phonological rules (summary)

Frederick J Newmeyer fjn at u.washington.edu
Sun Nov 17 21:48:24 UTC 2013


Thanks, Joan,

Yes, you are right. Nobody suggested a publication that makes explicit comparisons. Such a publication appears not to exist.

Interestingly, given that my posting was on Funknet, almost all of the replies provided some sort of defence of classical phonology. The big exception was that a few people told me to read Port and Leary's paper 'Against Formal Phonology'. I had read it, and I read it again. My problem with it is that what they consider to be the defining features of 'formal phonology' are so different from what I take them to be that I ended up being more puzzled by their critique than anything else.

I am on admittedly shakey ground not being a phonologist and not commanding the literature as well as I wish that I did. But I find Labov's work on frequency effects and lexical diffusion as is has been extended by Kiparsky to be a convincing way of reconciling the empirical discoveries of usage-based phonology (yours and those of others) with the classical model of phonology. Kiparsky argues that 'being a redistribution of phonemes among lexical items, [lexical diffusion] cannot produce and new sounds or alter the system of phonological contrasts.' He goes on to show how lexical diffusion is a species of grammar simplification driven by the system of structure building rules in the lexical phonology. He gives examples including the shortening of long /u/ in English (in words like 'took' and 'good') and Labov' famous AE tensing. Point by point Kiparsky shows how lexical diffusion manifests the same properties as lexical analogy. In short, if he is right, we need only the mos!
 t minimal extension of the Neogrammarian / classical phonology model.

I can't resist giving an example from my own variety of English (impure Philadelphia) that seems to support Kiparsky's model. It pertains to the reflexes of Early Modern English short [o]. In this dialect, [o] became a low back rounded diphthong in frequent words and became [a] in less-frequent words:

LOW BACK ROUNDED DIPHTHONG          [a]
dog                                 frog, bog, log
on, off                             honor, offal, don, doff, Goth
loss, boss                          floss, dross
strong, song, wrong                 gong, tong
cost, frost                         Pentecost

I'm not sure what the precise historical sequence of developments was here. But importantly, both sounds already existed in this dialect: Low back rounded diphthongs in 'saw', 'thought', 'bought', etc. and [a] in 'father', 'drama', etc. So it looks like what we have is an analogical extension of an existing phonological rule. Nothing new was created in the (presumably) word-by-word diffusion through the lexicon, nor do the frequency effects lead to calling into question classical phonology.

Best,

Fritz

Frederick J. Newmeyer
Professor Emeritus, University of Washington
Adjunct Professor, U of British Columbia and Simon Fraser U
[for my postal address, please contact me by e-mail]

On Sun, 17 Nov 2013, Joan Bybee wrote:

> Dear Fritz,
>
> Thanks for the summary. It seems you didn't come up with much in the way of
> explicit comparison. Also you didn't mention the models that combine OT
> with exemplar theory (by Joeren van der Weijer, James Meyers) or more
> formal representations of exemplar theory (Paul Boersma). Rather than
> compare, these theorists choose to incorporate features from both types of
> models.
>
> As for the points made in your message, they unfortunately do not
> constitute differences between exemplar theory and phonemic theory or
> natural phonology (of Donegan and Stampe). I would like to comment on each
> point.
>
> Point 1: Adopting exemplar theory does not mean there are no phonological
> processes, as Bybee 2001 and Pierrehumbert 2001 note. They are in basic
> agreement with Donegan and colleagues that phonological processes are the
> neuromotor patterns (thus both cognitive and real time) that influence
> actual pronunciations.
>
> Point 2: Exemplar theory is above all a theory of categorization and thus
> what would have earlier been called phonemic categories are said to derive
> from the organization of exemplars that are similar to one another.
> Exemplar theory arose from studies of the categorization of non-linguistic
> objects and when frequency in experience is taken into account, these
> categories show prototype effects. Only if one is determined to believe
> that linguistic categories are different from other cognitive categories
> would one want to say that phonemic categorization is not based on
> exemplars. The empirical evidence argues against this position: Joanne
> MIller (*Cognition* 1994, 50:271-285) in various works has shown that
> phonemic and even allophonic categories show prototype effects.
>
> In addition, exemplar theory allows for the gradual merger of phonemic
> categories and their gradual split. Phonemic categories with their plus and
> minus features are not compatible with gradual change.
>
> Point 3: It is not really an argument that Labov has overlooked the fact
> that gradual phonetic change diffuses gradually through the lexicon.
>
> Point 4: Calling lexical diffusion analogy just kicks the can down the
> road. What is analogy then? Why do morphophonemic analogies affect low
> frequency items first while phonetic ones affect high frequency items?
>
> Point 5: This is by definition; it is not an empirical finding.
>
> I hope you find these points useful.
>
> best wishes, Joan
>
>
>
> On Wed, Nov 13, 2013 at 3:22 PM, Frederick J Newmeyer
> <fjn at u.washington.edu>wrote:
>
>> Dear Funknetters,
>>
>> Last week I posted a request for literature references on the degree to
>> which classical phonology (discrete rules, regular sound change) seems to
>> be refuted by the 'usage-based' work of Bybee and others that stresses the
>> importance of relative frequency of variants, 'exemplars' embodying
>> multiple representations instead of discrete phonological units, and so on.
>> I received several responses with references that seem to support more
>> classical views. I summarise them below without personal comment:
>>
>> 1. Work in natural phonology (Donegan 2014; Donegan & Nathan 2014) defends
>> the existence of 'phonological processes', which, like classical phonemic
>> statements, are holistic characterisations of (non-morphological)
>> phonological alternations, rather than the item-by-item representations
>> provided by usage-based models.
>>
>> 2. Along these lines, work going back to Baudouin de Courtenay and Sapir
>> and continuing to the present day supports the psychological reality of the
>> phoneme (or its generative counterpart), not just that of individual
>> phonetic elements.
>>
>> 3. Labov (1994) provides a typology of phonological change, in which the
>> classic Neogrammarian view of exceptionless change plays a major role.
>>
>> 4. Kiparsky (1995) argues that lexical diffusion (which prima facie calls
>> into question the classical model) is a form of analogical change and not
>> 'sound change' per se.
>>
>> 5. (Degree of) gradience does not enter into statements of phonological
>> processes or phonological change. For example, a phonological rule might be
>> sensitive to whether a following segment is nasal, but not to its *degree*
>> of nasalisation.
>>
>> Thank you all for your replies.
>>
>> Fritz
>>
>> REFERENCES
>>
>> Donegan, Patricia J. (2014), 'The emergence of phonological
>> representation', in Brian MacWhinney and William O'Grady (eds.), Handbook
>> of language emergence. Boston: Wiley.
>>
>> Donegan, Patricia J. and Geoffrey S. Nathan (2014), 'Natural phonology and
>> sound change', in Patrick Honeybone and Joseph Salmons (eds.), Oxford
>> handbook of historical phonology, Oxford University Press. Oxford.
>>
>> Kiparsky, Paul (1995), 'The phonological basis of sound change', in John
>> A. Goldsmith (ed.), The handbook of phonological theory. Oxford: Blackwell,
>> 640-70.
>>
>> Labov, William (1994), Principles of linguistic change. Volume 1: Internal
>> factors, Language in Society, 20. Oxford: Blackwell.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Frederick J. Newmeyer
>> Professor Emeritus, University of Washington
>> Adjunct Professor, U of British Columbia and Simon Fraser U
>> [for my postal address, please contact me by e-mail]
>>
>>
>>
>
>
> -- 
> Joan Bybee
> HC 66 Box 118
> Mountainair, NM 87036
> 505-847-0137
>



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