25.1019, Review: Phonology: Carr & Montreuil (2013)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-25-1019. Sat Mar 01 2014. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 25.1019, Review: Phonology: Carr & Montreuil (2013)

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Rajiv Rao, U of Wisconsin Madison
Joseph Salmons, U of Wisconsin Madison
Mateja Schuck, U of Wisconsin Madison
Anja Wanner, U of Wisconsin Madison
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Date: Sat, 01 Mar 2014 09:27:56
From: Snezhina Dimitrova [snezhinad at hotmail.com]
Subject: Phonology, 2nd edition

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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/24/24-3302.html

AUTHOR: Philip  Carr
AUTHOR: Jean-Pierre Y. Montreuil
TITLE: Phonology, 2nd edition
SERIES TITLE: Palgrave Modern Linguistics
PUBLISHER: Palgrave Macmillan
YEAR: 2013

REVIEWER: Snezhina Dimitrova, University of Sofia

SUMMARY

The second edition of Philip Carr and Jean-Pierre Montreuil’s “Phonology” is
aimed at the beginner student who has elementary knowledge of articulatory
phonetics, but no previous experience with phonology. In the Preface, the
authors describe their motivation for writing the textbook as follows: “This
book is an attempt at a solution to a problem. The problem is this: how to
introduce generative phonology, without trivializing the subject, within the
confines of a ten-week course, to students who major in subjects other than
linguistics, and thus may not take their study of the subject any further”
(pp. x-xi). The book’s potential audience is thus clearly defined, and the aim
of the book could hardly be any more ambitious.

The book adopts a historical perspective and can be divided into two parts.
The first part is an introduction to the terminology and methodology of
phonological analysis. It guides students from an introduction of the phonemic
principle, through an outline of some of the problems which it poses, and then
searches for solutions to these problems through the adoption of the classical
generative phonology model outlined in Chomsky and Halle’s (1968) “The Sound
Pattern of English” (SPE). The first five chapters of the second edition are
similar to the respective chapters in the first edition, with some new
exercises added to them, while Chapters 6 and 7 have been conflated and
updated.

The introductory chapter, “Revision of Phonetics”, reviews basic phonetic
terminology used for consonant and vowel description: consonantal places and
manners of articulation, the vowel space and the cardinal vowels, as well as
the symbols for their representation, including major diacritics. At the end
of this introduction, the latest revision of the International Phonetic
Alphabet is included for further reference -- a very helpful addition for the
novice to phonology who is about to be faced with language data from a variety
of languages throughout the book.

Chapter 1, “The Phonemic Principle”, introduces students to basic concepts
such as phonemes and allophones, contrastive, complementary and parallel
distributions, free variation, minimal pairs, phonemic rules and the notation
for writing them, etc. The emphasis is on motivating the need for phonological
analysis in order to express generalizations about speakers’ unconscious
phonological knowledge. The authors thus address a major question which
beginner students with some knowledge of phonetics usually ask, namely, “What
do we need phonology for?” The chapter is rich in examples and exercises from
a range of languages, thus involving students from the start in “doing
phonology”: there are as many as 9 in-chapter exercises, and 5 more exercises
at the end.

Chapter 2, “Alternations”, explains how phonemic representations are mapped
onto phonetic representations through a set of ordered phonological rules. It
demonstrates how such an approach enables phonologists to express
generalizations regarding morphophonological alternations. The sections on
testing hypotheses about rules and representations and on choosing between
analyses offer a step-by-step guide on how to make decisions about the merits
of alternative analyses and how to give clear arguments in support of the
particular choices that have been made. Again, the chapter abounds in examples
and exercises from a variety of languages, ranging from English to Hungarian
to Lumasaaba.

Chapter 3, “Features, Classes and Systems”, begins by addressing another
question which newcomers to the field of phonology are likely to ask, namely,
“Why use features rather than phonemes?” The distinctive feature theory which
has been adopted is largely inspired by that outlined in Lass (1984). Students
are shown how to write generative rules, and are presented with a detailed
outline of the advantages of feature-based over phonemic rules, both for the
expression of important generalizations as well as for making explicit the
phonetic motivation behind the rules.

