Introduction

This exercise is designed to give you practice in solving phonology problems. In this exercise, you will be shown some data from English and then you are to answer the questions that follow. If you are unsure how to solve this problem, you may want to consult the lessons on Phonemes and Distinctive Features.

Data

The following are data from English:

bead
seem seep
creek
piece reave
read
breeze meek
meal
reef creep
beep
reek bean

Questions

  1. Look at the instances of long vowels and the instances of short vowels. List the environments for long vowels and for short vowels (for example, the word bead has a long vowel, with b on one side and d on the other, giving it an environment like ).
  2. Observe the environments that you listed in (1). Do the sounds to the left of the long vowels have anything in common that makes them unique as opposed to the sounds to the left of the short vowels? How about the sounds to the right of the long and short vowels?
  3. Based on your answer to (2), are the long and short vowels separate phonemes, or are they allophones of the same phoneme?
  4. If you conclude that they are separate phonemes, explain why and give an example of a minimal pair that gives evidence for your answer. If you conclude that they are allophones of the same phoneme, what environment determines which allophone surfaces?

Phonology

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