What does word-final position describe?

What does word-final position describe?

• A. The middle of a word
• B. The beginning of a word
• C. The end of a syllable
• D. The end of a word

Answer: (D)

Word-final position describes where a sound sits relative to the end of the word—the final segment you pronounce before the word boundary. In any word you can have initial, medial, and final positions; the final position is simply the last sound of the word. For example, in “cat” the final sound is /t/; in “happiness” the final sound is /s/; in “computer” the final sound is typically the rhotacized vowel /ɚ/ in many dialects. This is about the end of the whole word, not the end of a syllable, which can occur earlier within multisyllabic words.

Word-final position describes where a sound sits relative to the end of the word—the final segment you pronounce before the word boundary. In any word you can have initial, medial, and final positions; the final position is simply the last sound of the word. For example, in “cat” the final sound is /t/; in “happiness” the final sound is /s/; in “computer” the final sound is typically the rhotacized vowel /ɚ/ in many dialects. This is about the end of the whole word, not the end of a syllable, which can occur earlier within multisyllabic words.