1. Give an IPA transcription for your pronunciation of the following English words:

Based on these transcriptions (and any other evidence you think is relevant), what are the various IPA forms of the English plural morpheme (i.e. what you normally add to a word to create its plural form)? What features of the word being pluralized determine which of the alternative forms is chosen?

2. German is described as having both a palatal fricative [ç] and a velar fricative [x], with the choice between them is determined by the quality of the preceding vowel. If you take the following forms as typical, what feature of the vowel is responsible for the choice?

3. The following table gives some examples of Somali nouns in their plain form, and in a form that means something like an English noun with the, which are created by adding a syllable to the end of the word. Thus naag is "woman" or "a woman", while naagta is "the woman".

(The forms are given in standard Somali orthography, in which the vowels a, e, i, o, u are pretty much as they are in IPA, and likewise the consonants are used with their IPA values, except that y is the glide represented by IPA [j], c is the pharyngeal fricative represented by IPA [ʕ], j is the affricate represented by IPA [dʒ], and sh is the fricative represented by IPA [ʃ].)

Question 3(a): Based on these examples, what are the forms of the definite article, and what properties of the noun determine which form is chosen?

In fact, Somali has another set of definite forms, used when the noun is remote in space or time:

You might think that the non-remote/remote distinction is like English this vs. that, but Somali also has demonstratives (like this and that) that subdivide space around the speaker into four zones:

Question 3(b): Looking at both non-remote and remote definites, and the four grades of demonstratives, what are the morphemes involved in these forms? Which of them occur in more than one form in the examples shown? What determines the forms chosen?

Extra credit question:

In addition to the variants that you've seen so far, Somali has a few other ways of changing the shape of the nominal clitics added to indicate definiteness or location in space, time and discourse around the speaker. The following table gives four examples of one of these categories of variation, preceded by four forms that work like some of those you've seen before.

How would you analyze the new forms?