Homework on Ladefoged (2005) Chapter 1 "Sounds and Languages"

Questions to answer

1. In the passage where Ladefoged says, "If a language had only one or two vowels and a couple of consonants it could still have ......" what are the other two units that he talks about in the rest of the passage? That is, what are the other two types of things being counted besides the two vowels and two consonants that he posits here? Also about how big are the counts that he talks about when he says there could be some number of these other units?

   Following up: After answering the above question, prepare for our discussion of this claim in class by thinking about how we could calculate, in theory, whether he is correct about these two other counts. For the purpose of this "thought experiment" list all of the one- and two-syllable English words that you can think of that are made by (some combination or another) of the two vowels i (i.e., the vowel in the English word key) and a (the vowel in the first syllable of the English word father) and the two consonants m (the consonant at the begining of the English word my) and k (the consonant at the beginning of the English word key). As you make this list, observe your thought processes. Are you doing anything systematic to try to remember all the different possible combinations of these four sounds that make real words instead of nonsense words? After you have made this list, and thought about how you made the list, try to translate your observations of your thought processes into an algorithm for calculating the number of one-syllable words and the number of two-syllable words that would be possible, in theory, in a language that had only these four speech sounds.

2. Ladefoged also talks about three different ways of representing the sounds of languages. Think about these three different ways and then decide ...
   (a) Which of these ways of representing the sounds of English were we using when we talked about "the two vowels i and a and the two consonants m and k" in the followup to the previous question?
   (b) Which of these ways of representing the sounds of English was Ladefoged using when he described "the lip gestures" in m and listed two other sounds that also are "made by a gesture involving the two lips"?
   (c) Which of these ways of representing the sound a in the English word father does Ladefoged use in Figure 1.1?

3. In another passage in this chapter, Ladefoged talks about the number of speakers of "the 10 major languages" of the world, as compared to the number of speakers of two other types of languages.
   (a) About how big are the numbers that he estimates for the number of speakers of "the 10 major languages" and each of the other two types of languages?
   (b) Also, how many languages does he estimate for each of the other two types of languages besides "the 10 major languages"?
   (c) What is his source for these numbers?

   Following up: After answering that question, prepare for our discussion of these numbers in class by thinking about the relationship between the number of speakers that a language has and the number of other languages that have about that many speakers. Here is a possibly relevant observation:

   "large events are rare, but small ones quite common. For example, there are few large earthquakes but many small ones. There are a few mega-cities, but many small towns." (Adamic, 2002)

Acknowledgments and references