Chapter 4, “Problems with the Phonemic Principle”, presents several case
studies of neutralization and of the application of the minimal pair
criterion, and demonstrates how insistence on a distinction between
morphophonemic and phonological rules and on two distinct levels of
representation above the phonetic level causes analyses to lose generalizing
power. The authors thus make their case for the adoption of the Generative
Phonology (GP) approach to linguistic analysis in the rest of the book.

Having motivated the need for a theoretical approach that abandons the phoneme
concept in favor of a view that better accounts for “unconscious” (p. 93)
human knowledge of language, in Chapter 5 -- “The Organisation of the Grammar”
-- the textbook proceeds to present an outline of the model of Generative
Grammar adopted in Chomsky and Halle’s (1968) SPE, emphasizing the model’s
modularity and the relationships between the phonological component, the
lexicon and morphology. Several claims are made which relate to the
interactions which take place between different kinds of linguistic knowledge,
the ordering of phonological rules, and the relationship between phonetics and
phonology and the abstractness of phonological representations in the lexicon.

Chapter 6, “Abstractness, Psychological Reality and the Phonetics/Phonology
Relation”, looks at the consequences of some of the claims made in Chapter 5,
namely, those concerning rule ordering and abstractness. The authors show how,
within a GP model, the distance between phonetic and phonological
representations may be such that a large number of rules may apply in the
derivation, and thus, the phonetic representations of segments may differ
considerably from underlying ones. A crucial issue which is addressed next is
whether allowing for such a degree of abstractness is desirable and
“psychologically real” (p. 117). The search for an answer prepares the student
for the introduction of some of the major extensions and revisions of the
theory in the second part of the book.

Chapter 7, “The Role of the Lexicon”, largely corresponds to Chapter 8 in the
first edition. It introduces Lexical Phonology (LP), a major post-SPE
development which seeks to address the issue of rule ordering through a
revision of the organization of grammar and the introduction of a
level-ordered model of affixation in morphology. Examples of the operation of
the LP model are drawn from several varieties of English and from Standard
Malay. The last section of the chapter introduces some ways, proposed within
Underspecification Theory, in which the specification of feature values in
underlying representations may be reduced.

Chapter 8, “Representations Reconsidered (i): Phonological Structure above the
Level of the Segment”, considers, first of all, syllable structure and the way
in which lexical rules enforce the phonotactic constraints in a language. Some
syllable-based generalizations which are discussed concern nasalization, the
distribution of mid vowels in French, resyllabification, extrasyllabicity and
liaison and its consequences for abstractness. A solution to the SPE problem
of formalizing rules which involve segment length is suggested through the
introduction of the CV-tier (i.e. the skeletal tier in later work). Lexical
stress assignment in some languages is also shown to be best described with
reference to syllable structure. Furthermore, the student is introduced to
another major post-SPE development -- Metrical Phonology -- and speech rhythm,
and nuclear, compound, and phrasal stress assignment in English are discussed
within its framework. Finally, there is a brief outline of the prosodic
hierarchy and the syntax-phonology relationship, with detailed notes at the
end of the chapter for those who may want to pursue some of these questions
further.

Chapter 9, “Representations Reconsidered (ii): Autosegmental and Subsegmental
Phonology”, is devoted to post-SPE theoretical developments which depart from
the classical view of linear transmission of phonological properties from one
segment to another. A discussion of Autosegmental Phonology and how
autosegments are associated with elements on the segmental tier highlights the
greater generalizing power of the autosegmental approach, e.g., in dealing
with nasality and vowel harmony in a number of languages. In addition, the
idea that feature bundles have internal structure is discussed within the
framework of Feature Geometry, and is combined with the idea of
underspecification.

Chapter 10, “Phonological Weight”, constitutes a new addition to the second
edition of the book. The validity of the mora as a basic unit of weight in
Moraic Theory (MT) and the place of the mora at the bottom of the prosodic
hierarchy are discussed and amply illustrated. The weight of syllable codas is
reconsidered under MT and the question about the correlation between weight
and stress is addressed. Finally, an MT account of compensatory lengthening in
several languages is put forward.

