Functional (generative) phonology

[Geoffrey S. Nathan]

        I think that people's assessment that 'generative' phonology is becoming
more 'functional' (all scare quotes deliberate) is quite correct.
        I am, as some of you know, a died-in-the-wool functional phonologist (in
the American, rather than the European sense), a student of David Stampe,
and I have been trying to integrate the principles of Natural Phonology
with the concepts of Cognitive Grammar.  But I continue to follow the
paradigm in what has evolved out of Generative Phonology.  While some
practitioners continue to ignore phonetic considerations, others,
especially many at the leading edge of Optimality Theory development, are
attempting to build articulatory and (occasionally) acoustic considerations
into the grammar.  I should point out, in addition, that not all functional
considerations are purely 'phonetic'.  Bruce Hayes, for example, has done
some very nice work on the nature of rhythm and how human rhythmic behavior
contributes to the nature of stress systems in the world's languages.  And,
of course, in my work I have argued that phonemes are categories, and
consequently such categorization principles as prototypicality and image
schema transformations apply to relate members of categories--again, these
are 'functional' considerations which go beyond the issue of the plumbing
used in producing sounds.
        For what it's worth, when there was a conference held two years ago in
Milwaukee on formalism/functionalism, the phonologists among us (Hayes,
Hammond, Bybee, me) had far more to say to each other than the
syntacticians and semanticists.    The convergence is greater at the
phonological level than at higher ones.  </Shameless self-promotion
on>Volume one of that conference will be out from Benjamins in a month or
so, incidentally.</ss-p off>

Geoff


Geoffrey S. Nathan
Department of Linguistics
Southern Illinois University at Carbondale,
Carbondale, IL, 62901 USA
Phone:  +618 453-3421 (Office)   FAX +618 453-6527
+618 549-0106 (Home)