A student says, 'The word city starts with the letter c, so it must start with the same sound as cat.' What is wrong with this reasoning?
ANothing — both words begin with the same consonant sound /k/
BLetters and sounds are not the same thing; city begins with /s/ while cat begins with /k/ — the same letter represents two completely different sounds
CThe student is correct that both start with /k/, but city adds a following /s/ sound
DThe student is correctly applying IPA notation, but English spelling is an exception
This is the most fundamental misconception in phonetics: confusing letters with sounds. The letter 'c' in English represents /k/ in 'cat' but /s/ in 'city' — two entirely different sounds. IPA resolves exactly this ambiguity by assigning one unique symbol to each sound, regardless of spelling. Articulatory phonetics studies the physical gestures that produce sounds, not the orthographic symbols that represent them on the page.
Question 2 Multiple Choice
The consonants /p/ and /b/ form a minimal pair. What do they share, and what distinguishes them?
ASame place of articulation (bilabial) and same manner (stop), differing only in voicing
BSame voicing (both voiced) and same manner (stop), differing only in place of articulation
CSame place of articulation (alveolar) and same manner, differing only in voicing
DSame voicing (both voiceless) and same place, differing only in manner
Both /p/ and /b/ are bilabial stops — both produced by closing and releasing both lips (bilabial), and both involve a complete stop of airflow followed by release (stop). The single difference is voicing: /b/ involves vibrating vocal cords while /p/ does not. A minimal pair is the clearest possible demonstration that a single phonetic feature — here, voicing — is a meaningful contrast in a language.
Question 3 True / False
In the International Phonetic Alphabet, the same symbol always refers to the same physical speech sound, regardless of what language it appears in.
TTrue
FFalse
Answer: True
This universality is precisely what makes the IPA useful. A given IPA symbol represents a specific articulatory gesture — a particular combination of place, manner, and voicing — not a letter from any particular writing system. /p/ refers to a voiceless bilabial stop in English, Spanish, and Mandarin transcriptions alike. This allows linguists to describe and compare the sounds of any language using a shared notation system.
Question 4 True / False
A 'voiced' consonant is one that is pronounced louder or with more force than its voiceless counterpart.
TTrue
FFalse
Answer: False
Voicing has nothing to do with volume or force. It refers specifically to whether the vocal cords are vibrating during the production of the sound. Hold your fingers to your throat and say /z/ — you will feel vibration. Now say /s/ — no vibration. Both can be whispered softly or said loudly. The distinction is purely about laryngeal activity: voiced = vocal cords vibrating; voiceless = vocal cords not vibrating.
Question 5 Short Answer
Why is the three-dimension classification system — place, manner, and voicing — necessary to uniquely identify consonants? What would be missing if you only described consonants by where they are produced?
Think about your answer, then reveal below.
Model answer: Place alone is insufficient because multiple consonants are produced at the same location. For example, /p/ and /b/ are both bilabial (both lips), and /p/ and /m/ are also both bilabial. Without manner (stop vs. nasal) and voicing (voiced vs. voiceless), you cannot distinguish them. All three dimensions together form a unique 'address' for each consonant — they identify precisely which combination of physical gestures produces that sound, which is what makes the classification system both predictive and universal.
The power of the three-dimension system is that it describes articulation in terms of independent physical parameters. This means you can predict the sound from the description and vice versa. It also makes the relationship between similar sounds explicit: /p/ and /b/ differ on exactly one dimension (voicing), which is why they form a minimal pair. A one-dimension system would conflate sounds that are phonetically and phonologically distinct.