Homework on Ladefoged (2005) Chapter 6 ("The Sounds of Consonants")

The questions in this homework are in conjunction with the assignment to read Chapter 6 of Ladefoged (2005) on "The Sounds of Consonants".

Your answers are due in class on Wednesday, November 7, for discussion in class that day.

1. Chapter 6 is an introduction to the features that differentiate contrasting consonant sounds such as the p consonant sound that is spelled with 'p' in pat and tap, as opposed to the b sound that is spelled with 'b' in bat and tab, or the k sound that is spelled with 'c' at the beginning of cat but with 'ck' at the end of tack. He says that all three sounds p, b, and k have acoustic properties in common that contrast them with the m, n, and ŋ consonant sounds that are spelled with 'm', 'n', and 'ng' at the ends of the words ram, ran, and rang. What is the feature name that Ladefoged uses for the sounds p, b, and k? What other sounds (if any) are also in the group of English consonant sounds that is named by this feature?
   Following up: Remember how we decided why the number of syllables that can be made with two consonants and two vowels is closer to 2 + (2 * 2) = 6 ("half a dozen") than to 4 * 4 = 16? Comparing the acoustic properties that differentiate i from u to the acoustic properties that differentiate p from k, can you state a hypothesis about why this might follow from the different types of acoustic properties involved in differentiating vowels as compared to differentiating these consonants?
2. What are the acoustic properties that Ladefoged identifies for the class of consonant sounds that includes all three of p, b, and m? Are these acoustic properties exactly the same when these consonants occur at the beginning of a word (as in pat, bat, and mat) as they are when these consonants occur at the end of a word (as in tap, tab, and sam)? What figure or set of figures shows these properties?
3. What is the feature name that Ladefoged used for the group of sounds m, n, and ŋ? Ladefoged explains the name for this group of sounds when he first introduces the feature in Chapter 6. What is his explanation for why they are called by this feature name?
   Following up: Comparing the figure(s) showing words containing these sounds to the figure(s) showing words containing the sounds b, d, and g, can you describe what the acoustic properties are that m, n, and ŋ have in common that b, d, and g lack, which might be related to Ladefoged's explanation for the feature name?
4. What is the feature that the f in fie, the θ in thigh, the s in sigh, and the ʃ in shy all have in common? Is there any common acoustic property that is related to this feature?

The reading that is assigned for this homework is from the book:

Peter Ladefoged (2005). Vowels and Consonants: An Introduction to the Sounds of Languages. 2nd Ed. Blackwell.