[Lingtyp] [ɸ] - [h]

[Jess Tauber]

I've always had issues with Chomsky/Halle privative phonological
distinctive features. They may work fine for morphosyntax, but I prefer the
Prague-School features for underlying representations.

Jess

On Wed, May 24, 2023 at 11:06 AM Christian Lehmann <
christian.lehmann at uni-erfurt.de> wrote:

> Dear Jérémy and everybody,
>
> you are drawing attention to the fact that, no matter whether we call the
> feature [labial] or [rounded], it is shared by /u/ and /o/. This calls into
> question the initial assumption:
>
> No labiality or roundedness feature is responsible for [h] becoming [ɸ]
> before [u]/[ɯ]. What seems to count, instead, is [+high, +back]. However,
> [ɸ] does not share [+back] with these vowels, and shares [+high] with front
> vowels, too.
>
> Your solution is that [+high, +back] increases the value of [labial] to
> [++ labial]. (For both [u] and [ɯ]?)
>
> An alternative approach would be to doubt that [h] -> [ɸ] / __ [u]/[ɯ] is
> at all a process of assimilation. But what is it then?
>
> Cheers,
>
> Christian
>
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Am 24.05.2023 um 16:35 schrieb PASQUEREAU Jeremy:
>
> Dear Christian,
>
> I saw your message on LingTyp and, if I understood the issue correctly, it
> seems to me you may be facing a similar problem as the one I faced a few
> years ago when describing the phonology of Karata (Nakh-Daghestanian):
> there’s a phonological rule (C labialization in Karata) that occurs in the
> context of some rounded vowels (/u/) but not others (/o/). How to
> discriminate between /u/ and /o/ given that they are both [+round] (or
> [labial] if using privative features)? I wrote a paper
> <https://muse.jhu.edu/article/712106> on this where I make the proposal
> that in at least some languages the labial feature is scalar and therefore
> phonological rules can make reference to one and not other labial features.
> Regardless of the analytical innovation I proposed, you may find the paper
> useful in that it discusses the range of phonetic (articulatory,
> perceptual) and phonological evidence in favor of distinguishing different
> degrees of rounding and it also discusses other phonological phenomena that
> the proposal can be brought to bear on.
>
> Best regards,
>
> *Jérémy Pasquereau*
> chargé de recherche — https://jeremy-pasquereau.jimdo.com/
> Laboratoire de Linguistique de Nantes (LLING) UMR 6310, CNRS & Nantes
> Université — https://lling.univ-nantes.fr/
>
>
> Le 23 mai 2023 à 14:40, Christian Lehmann
> <christian.lehmann at uni-erfurt.de> <christian.lehmann at uni-erfurt.de> a
> écrit :
>
> Dear Miren and everybody,
>
> I find this problem interesting. Nowadays everybody appears to agree that
> syntactic and morphological classes are essentially distribution classes
> although the elements in question have meaning. In the same spirit, the
> distributionalists conceived of the phoneme in terms of the distribution of
> phones although these have physical properties. And the basic phonological
> features like [consonantal] and [syllabic] essentially relate to the
> distribution of segments in phonotactic patterns. Questions such as whether
> [ts] consists of two segments /ts/ or is one affricate /ʦ/ are not solvable
> by phonetics (to the best of my knowledge), but are resolved by analyzing
> the distribution of this element. Again, it is true that distribution alone
> leads to unsatisfactory classes. The complementary distribution of [h] and
> [ŋ] in several languages including English is one such example. Apparently
> a distribution class counts as a natural class only if it has a phonetic
> motivation.
>
> My impression is that a full phonological description works with a
> heterogeneous set of features: It does not abide by purely distributional
> phonological features, but  also needs features which are essentially
> phonetic and have no direct relation to the distribution of the segments
> characterized by them. This may concern, in particular, features involved
> in processes of assimilation. If a consonant assimilates to an adjacent
> vowel, it means they share a feature despite their appurtenance to distinct
> distribution classes.
>
> Net result for my initial question: Assuming that I want a rule that
> assimilates a fricative to a following [u], producing [ɸ], I will have to
> accept an articulatory feature like [labial] in my phonology. Does this
> correspond to the state of the art in phonology?
>
> Christian
> --
>
> Prof. em. Dr. Christian Lehmann
> Rudolfstr. 4
> 99092 Erfurt
> Deutschland
> Tel.: +49/361/2113417
> E-Post: christianw_lehmann at arcor.de
> Web: https://www.christianlehmann.eu
> _______________________________________________
> Lingtyp mailing list
> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
> https://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
>
>
> --
>
> Prof. em. Dr. Christian Lehmann
> Rudolfstr. 4
> 99092 Erfurt
> Deutschland
> Tel.: +49/361/2113417
> E-Post: christianw_lehmann at arcor.de
> Web: https://www.christianlehmann.eu
> _______________________________________________
> Lingtyp mailing list
> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
> https://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lingtyp/attachments/20230524/a8d425bf/attachment.htm>