The last two chapters in the second edition of “Phonology” are also new. Their
aim is to introduce the student to a constraint-based model of generative
grammar which appeared around the time of publication of the first edition of
the book, and has since become very influential. Chapter 11, “Optimality
Theory”, begins by outlining the basic architecture of the Optimality Theory
(OT) model: the set of constraints, the generating function and output
candidates, and the evaluation function. The roles of markedness and
faithfulness constraints are discussed and illustrated with the help of
tableaus that progressively increase in complexity. Positional constraints are
introduced later in the chapter, and the nature of the input in OT, the
prosody- melody interface, as well as the concept of positional faithfulness
are discussed.

Chapter 12, “Issues in Optimality”, focuses on some problems which the
classical version of OT outlined in Chapter 11 has encountered. The first part
of the chapter deals with opacity issues: opaque ordering, paradigm pressure,
derived environment effects and chain shifts -- cases with which an
output-driven theory struggles to deal. The second half of the chapter reviews
some of the ways in which opacity problems have been addressed through
“enhancements” to the classical version of OT, such as local conjunction,
enriched outputs and the stratal OT approach, the extent of success which they
have had in dealing with various opacity issues, and the challenges to some of
the basic tenets of classical OT which they pose.

EVALUATION

The overall structure and the content of the textbook under review are logical
and straightforward, and are obviously based on its authors’ rich professional
experience of teaching phonology to beginners. Given the target audience of
the book, the authors’ decision to start off by ensuring that the students
have brushed up on their basic phonetics, with the help of a revision chapter,
is to be lauded. The latest version of the IPA at the beginning (p. 11) and
the feature specification matrices for consonants at the end (pp. 312-313) are
useful references for the beginner student.

However, the term “palato-alveolar” (p. 3), which no longer appears on the IPA
chart, and the use of the non-IPA symbols č and ǰ for the representation of
the post-alveolar affricates in the feature matrix (p. 312) and in many other
instances (see, e.g., p. 74 and elsewhere for Polish, p. 76 for Hungarian, pp.
82-83 for Russian, etc.) are likely to be confusing for the newcomer to the
discipline. The same is true of the use of š and ž for the post-alveolar
fricatives, especially in Polish data throughout the book. This use comes in
spite of the initial claim, on p. 4, that the  post-alveolars will be
represented by their IPA symbols. This use of symbols, together with some
(presumably typographic) errors (see, e.g., p. 83 line 19 from top, p. 157
line 2 from bottom, p. 229 lines 9 and 10 from top) may turn into something of
a stumbling block for less ambitious students.

Phonology is best learned through doing phonological analysis, so students are
urged to work through a variety of exercises from the very beginning of the
course (and to keep their answers in order to refer to them at a later stage).
The distinctive features introduced in Chapter 3 are defined in a way which
beginners with only a basic knowledge of phonetics are likely to find
comprehensible and straightforward. Even though at times one may feel that
there is too much illustrative material, the variety of languages from which
the examples are drawn is certainly a major strength of the book. Even
lecturers who teach the phonology of a particular language may be able to pick
and mix data suited to the needs of the courses which they are teaching.

As an introduction to Generative (and major post-Generative) approaches to
phonological analysis, the second edition of “Phonology”, by Philip Carr and
Jean-Pierre Montreuil, certainly meets its objectives. The preface to the
first edition says that the text falls into two parts, and this is also true
of the second edition, which may best be used as a two-semester course, or as
two separate courses – one introductory, and a second one for those who want
to learn about more recent developments in phonological theory. The first part
in particular is fairly gently paced, rich in illustrative materials from a
diversity of languages, and intended to guide the student through the initial
stages of not only learning about, but also doing phonology. The second part
of the book is likely to be harder for the beginner. Hopefully, a beginner,
who by this time has found phonological analysis exciting, will be willing to
invest the extra time and effort needed to
work through the second half of this excellent textbook.

REFERENCES

Carr, Philip. 1993. Phonology. London: Macmillan.

Chomsky, Noam & Morris Halle. 1968. The Sound Pattern of English. New York:
Harper & Row.

Lass, Roger. 1984. Phonology: An Introduction to Basic Concepts. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Snezhina Dimitrova is an Associate Professor at the Department of English and
American Studies, Sofia University 'St Kliment Ohridski' in Bulgaria, where
she teaches English phonetics and phonology, English pronunciation, Varieties
of English, etc.








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