The Midterm will be given in class on Friday the 6^th

The exam will include

Multiple choice and True/False questions that test your knowledge of facts, terms, and concepts

Problem-solving questions to test your ability to apply those concepts

The following is a list of the units that will be tested in the midterm as well as suggested review topics to help you organize your studying. However, be sure to review class notes, the slides, assigned readings, and past homework assignments as well.

• Introduction
• Prescriptive grammar
• Descriptive Grammar
• Mental Grammar

• Phonetics
• The parts of the vocal tract (see Figure 2.3 on p. 23 of CL)
•  Be able to interpret a diagram like this and identify what consonant is  being produced.
• English consonants (see Table 2.12 on p. 33 of CL): IPA symbols and properties
• English vowels (see Figure 2.9 on p. 37 of CL (remember that [ɔj] is considered tense, too)): IPA symbols and properties
• Given a word in English spelling, be able to match it to a phonetic transcription

• Phonology
• Being able to identify phonological processes.
• Using properties of segments, describe groups of segments as natural classes
• Remember, using just enough features to exclude the segments left out of the group, but not using any features that would incorrectly exclude one of the members of the group.
• The properties to know:
• The consonant and vowel properties as noted in (2) above
•  Some useful additional sound properties introduced in the phonology unit: strident (= sibilant) and labial.
• Analyzing the distribution of two sounds to determine whether they belong to two separate phonemes or are allophones of the same phoneme.
• Distinct vs. non-distinct environments?
•  Complementary vs. contrastive distribution?
• Same or separate phonemes?

• Stating a phonological rule using sound properties/ natural classes and rule notation

• Stating a rule that applies to a whole natural class (not just individual speech sounds)

• Morphology
• Finding morphemes in a dataset from an unfamiliar language

• Finding morphemes in a dataset from English
•  Identifying word categories involved when a morpheme is added
• Determinng whether two words share a morpheme in common

• Tree diagrams for morphological structure
• Classifying morphemes and morphological structures: free/bound, root/base/affix, prefix, suffix, infix, inflection/derivation, compound
• How our model of mental grammar treats:
•  Unpredictable information about a specific morpheme or word
• Predictable/systematic information about how words are formed