Final Assessment Questions on “Theoretical phonetics” Card-1 Connection of Phonetics with Other Sciences

2. The Definition of a Syllable
A syllable is a part of a word that contains a single vowel sound and that is pronounced as a unit. So, for example, ' book' has one syllable, and ' reading' has two syllables. We children called her Oma, accenting both syllables. Word origin: Via Old French from Latin syllaba, from Greek sullabē, from sullambanein to collect together, from sul- syn- + lambanein to take.A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Syllables are often considered the phonological "building blocks" of words.[1] They can influence the rhythm of a language, its prosody, its poetic metre and its stress patterns. Speech can usually be divided up into a whole number of syllables: for example, the word ignite is made of two syllables: ig and nite.Syllabic writing began several hundred years before the first letters. The earliest recorded syllables are on tablets written around 2800 BC in the Sumerian city of Ur. This shift from pictograms to syllables has been called "the most important advance in the history of writing".A word that consists of a single syllable (like English dog) is called a monosyllable (and is said to be monosyllabic). Similar terms include disyllable (and disyllabic; also bisyllable and bisyllabic) for a word of two syllables; trisyllable (and trisyllabic) for a word of three syllables; and polysyllable (and polysyllabic), which may refer either to a word of more than three syllables or to any word of more than one syllable.
Card-10
1.The South African English Pronunciation.
South African English is the variety of English used in South Africa (Namibia, Zimbabwe). It is mother tongue for 40% of white inhabitants. South African English is a mix type of Australian and British English, eg.
Bra, bru – ‘male friend’ Dorp – ‘small town or village’
Boy – ‘a black man’ Book of life – ‘national identity document’
This article covers the phonological system of South African English (SAE) as spoken by White South Africans. While there is some variation among speakers, SAE typically has a number of features in common with English as it is spoken in southern England (in places like London), such as non-rhoticity and the TRAP–BATH split.
The two main phonological features that mark South African English as distinct are the behaviour of the vowels in KIT and PALM. The KIT vowel tends to be "split" so that there is a clear allophonic variation between the front [ɪ] and central [ɪ̈] or [ə]. The PALM vowel is characteristically back in the General and Broad varieties of SAE. The tendency to monophthongise /ɐʊ/ and /aɪ/ to [ɐː] and [aː] respectively, are also typical features of General and Broad White South African English.
General South African English features phonemic vowel length (so that ferry /ˈferiː/ and fairy /ˈfeːriː/ as well as cot /kɑt/ and cart /kɑːt/ differ only in length) as well as phonemic roundedness, so that fairy /ˈfeːriː/ is distinguished from furry /ˈføːriː/ by roundedness.[1][2]
Features involving consonants include the tendency for /tj/ (as in tune) and /dj/ (as in dune) to be realised as [tʃ] and [dʒ], respectively (See Yod coalescence), and /h/ has a strong tendency to be voiced initially