English Structure

• Phone is a physical realization of a mental representation of a speech sound.
• Phoneme is the smallest meaningless contrasive unit of language.
• Allophone is a predictable positional variant of a phoneme occuring in and restricted to well defined enviornments
• Complimentary distribution of sounds- sounds occur in different or mutually exclusive enviornments and are allophones of the same phoneme
• Contrasive distribution of phonemes- involves two or more sounds that occur in identical enviornments and they bring about the contrast in meaning
• Allophoninc processes mediate between and underlying (abstract) representation of sounds and surface (phonetic) repsentation
• Characteristic of assimilation- two neighbouring phonemes becvome alike each other in terms of their phonetic properties
• Assimilation in terms of of place of articulation is when sound changes its place of articulation to another place, which depends on the place of articulation in another sound
• Assimilation in terms of manner of articulation is when two neighbouring sounds become similar in their manner of articulation, two adjacents sounds are merged to create a new sound.
• assimilation in terms of voice is when one of phoneme looses 'part' of its voicing across word boundaries
• assimilation occurs when voiceless plosives become aspirated voiceless plosive word or syllable initially before a stressed vowel
• vowel reduction occurs when lax vowels are reduced to weak vowel when unstressed
• Syllable is made out of onset; nucleus; coda
• Onset is consonant that comes at the beginning of a syllable, consisting of up to 3 consonants
• Coda is consonants that come at the end of a syllable consisting of up to 4 consonants
• Phonotactic rules are restirictions of possible combination of consonants in onset and coda positions
• 3-consonant onsents permissible in english are : pre-initial C ->Initial C -> Post-initial C
• In two syllable verbs second syllable is stressed when it contains a long vowel, a diphtong or more than one consonant in coda
• In two syllable verbs first syllable is stressed when the second syllable contains a short vowel, one or none consonants in coda or a diphtong
• In three syllable verbs middle syllable is stressed when the final syllable contains a short vowel, has no more than one consonant in coda
• In three syllable verbs final syllable is stressed when it contains a long vowel or a diphtong and more than one consonant in coda
• In two syllable nouns first syllable is stressed if the second syllable contains a short vowel
• In three syllable nouns middle syllable is stressed when it contains a long vowel, a diphtong or has more than one consonant in coda and the final syllable contains a short vowel or a diphtong (shwa-u)
• In three syllable nouns first syllable is stressed when the final syllable contains a short vowel and has only one consonant in coda, its also stressed when the final syllable contains a long vowel
• Two syllable adjectives are stressed according to rules of two syllable verbs
• Three syllable adjectives are stressed according to the rules of three syllable nouns
• Morpheme is the smallest mental units of language that are capable of being associated with meaning
• Morphs are the actual segments of words
• Allomorphs are predictable variants of morphemes
• Inflectional morphemes carry grammatical information; they carry meaning associated with grammatical category:- number, case, gender, definitness, person, tense, aspect, mood, voice, degree
• Inflectional endings can attach to newly created words or new words borrowed from other languages : plural, possesive -s; tense -ed -ing; comparison -er -est
• Unproductive inflectional endings are found on selected members of a class but would never be added to new;

  singular / -> plural / ;en singular -us ->plural -I singular is -> plural -es singular on; um -> plural a singular ex -> plural ces;xes

  infinitive / -> past tense n participle /; (e)n; t
• The occurence of a particular allomorph is predictable from the phonetic environment, it is not random but conditioned by the final phoneme of the steam

  [pl]-> [shwa-z]/sibiants; [s]/C[-voice];[z]z/elsewhere

  [past]->[shwa-d]/ [long l] or [d]; [long l]/ c [-voice] ; [d]/elsewhere
• Conversion is a change in lexical category and meaning without the addidion of any derivational morphemes

  Proper nouns -> common nouns

  Wellingto -> wellington
• Compoudin is a proces by which two or more free roots and associated affixes are combined together e.g:

  A+N>N Mad Man

  N+N>V Skydive

  A+V+-ing > A Easy-going
• Blending is a morphological process by which two free roots are combined together and the end of the first root and the beggining of the second root are clipped

  smog > sm(oke) + (f)og
• Shortening is a deletion of sounds segments without respect to morphological boundaries

  Flu> in-flu-enza

  Fridge> re-Fridge-rator