An Introduction to Phonology Francis Katamba (original) (raw)
Generative Phonology: The Basic Model
1974
The term generative phonolgy refers to statements, rules or axioms which can produce all but only those well-formed utterances of a language. The goal of this theory is to make precise and explicit the ability of native speakers to produce utterances of a particular language. In generative phonology, the level of the phoneme is redefined to match the deeper level of abstraction aimed for in the most efficient conception of phonological processes. It is the task of the phonological rules to account for the predictable aspects of pronunciation whether they relate to alternate pronunciations of the same basic morpheme or different phonetic forms that a sound can take. These rules, made to look like "mathematical formulas," provide an explicit means of capturing the general principles of various phonological processes: 1) assimilation, 2) neutralization, 3) deletion, 4) coalescence, 5) epenthesis, and 6) redistribution. The incorporation of distinctive features into a generative phonology allows the linguist to state explicitly important generalizations about the phonology of a language. (PM)
1979
Noam Chomsky and Morris Halle founded the Generative School of Phonology in the late 1950's. It's basic premises are that phonological structure reflects the linguistic competence of the individual native speaker to compute a phonetic representation for the potentially infinite number of sentences generated by the syntactic component of the grammar and that this competence can be investigated in a serious scientific fashion. The generative point of view has become dominant in the field of linguistics and has had varying degrees of influence on other cognitive sciences. This entry surveys the development of the generative approach over three fifteen-year segments and concludes with current research trajectories.
2012
As is well known the physical properties of speech are determined by a large number of factors. They vary depending on the language spoken, on the age, gender and identity of the speaker. They undergo stylistical modifications in innumerable ways owing to the interaction of physiological, cognitive, social and communicative factors. Linguistics deals with this problem by assigning the study of the speech signal to phonetics. Phonology investigates postulated sound structure, that is abstract entities and processes which are assumed to underlie speech behavior and which are by definition independent of performance and language use. In this way, the study of speech sounds is split into two: Phonology becomes digital, and phonetics analog. “ … the fundamental contribution which Saussure made to the development of linguistics … “ was “ … to focus the attention of the linguist on the system of regularities and relations which support the differences among signs, rather than on the detail...
When we speak, we use sounds. Through these sounds, we are able to understand each other. This is because there are different types of relationships that exist between the sounds that we use in speech acts. This is the principal objective of Phonology: to study the relationships between speech sounds within a language system. Bearing in mind the afore-mentioned, a brief report is given on one chapter from Davenport and Hannahs’ (1998) book, shedding light on the importance of Phonology in the study of language. This paper discusses what generative grammar is about, and how phonology fits into this grammar. Attention is paid to the similarities and differences between phonetics and phonology and their relevance to language study, providing relevant examples to substantiate certain claims. Concluding remarks are given, based on the information presented. Keywords: phonology, phonetics, sound, speech sound, phoneme, language, communication, generative grammar.
Introduction: models of phonology in perception
The aim of this book is to provide explicit discussions on how perception is connected to phonology. This includes discussions of how many representations a comprehensive view of phonology requires, and how these representations are mapped to each other in the processes of comprehension and production. Of the two directions of processing, this book centres on comprehension, the direction that has received relatively little attention from phonologists.
Phonological Processes and Phonetic Rules
2009
1. Relating phonological representations to phonetic output In both generative and natural phonology, phonological representations and alternations have been described in terms of categorical feature values, as in Jakobson, Fant, & Halle’s (1963) original conception. This categorical representation contrasts with instrumental phonetic data, which present the speech signal as temporally, qualitatively, and quantitatively non-categorical and continuous. The question that will be addressed here is how phonetic representation (‘surface’ phonological representation) and speech are related. Generativists and naturalists have taken two quite different views on this. The generativist view, and that of most recent writers on phonetics, has been that phonetic representation and speech are related by language-specific phonetic rules that associate binary phonological values with gradient phonetic values. The naturalist position has been that the relationship is universally determined in the ac...
1997
The goal of this paper is to describe a phonological framework in which the study of discrete 'phonological' units appears not as a separate enterprise, opposed to the study of continuous 'phonetic' phenomena, but rather as part of the larger enterprise of the scientific study of speech. Why is such a framework necessary? Given that the sound structure of language is a structure composed of discrete units defined in terms of contrast, would it not be the task of the phonetician to deal with all aspects of speech that are neither discrete nor contrastive? Unfortunately, phoneticians are not ready to pick up where the phonologists leave off and specify in detail how the discrete units used in phonology can be realized in, and recovered from, the undifferentiated continuous data provided by acoustic waveforms or articulatory records. In fact phoneticians have good reasons to be skeptical about the feasibility of the tasks imposed on them by the internal logic of phonology. For example, phonologists usually work with idealized data that preserves dialectally and grammatically conditioned variation but suppresses variation within the speech of a single individual and across individuals sharing the same dialect/sociolect. Perhaps the human apparatus for speech perception can somehow magically filter out variability along certain dimensions but not along others, but phoneticians have not succeeded in creating models that are capable of the kind of selective filtering presupposed in phonology, nor do they necessarily believe that humans actually perform such feats. The net result of the discrepancy between what phonologists assume phoneticians can do and what phoneticians actually do is that phonology depends on an unspecified and perhaps unspecifiable black box as its primary data-gathering instrument. The result of this situation is that phonological theory is of surprisingly little use to anybody outside the self-imposed boundaries of the discipline. Phoneticians, acousticians, and other scientists and engineers interested in speech for theoretical or practical purposes generally find the rule or constraint systems devised by phonologists to be brittle in the sense that slight changes in the data, such as the discovery of a related set of forms, bring about radical revisions of the grammar, fragmentary in the sense that what constitutes relevant data for
Natural Phonology as a Functional Theory
Poznań Studies in Contemporary Linguistics, 2000
This paper presents Natural Phonology as a functional theory. Natural Phonology is shown to be functional in two senses: as focusing on explanation and thus increasing our understanding of how language works, and as having practical applications, especially to second language acquisition and speech therapy. The contribution argues that crucial as formalism is in computational linguistics and speech technology, Natural Phonology, with less rigid and less formalized claims, has important applications in the areas where language and not totally predictable human factors are involved. The paper discusses approaches to autonomy in language, explanation and hypothesis in Natural Phonology, and applications of Natural Phonology.
