evidence that calls certain aspects of this theory into question. What alternative theory can help to explain these aspects and how so?

Extra Credit (Optional – 10 points possible):

Write about something that you have learned in this class so far that has surprised you or that you found really interesting. What did you find interesting and why? How might you use this knowledge (or maybe you have used it already) in your profession or in your everyday life? How has this knowledge changed your thinking about language?