Structural Linguistics
In this project, you will respond to the following questions completely and thoughtfully:
Part 1 – Story Corps
StoryCorps records speakers having a meaningful talk or telling an important story from their life to someone else. Active since 2003, the project has built the largest collection of human voices ever archived – each telling a story from their life experiences. The full collection is housed at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress and represents and amazing cross-section of speakers and their stories from across America and the world.
Select and listen to a speech sample from StoryCorps that interests you. As you listen (and re-listen, as necessary), identify three words in the sample that the speaker pronounces differently from your own regular pronunciation of the word.
In your response:
1) Identify the source and the specific speech sample (storyteller and interviewer, title of story, URL).
2) Provide a very brief synopsis of the story, in your own words.
3 For each word you selected that the speaker pronounces differently from your own pronunciation, provide:
A) the English orthography (spelling) of the word.
B) the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) representation of the speaker’s pronunciation of the word.
C) the IPA representation of your usual pronunciation of the word.
Part 2 – Phonology Problem
Examine the phones [d] and [ð] in the following data set, taken from Spanish.
1) Determine whether the two phones are allophones of one phoneme or of separate phonemes.
2) If they are allophones of one phoneme, identify a rule that describes their use.
3 If [d] and [ð] are allophones of separate phonemes, give minimal pairs that prove this.
Explain your answer.