LING 301 EXAM STUDY GUIDE 2026
COMPLETE QUESTIONS WITH ANSWERS
GUARANTEED TO PASS
▶ Characteristics of Vowels. Answer: - Front
- Center
- Back
- Roundness (o,u)
- Tense (e)
- Lax
▶ Syllable. Answer: Unit of speech
Every utterance/word consists of at least one syllable
Syllable can be broken into onset and rhyme
Rhyme can be broken into nucleus and coda
▶ Nucleus and Coda. Answer: The heart of a syllable
Not all languages require an onset or a coda
▶ Syllabic Consonants. Answer: [m]- Bottom, adam
[n]- Button, chicken
[l]- Little, single
- Ladder, burp
▶ Suprasegmental Features. Answer: - Features above descriptive
features of a segment/sound
- Length, intonation, tone, stress
▶ Syllable Structure. Answer: 1. Cat
2. Skin
3. Eat
▶ Length. Answer: The duration of one segment as compared to another
Marked with a colon
, ▶ Intonation. Answer: The pattern of pitch movements across a stretch of
speech
Closely related to pragmatics as it may change the meaning of an
utterance
▶ Tone. Answer: The pitch at which a syllable is produced
Can be used to make meaning distinctions in some tone languages
▶ Stress. Answer: A combination of pitch, length, loudness that makes
one syllable more prominent than another
Some languages have stress free patterns while others have fixed stress
▶ Articulatory phonetics. Answer: Study of speech production
▶ Acoustic phonetics. Answer: Study of speech perception or how it is
transmitted onto the sound waves
▶ Spectograms. Answer: Used to visually represent acoustic properties of
speech sounds
Horizontal axis: Length of a segment
Vertical axis: The frequency at which the segment is produced (formants)
▶ Phonetics. Answer: The study of sounds
- How they are pronounced
- How they are perceived
▶ Phonology. Answer: The study of how those sounds are organized
within a language and how they interact with each other
- What is the organization of sounds in a language?
- What rules govern these relationships?
- In what ways can we understand and predict these rules and
relationships?
▶ Phonetic Inventory. Answer: The collection of sounds that are produced
as part of each language
- Different language may have different phonetic inventories
▶ Phonetic Constraints. Answer: A set of rules specific to each language
that govern which sounds sequences are possible in that language and
which are not
COMPLETE QUESTIONS WITH ANSWERS
GUARANTEED TO PASS
▶ Characteristics of Vowels. Answer: - Front
- Center
- Back
- Roundness (o,u)
- Tense (e)
- Lax
▶ Syllable. Answer: Unit of speech
Every utterance/word consists of at least one syllable
Syllable can be broken into onset and rhyme
Rhyme can be broken into nucleus and coda
▶ Nucleus and Coda. Answer: The heart of a syllable
Not all languages require an onset or a coda
▶ Syllabic Consonants. Answer: [m]- Bottom, adam
[n]- Button, chicken
[l]- Little, single
- Ladder, burp
▶ Suprasegmental Features. Answer: - Features above descriptive
features of a segment/sound
- Length, intonation, tone, stress
▶ Syllable Structure. Answer: 1. Cat
2. Skin
3. Eat
▶ Length. Answer: The duration of one segment as compared to another
Marked with a colon
, ▶ Intonation. Answer: The pattern of pitch movements across a stretch of
speech
Closely related to pragmatics as it may change the meaning of an
utterance
▶ Tone. Answer: The pitch at which a syllable is produced
Can be used to make meaning distinctions in some tone languages
▶ Stress. Answer: A combination of pitch, length, loudness that makes
one syllable more prominent than another
Some languages have stress free patterns while others have fixed stress
▶ Articulatory phonetics. Answer: Study of speech production
▶ Acoustic phonetics. Answer: Study of speech perception or how it is
transmitted onto the sound waves
▶ Spectograms. Answer: Used to visually represent acoustic properties of
speech sounds
Horizontal axis: Length of a segment
Vertical axis: The frequency at which the segment is produced (formants)
▶ Phonetics. Answer: The study of sounds
- How they are pronounced
- How they are perceived
▶ Phonology. Answer: The study of how those sounds are organized
within a language and how they interact with each other
- What is the organization of sounds in a language?
- What rules govern these relationships?
- In what ways can we understand and predict these rules and
relationships?
▶ Phonetic Inventory. Answer: The collection of sounds that are produced
as part of each language
- Different language may have different phonetic inventories
▶ Phonetic Constraints. Answer: A set of rules specific to each language
that govern which sounds sequences are possible in that language and
which are not
