Blackwell Reference Online

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Consider the “words” shown in (1): (1)  I II III a. xoda poda poda[z] (cf. coda, codas) [x] as in German ch. b. rudih hurid hurid[z] (cf. hoard, hoards) ngatus matus matus[Iz] (cf. mattress, mattresses) = [ŋ] c. bnick blick blick[s] (cf. block, blocks) Fluent speakers of English would agree that none of these are actual words of English, yet most speakers would also agree that those in column I are not possible words, while those in column II are. In addition, most speakers would agree that the plurals of the would-be words in column II would be pronounced as indicated in column III. How do we know this? Our knowledge of the sound patterns of our native language(s) comes not through memorizing a list of words, but, rather, by internalizing information about the allowed and disallowed sound patterns of that language. As fluent speakers of English, we know which sounds, or segments, occur in our language and which don't. For example, in (la), the [x] sound of German (written ch in borrowings from German, as in the German pronunciation of Bach ) just doesn't occur in English. In addition, some sounds which are sounds of English are nevertheless restricted in the position where they occur within the word. For example, as shown in (1b), the sound represented by the spelling sequence ng [ŋ] can occur in the middle (si ng er) or end (si ng ) of a word, but not the beginning, ... log in or subscribe to read full text