The purpose of this exam is to give you a chance to demonstrate your understanding of key concepts in phonological theory. The questions will not be focused on specific small details, but will encourage you to reflect on and explain important ideas in phonology and in linguistic model-building. There will not be a major data set to analyze; instead, expect a small number of discussion questions, some of which may involve discussing or critiquing part of a phonological analysis.
This web page is intended as a guide to help you review course material and prepare for the exam. With the following topics in mind, a good way to prepare for the exam is to look back through your own course notes, the lecture outlines, reading guides, and discussion exercises/data sets, and ask yourself, "Do I understand why we/they did things this way?" You may also wish to review what kinds of information and key points are addressed in each course reading, in case you need to use information from a reading in your answer to an exam question.
That said, if you have been keeping up with readings and spot-check questions, and digesting class discussions thoughtfully, you should be in a strong position for this exam without too much special preparation.
Exam logistics
- The exam will be administered on Canvas as a "Quiz" during class time
- The exam will open at 3:25 and close at 4:50, and you will have up to 80 minutes to complete it once you begin (=5 extra minutes if you start on time or early)
- Please bring your laptop and plan to take the exam in our usual classroom
- The exam is "open book" — you may use all LING 523 materials and your class notes
- Acceptable materials:
- Course readings, course web sites, lecture outlines, handouts, data sets, Canvas spot-check (and assignment) feedback
- External web sites linked from the Daily syllabus web page or the Phonetics review links web page
- Not acceptable:
- Conferring with someone else, whether a classmate or not
- Accessing non-523 materials on the internet
- Please ask me if you have questions about acceptable resources!
- Acceptable materials:
General topics and things to know
Phonological analysis basics
- Be able to recognize and use phonetic symbols
- Be able to distinguish between predictable and contrastive (unpredictable) information in a phonological data set, and defend your claim
- Be able to state an insightful descriptive generalization about phonological data
- Understand what models are used for in science, and some of the principles involved in working with models
Feature theory
- Be able to work with a distinctive-feature system
- Know how to describe consonants and vowels, and natural classes of segments, with the Hall (2007) feature system
- Be able to work with an alternative feature system if one is given to you
- More generally, understand what predictions a given feature system (model!) makes about phonologically active classes and phonological processes
Syllable structure and sonority
- Be able to use information about segment distribution, the domain of a phonological process, or syllable-weight-sensitive stress patterns to form a hypothesis about syllable structure in a given language
- Be familiar with which aspects of syllabification are thought to be universal, and which are language-specific
- Be able to formalize generalizations about syllable weight in terms of moraic theory, and draw the appropriate structures
- Be able to identify and discuss sonority-related patterns in syllable structure
Optimality Theory
- Be able to use the basics of the OT formalism insightfully and accurately
- Input and outputs
- Constraints
- Defining constraints and assessing violations
- Distinguishing markedness and faithfulness constraints
- Tableaus
- Hasse diagrams
- Be able to carry out, or critique, the following aspects of an OT analysis
- Finding informative or losing candidates
- Making valid ranking arguments
- Ranking syllable-structure constraints to correctly syllabify segments in a language
- Ranking feature-related constraints to generate a complementary-distribution (allophone) pattern, or the other patterns in this factorial typology (contrast, positional neutralization, inventory gap (also called absolute neutralization))