Answer to Question #253647 in English for Gevolglik

Question

3.1 Name and define one concept you have studied that is used to explain the
arbitrariness in spelling and pronunciation in the English language. For the concept you
have chosen, use one example to substantiate your answer. (2 marks)

Answer 1

One subject I've studied is the lexicon, which is used to explain the arbitrary nature of English spelling and pronunciation. A lexicon is a collection of a person's, language's, or field of knowledge's vocabulary. A lexicon is essentially a list of words with their pronunciations split down into phonemes, or units of word pronunciation, in its most basic form. The lexicon can be thought of as a Finite State Transducer with a set of transition probabilities that describe the likelihood of transitioning between word phoneme states. One state is assigned to each phoneme in the traditional configuration.Phoneme likelihoods, which are normally estimated from a huge corpus, are then used to specify the probability of transitioning between states.