This 46th collection of students’ pearls of wisdom, laboriously digitised from hand-written papers, demonstrates once again how students new to the study of language speculate about grammar after having imperfectly absorbed what their teachers think they have taught them.

Test Question—Phonological Patterns

The word ten can be pronounced as transcribed^* below, in these utterances:

ten dots	[ten]
ten bins	[tem]
tens	[ten]
ten cots	[teŋ]
tenpins	[tem]

Describe the pattern that you observe in the data.

Answers—Part 2

• All the alphabets after ten can be plosives, so ‘ten’ before them have to be pronounced as transcribed in the data.

• When the words are joined together, (bi)labial words will cause the /m/ sound.

• The data show the same onset and peak, varying in coda. The plosive ‘b’ is voiceless at the word-final position.

• The word ‘ten’ is the noun N, as in the rule N+N → N. New words are formed by compounding words together.

• In the way ‘ten’ is differently pronounced, the coda, after the vowel part is the only one that is modified in the syllable.

• Places of articulation of nasal vowels are the same as the consonants they precede.

• [+stop +sonarant +voice].

• The speaker uses the velar to pronounce the whole word.

• [+sonorant +stop] are [-voice] in word-final position. [+stop -nasal] are [+voice] in word-initial position.

• The last speech sound in the word-final position of the word ‘ten’ follows the place of articulation of the next speech sound following the last speech sound in word-final position of ‘ten’.

• The phoneme of the first syllable for each word is [+nasal].

• The ends of words ending with labial plosives and velar voiceless plosives become nasal, taking into account even the next word.

• The pattern is that word-initial voiceless plosives are aspirated. Also, word-end syllables are all nasal sounds.

• We pronounce [tem] if the peak of the second syllable of the word is [i] and its onset is a combination of the consonant ‘n’ and a bilabial plosive.

• nd+ns produce a ‘ten’ sound. nb+np produce a [tem] sound. Both ‘b’ and ‘p’ are plosives and bilabials. Hence, articulations tends to take a shorter route, since ‘m’ is also bilabial. Consonant sequence /np-/ must always be syllabified as it is not a well- formed syllable onset. Maximising the onset would make the word sound very weird.

• Voiced consonants are nasal sounds in the coda of the first syllable.

More to come...

	The SpecGram Inquisition—Madalena Cruz-Ferreira—with Inquisitor Generalis Jonathan Downie
	Overheard in the SpecGram Editorial Lounge—Hellgrün Dunkelblau, Ph.D. and Myrkur-Viviti Темнота, ABD
	SpecGram Vol CLXXI, No 2 Contents