Phonetics and you can find every thing in the slide - Essay Example

2a) Within the dataset provided there is only evidence of one minimal pair: [kano] “to make” and [xano] “to lose” providing evidence of /k/ and /x/ being phonemes because they are contrastive and therefore distinctive. It is unlikely that a language will have only one stop consonant (plosive) so it can be assumed that /t/ and /p/ are also phonemes. The fact that there is evidence of both a voiced /?/and voiceless /x/ velar fricative occurring in the same environments anticipates they are phonemes, and that a voiced counterpart to the labio-dental /f/ and alveolar fricative /s/ would also be found with further data.

Evidence also suggests that although the voiced and voiceless pairs of velar fricative phonemes exist they are not found in all situations; for example, /x/ and /?/ occur directly before the back mid vowel /o/ and the low vowel /a/ but not before the high /i/ and mid /e/front vowels and are thus in complementary distribution, wherein we find a voiceless alveolar fricative [?] or its voiced counterpart [?]. . /n/ only occurs between vowels, but because of symmetry it is more likely they both occur as phonemes – within this same argument there may be a velar nasal /?/. Another allophone evidenced in the data is the alveolar trill [r] which is only found inter-vocalically preceding two vowels - in other words a diphthong.

It can thus be assumed that the flap or tap /?/ becomes a trill [r] before a diphthong. The difficulty in terms of interpretation in this data set is whether the post alveolar affricate [t?] is a phoneme or an allophone; for want of further evidence and because both the voiced and voiceless post alveolar fricatives occur in the same environment as the post alveolar affricate it is suggested that it is an allophone of /k/ in keeping with the symmetrical pattern of each velar phoneme having allophones preceding front vowels.

The only other phoneme not discussed within the list is the back high vowel /u/, which if considered a phoneme provides a five vowel system for Cretan. 2b) The following rules would account for the presumed four allophones: /x/ [?] / -- /i/ and /e/ /?/ [?] / -- /i/ and /e/ /k/ [t?] / -- /i/ and /e/ /?/ [r]/ -- /i/ or /e/ 2c) Based on the dataset it is likely that [g] does not exist in Cretan because there is no evidence of any voiced stops; thus it can be assumed that Cretan only has voiceless stops.

References Silzer, P.J. 2005, Working with Language: an interactive guide to understanding language and linguistics. SIL at Biola, Department of TESOL and Applied Linguistics, School of Intercultural Studies, Biola University, viewed 14 January, 201,