Phonology

[Geoffrey S. Nathan]

At 12:09 PM 12/10/1999 -0700, Dianne K. Patterson wrote:
>On Fri, 10 Dec 1999, Noel Rude wrote:
>
> > Folks!
> >
> >         Have been away from the lit for quite a spell now and can't say
> I know
> > anything about acronymic linguistics (nor much of anything, for that
> > matter).
> >
> >         What bothers me about letting linguistics degenerate into
> phonology is
> > that this is what happens when we insist on grounding everything in
> > neurology and physiology.
>
>Perhaps I am missing something...but the standard position is that we do
>not want to confuse phonetics (which is mechanistic and mechanical) with
>phonology (which is a rule governed system and usually included as part of
>the grammar)...now people may wish to say phonology is not on the right
>track and should in fact be grounded in biology (e.g., John Ohala...and I
>have my own leanings in this direction)...but such views are outside the
>standard accepted views.


Alas, the 'standard position' has become greatly confused.  Many
phonetician/phonologists now believe that there are language-specific (and
thus not mechanistic and mechanical) phonetic implementation rules that are
distinct from phonological rules, although perhaps both need to be
grounded.  These rules include the implementation of the feature [+voice]
(which is voiceless in onset position in English, but voiced in French) and
similar cases.  Pat Keating has written on this issue, for example.
And it should be made clear that Natural Phonology, for instance (and I
think OT would agree with this way of expressing things) argued that while
phonological constraints have physiological explanations, they are not
mechanical in and of themselves, precisely because they are violable.  To
put things in a way that Hale and Reiss object to, it's easier to voice
obstruents intervocalically,  (for physiological reasons) and some
languages give in to the temptation while others don't (i.e. suppress the
process, as NP would say it, or rank Faithfulness higher, as OT would say it).
Stampe always argued that processes are substitutions made on behalf of the
vocal tract, not by it, and arguing that certain phonetically-motivated
constraints are outranked by faithfulness constraints is saying the same thing.

Geoff

P.S. Nobody is arguing that all grammar is reduceable to physiology, but
only that phonological processes (however interpreted these days) have
physical explanations.  Grammatical processes, according to Cognitive
Grammar, at least, have extragrammatical cognitive explanations.

GN
Geoffrey S. Nathan
Department of Linguistics
Southern Illinois University at Carbondale
Carbondale, IL, 62901-4517
Phone:  (618) 453-3421 (Office) / FAX (618) 453-6527
         (618) 549-0106 (Home)
                                                         geoffn at siu.edu
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