main point; nobody every taught you these rules; you just acquired them subconsciously and they became

LING-102, Summer 2007 Homework 1. Due Wednesday, July 11 at the beginning of class (hard copy) Part 1. Pick any sentence from today’s class handout that contains at least 5 words, and transcribe it on a separate piece of paper using the IPA. Bring your transcription to class on Wednesday. (At the beginning of class you’ll write it on the board and the rest of the class will convert it back to English orthography.) For the rest of the assignment you can use a separate piece of paper or write directly on your printout. Part II. Answer all the questions on p. 9 of the handout from today’s class (repeated below). Phonological rules, like other rules of the descriptive grammar, are unconscious – English-speaking children aren’t explicitly instructed to aspirate voiceless stops at the beginning of stressed syllables; they just automatically learn to do it. We learn phonological rules so thoroughly that we sometimes can’t ‘turn them off’ when we try to learn languages as adults. What happens when English speakers fail to turn off aspiration and diphthongization while speaking Spanish? Exercise: Consider the distribution of the front lax non-low vowels ε and I for a speaker from Texas: Spelling IPA Spelling IPA Spelling IPA let l εt stem stIm spill spIl Len lInlit lIt hem hIm Lynn lIn string strI ŋ hymn hIm met m εtwent wInt strength strI ŋθ west w εst spell spεl deaf d εf friend frInd red r εd peg p εg ...