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SpecGram >> Vol CLXXIII, No 4 >> Boundless Things You Didn’t Know You Didn’t Know—Madalena Cruz-Ferreira

From the Archives!—Dooms/Punod Manuscript Photo—The SpecGram Archive Elves™ SpecGram Vol CLXXIII, No 4 Contents Proto-Indo-Spamopean—An Early Exemplar of “Ye Olde Baite of Yon Clicke”—X. Kuvador, R. Kialugist, and Pael E. O’Ntolojiss

Boundless Things You Didn’t Know You Didn’t Know
(because they aren’t actually true)

gathered at great personal risk of
psycholinguistic harm from actual student papers
by Madalena Cruz-Ferreira

This 55th 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 5

  • [+nasal] speech sounds must be followed by [-nasal] sounds only.

  • Before the pronunciation of [-nasal -dental] the consonants before are [+nasal -dental].

  • The consonant after it begins with bilabial sounds. For example, [m] → {([nb, np])}.

  • The /n/ sound is only pronounced when the next sound is fricative or aleolar.

  • They are pronounced in different phonetic sounds.

  • Allomorphs of this morpheme are voiceless plosives.

  • [tem] when the next sound has an ‘i’ sound to it, [teŋ] when the next sound is ‘o’ which involves rounding of the lips.

  • If ten precedes consonants /b, d, k, p, s/ which are in common [-nasal] no matter are [+voiced] or [-voiced], the word-final sound will be [+nasal] /m, n, ŋ/.

  • They are all followed by consonants. [n] is followed by a voiceless sound.

  • /-n/ becomes /-m/ before voiceless plosives, /-ŋ/ before voiced plosives.

  • Syllables preceding aspirated plosives anticipate the oncoming sound. For /m/ the lips round in anticipation of the aspirated plosive /b/.

  • /b/ in all cases are made voiced biliable plosives.

  • The coda is nasal and voiced, and sonorous.

  • Consonants following a mid front vowel are nasal.

  • Coronal consonants are labial in syllable-final positions. Plosives are voiceless. Fricatives are coronal in word-final position.

  • People tend to confuse plosive sounds with nasal sounds.

More to come...


* The interested and/or confused reader may note that, as becomes apparent through the various scholarly works published from time to time in an outfit attracting international attention such as ours, our linguistic brethren across the big pond are not only separated from us by a common language, but also by a common transcription system. Thus, caveat lector—transcription contents may unsettle during shipping overseas. —Eds.

From the Archives!—Dooms/Punod Manuscript Photo—The SpecGram Archive Elves™
Proto-Indo-Spamopean—An Early Exemplar of “Ye Olde Baite of Yon Clicke”—X. Kuvador, R. Kialugist, and Pael E. O’Ntolojiss
SpecGram Vol CLXXIII, No 4 Contents


© MCMLXXXVIII — MMXXV Speculative Grammarian™


© MCMLXXXVIII — MMXXV Speculative Grammarian™
[URL: https://specgram.com/CLXXIII.4/06.cruz-ferreira.know55.html]