Generative phonology in the late 1940s
Phonology, 2008
This paper offers a careful reading of an article published by Rulon Wells inLanguagein 1949 on the subject of automatic alternations in phonology. Read with a modern eye, it reveals that phonologists were exploring the value and use of phonological derivations, including both abstract representations and intermediate representations, in the late 1940s. Contrary to what has been suggested in the literature, Bloomfield's explorations in rule ordering published in 1939 were not isolated and without influence. Our conclusion is the null hypothesis: that there is an intellectual continuity from the work of Sapir and Bloomfield, through that of Wells and Harris, to that of Chomsky & Halle. We conclude by offering some suggestions as to why this is not widely recognised in the field.
Journal of Linguistics, 1991
The subject matter of this book covers both so-called classical or orthodox Generative Phonology, as represented by the 'monumental' (1) The sound pattern of English (SPE = Chomsky & Halle, 1968), and important subsequent developments within what might be called (from an 'Atlantic' point of view) mainstream linguistics, with MIT as the dominant centre. Only Durand's last chapter, covering Dependency Phonology, lies on the edge of the main stream. This peripherality can be seen in the asymmetric distribution of references, with Dependency Phonology making many references to Metrical, Autosegmental or Lexical Phonology, while there are very few in the opposite direction as far as I can judge. The book thus covers what might be called the SPE tradition, and in general the basic claims and premises of this tradition are not questioned. In agreement with the title, Durand lays emphasis on the 'non-linear' offsprings of SPEWks Metrical and Autosegmental Phonology; of course, 'non-linear' here means 'not-only-linear', since linearity still plays a crucial part in the representations. Phonology outside this tradition is only treated in passing or not at all. There is little or no discussion of the different kinds of 'natural' phonology (not to be confused with 'Natural Generative Phonology' represented by Hooper (1976) and discussed by Durand on pages 134-150), nor of the semiotically based phonology proposed by Henning Andersen and others-developing the work of Roman Jakobson-just to mention two important examples. But within the trends which Durand has decided to cover, the treatment is fair and adequate. The argumentation is in general detailed and clear, and well illustrated with examples, including Durand's own material on Midi French. The bibliography is comprehensive and relevant, and seems to be up to date. Chapter 1, 'Introduction', gives the background of the SPE breakthrough, treating such questions as phonemic opposition, phonemes vs features, and levels of representation, presupposing that readers have a basic knowledge of phonetics already. Let me say in passing that the ' patently arbitrary relation between morphological features (eg...singular/plural) and phonological forms' (40) is in very many languages patently non-arbitrary (with a high degree of iconicity) in that the singular ending is zero. My only other comment on this chapter concerns the discussion of regular plural formation
Phonology in Universal Grammar
The Oxford Handbooks of Universal Grammar, 2017
In order to investigate the phonological component of Universal Grammar (UG), we must first clarify what exactly the concept of UG involves. 1 The terms 'Universal Grammar' and 'Language Acquisition Device' (LAD) are often treated as synonymous, 2 but we believe that it is important to distinguish between the two. We take a grammar to be a computational system that transduces conceptual-intentional representations into linear (but multidimensional) strings of symbols to be interpreted by the various physical systems employed to externalize linguistic messages. It thus includes the traditional syntactic, morphological, and phonological components, but not phonetics, which converts the categorical symbols output by the grammar into gradient representations implementable by the body. Bearing the above definition of 'grammar' in mind, we take 'Universal Grammar' to refer specifically to the initial state of this computational system that all normal humans bring to the task of learning their first language (cf. Hale and Reiss 2008:2; and chapters 5, 10, and 12). The phonological component of this initial state may contain, inter alia, rules (the 'processes' of Natural Phonology Stampe 1979), violable constraints (as in Calabrese's 1988, 1995 marking statements or Optimality Theory (OT)'s markedness and
Lecture Notes: Phonology (The American English Sound System)
One major consequence that has come out of the Chomskyan revolution in linguistics has to do with the acknowledgement that sounds in a given language are essentially built-up out of a matrix of smaller phonological features, and that such features, much like how the chemist understands the periodic table of elements, can combine to create a phoneme. The very notion of breaking-up features and combining them to making speech sounds widely differs from a potential Skinnerian approach that would hold that speech is simply rote-learned by-products of environmental sounds and is essentially non-rule-based. Chapter on Phonology (Cognella 2013)