Is it the author's mistake or what?
Excerpts from a book:
"The discussion on speech comprehension suggested that nonlinguistic factors can be involved in - and sometimes interfere with - linguistic processing. They also affect speech production. The individual who said 'He made hairlines' instead of 'He made headlines' was referring to a barber. The fact that the two compound nouns both "start with the same sound", are composed oh two syllables, have the same stress pattern, and contain the identical second morphemes undoubtedly played a role in producing the error, but the relationship between the hairlines and barbers may also have been a contributing factor."
Question: The part of "start with the same sound" refers to both 'hai' in hairlines and 'hea' in headlines? The starting sound of both hairlines and headlines are not 'hair' and 'head' respectively, in terms of syllable?
Thank you.
Search from various English teachers...
Answers · 17
1
If it was 'headlines' and 'headphones' then it would have started with both the same syllables and sounds !
Here the 2 syllables are different ,but starting with the same sound 'hai'
He is referring to a Freudian slip in speech ,that could occur due to nonliguistic factors , like psychological ones amongst others !
1
The author is making a distinction between a sound and a syllable.
The two syllables "hair-" and "head-" both begin with the same sound (or more precisely, the same sequence of two sounds H + E), "hai / hea", which are pronounced the same in this case.
The two syllables only differ in their final sound in the syllable, "r" or "d" -- and articulating the difference can be a challenge for beginning and intermediate learners of English.
So the author's point is valid, and you are also correct ;-)
1
The author and editors are correct. You shouldn't think in terms of syllables.
Just like "start" and "stop" both start with the same sound. You shouldn't limit yourself to thinking sounds and syllables have to go together. I'm no linguist so I don't know ll the terminology.
More examples:
"terminology" and free both end in the same sound. There's only one syllable but two sounds (three if you want) in "free". "Fr" and "ee". So freeze, fridge, and free all start with the same sound. Terminology ends in the "ee" sound but the last syllable is "gy" and not "y" by itself. It's about sounds not syllables.
0
In North American English, the pronunciation of the two words is identical except for one difference the [d] in headlines and the [r] in hairlines.
headlines - [hɛdlaɪnz]
hairlines - [hɛrlaɪnz]
Also, Juda, the [h] is the same in both words.
0
I replied in my answer to your comment.
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