Phonology

1. Phonolgy is concerned with a term for both Phonetics and Phonemics. Phonetics
focuses on the description of natural classes of sounds such as fricatives, nasals, and
affricates. Explain!
Answer : Phonetic natural classes are groups of sounds in a language which share some
articulatory or auditory feature. In order for a group of sounds to be a natural class, it must
include all of the sounds that share a particular feature or group of features, and not include
sounds that don’t. Some sound classes are based on articulation or production. Other natural
classes are based on sound quality, or auditory properties.
 
2. Phonemics is the study of the distinctive sound units (phonemes) of a language and
their relationship to one another. Clarify!
Answer : Phonemes are more on the psychologicallevel; they are more abstract. Phonemes
are psychological units of linguistic structure. Phonemes are not directly observable.

3. The natural classes are also based on sound quality or auditory properties. One
example is Sibilants. What do you mean by sibilants?
 Answer : natural classes are based on sound quality, or auditory properties. One example of a
natural class based on auditory properties is Sibilants. such words as rich, bush, kiss,
garages, rouge, and maze, (in other words, [s, z,  d,]) the form is [z]. This group of
sounds all differ in respect to voicing, place, and manner of articulation. However, they do
have an auditory property in common: a high pitched hissing sound. These sounds, therefore,
form a natural class called sibilants.

4. Other classes are obstruents and sonorants. Explain and give examples!
Answer : Obstruents, which are sounds produced with an ‘obstruction’ of air flow,
namely stops, fricatives, affricates. Sonorants, which are consonants produced
with a relatively open passage for the air flow, including nasals, approximants
and others (or nasals, liquids, glides, and others). 
●/e/ in bed, /i/ in lid, and /n/ in nose
 
5. The way to decide two sounds are distinctive is to identify a minimal pair. What is
meant by a minimal pair? Give some examples!
Answer : a pair of words that differ only by a single sound in the same position - and which
have different meanings - but which are otherwise identical.
Example : tot        vs.    hot        
tap    vs.    top
tap    vs.    tab

6. Clarify the distinction between a phone and a phoneme!

Answer : a Phone, which is simply an individual speech sound. a Phoneme, which is a class of
speech sounds which are identified by a speaker as the same sound.