Midterm #2 will cover chapters 4, 5, 6, and 7, as well as parsing of latinate words.
The main focus of this exam will be phonetics, including sound terminology (for review of the sound terminology and its parsing, see the Sound Terminology page); phonological processes (both general ones, like assimilation, and specific ones, like the place assimilations of the Latin prefix /ad-/ 'to, towards'); parsing, etymology, and semantic change.
The time limit on the exam will be 1.5 hours, but it is meant to be doable in ca. one hour. It is not meant to be a race against the clock. Do the exam in one sitting, with only short breaks (if necessary). While your exam is activated, no naps, chattings with friends, web surfing (even on the course site) etc. The exam is designed to be done in one sitting in a quiet place and with no internet information visible other than the "Tests and Quizzes" site on Owlspace. (Music is OK though). Submit the exam when done. Web surfing, or having conversations with others, or even conversations going on around you, could lead to accidental violations of the Honor Code.
SK comment--I take the Honor Code very seriously and so should you, in part because it makes our lives SO much better here at Rice! No exam police like at other universities!! Flexible exam schedules!! Don't abuse the freedom we all benefit from. (I believe that there are not many who need to be reminded of this, but occasionally I have encountered such students and had to deal with them.)
Some abilities you should have by the time of the exam:
Phonetics
consonants fricative voicing affricate larynx (voice box), vocal chords nasal (nasal consonants are also nasal stops) place of articulation liquid lips, bilabial approximant labiodental lateral interdental, dental voicing assimilation alveolar, alveolar ridge place assimilation palatal-alveolar manner assimilation ( = alveo-palatal, partial assimilation = post-alveolar) total assimilation hard palate, palatal vowels soft palate (velum), velar vowel frontness: front/central/back glottis, glottal vowel height: high/mid/low manner of articulation diphthong stop (oral stop = plosive) schwa (the mid-central neutral vowel) aspirationPhonological processes
A small terminological note, not terribly important, but I add it with the aim of being precise about terminology:
Phonological processes start out as very general unconscious articulatory adaptations that speakers make while speaking. At the very beginning they are idiosyncratic, but when a group of speakers makes them systematic (another way of saying that they become conventionalized among that group), they are then properly called phonological processes. After a while, what often happens is that a process becomes specific to a certain morpheme or morphemes, and is no longer fully general to all sounds that meet the phonological conditions. At this point such a process is called a morphophonological process or a morphophonological rule.
The classic example is the set of processes that govern the English plural allomorphs [s], [z], [əz]. This set of processes in English does not operate on all /s/ sounds, just when the /s/ is the English plural morpheme. The processes together are called the "English plural rule". Most of the "phonological processes" we have talked about in class and which are discussed in the book really operate on specific morphemes and hence are actually morphophonological processes. Sometimes, for simplicity's sake, linguists may refer to morphophonological processes as phonological processes. (The first term is such a mouthful!) The two types of processes have much in common, since one is just a historically later stage of the other, and that is why it is not that necessary for us to distinguish them.
ablaut rhotacism weakening insertion deletion, loss metathesis filler, linker morphemeSemantic change
etymology euphemism polysemy taboo homonymy amelioration widening (generalization) pejoration (degeneration) narrowing (specialization) synechdoche metaphor eponymy metonymy
© 2007 Suzanne Kemmer
Last modified 29 Oct 07