Core phonology: Evidence from grammatical universals

2009

* I would deeply like to express my gratitude to Dr. Jeroen van de Weijer for his valuable comments and suggestions for my first draft. I would also like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions. All remaining errors are, of course, my own.

This paper presents a revised typology of consonant epenthesis and explores the theoretical implications of such a typology. Through careful re-analysis, the basis for a proposed universal of coronal preference and dorsal avoidance is shown to be lacking in evidential support. In fact, epenthesis as a verifiable phenomenon-and not just a theory-internal label-is called into question once careful attention is paid to the issue of choosing between epenthesis and deletion as competing analyses of the same data. The ambiguity between multiple possible analyses, and the lack of formal transformations (from 'data' to 'evidence') are shown to be general problems within phonological theory. Phonological 'universals' can be invoked to arbitrate between competing analyses, but when the typological evidence for those 'universals' is derived from the same data, a problem of circularity arises. In order to break this closed loop, a quantitative evaluation metric is proposed that is theory-independent with regards to substantive universals. This metric is essentially a statistical threshold for learnability (itself empirically testable) that allows for independent testing of certain theoretical claims.

Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2013

Humans weave phonological patterns instinctively. We form phonological patterns at birth, we spontaneously generate them de novo, and we impose phonological design on both our linguistic communication and cultural technologies-reading and writing. Why are humans compelled to generate phonological patterns? Why are phonological patterns intimately grounded in their sensorimotor channels (speech or gesture) while remaining partly amodal and fully productive? And why does phonology shape natural communication and cultural inventions alike? Here, I suggest these properties emanate from the architecture of the phonological mind, an algebraic system of core knowledge. I evaluate this hypothesis in light of linguistic evidence, behavioral studies, and comparative animal research that gauges the design of the phonological mind and its productivity. Some puzzles All languages construct words (meaningful symbols) from meaningless elements. English speakers contrast gods and dogs, they write blogs not lbogs, and they rhyme them with frogs. Such patterns are not merely reflexes of speech, because similar meaningless structures are found in sign languages [1]. And in both modalities, these patterns generalize to new forms [2,3]. The tacit knowledge of humans concerning the patterning of meaningless linguistic elements is called phonology (see Glossary). Why do humans weave phonological patterns? Viewed broadly, vocal patterns of meaningless elements are common in nature [4]. But while animal communication is typically attributed to specialized cognitive systems [5], human phonological patterns are viewed as products of domain-general sensorimotor pressures (e.g., blog is easier to perceive and articulate than lbog) and associative mechanisms of statistical learning [6,7]. Even those who endorse the specialization of the language faculty tend to rest their case on syntax [8,9]; phonological specialization is deemed unlikely [10]. But this conclusion is premature (Figure 1)-it fails to explain why distinct phonological systems (signed and spoken) converge on their design [11]; why this design relies on algebraic mechanisms [12,13] (rather than merely analog sensorimotor pressures); why phonology emerges early [14] and spontaneously [15,16]; and why it forms the basis for reading [17]. Here, I suggest that these properties emanate from the architecture of the phonological mind;the possibility that phonology is an algebraic system of core knowledge. I spell out these two hypotheses below and Opinion Glossary Algebraic optimization: the capacity to optimize functional pressures (e.g., phonetic restrictions) by relying on algebraic rules (e.g., algebraic phonological rules). Algebraic rules: mental operations that can extend regularities across the board, to any member of a class, actual or potential. These generalizations are supported by various representational capacities, including the capacity (i) to form equivalence classes; (ii) to operate on entire classes using variables; and (iii) to distinguish types (noun) from individual tokens (dog) [29]. Coarticulation: the overlap (partial or full) in the production of distinct sounds (e.g., consonants and vowels) during speech production. Core knowledge: knowledge of innate, universal principles that determine an individual's understanding of the world in early development and shapes the acquisition of mature knowledge systems later in development. Equivalence class: a class of elements whose members (actual or potential) are all treated alike with respect to a given generalization. For example, the CV syllable rule (a syllable is comprised of 'any consonant' followed by 'any vowel') treats 'all consonants' alike; it applies to either familiar English consonants (e.g., b) or novel ones that are nonnative to English (e.g., ch in Chanukah). Homology: a common trait that emerges in distinct species through descent from a common ancestor. Homoplasy: a common trait that independently emerged in distinct species (i.e., it is not a homology). Metrical phonology: humans' knowledge concerning the relative prominence of phonological units. Such knowledge, for example, allows humans to identify the prominence contrast between the two syllables in baby (where the initial syllable has greater prominence) and begin (with a prominent final syllable). Morphemes: linguistic units that convey the meaning or function of a word. For example, the word liked comprises two morphemes, the base like and the ending d, indicating a past tense. Phonetics: the system that implements algebraic phonological patterns as concrete, analog sensorimotor programs, either acoustic and oral (in spoken languages) or visual and gestural (in sign languages). Phonological patterns: a pattern of meaningless linguistic elements. Phonology: humans' knowledge concerning the patterning of meaningless linguistic elements in their language, either signed or spoken. Productivity: the capacity to extend linguistic regularities to novel instances. Onset: the consonant(s) that occur at the beginning of a syllable (e.g., bl in block). Ranking (of constraints): modern linguistic theory [38] asserts that all languages share the same universal set of grammatical constraints, but differ with respect to their relative weight (ranking). For example, the fact that syllables such as lba are allowed in Russian, but not English, is captured by the ranking of two constraints. One constraint bans sonority falls (for simplicity, No-lba), whereas another constraint favors faithfulness to such inputs (i.e., for simplicity, Faith-lba). English ranks the ban on lba above the faithfulness to the input and, consequently, such syllables are unattested; Russian exhibits the opposite ranking, so lba-type syllables are allowed in this language. This example illustrates how a theory of universal grammar can potentially capture both the similarity across languages and their variability. Sonority: an abstract phonological property of segments that correlates with their loudness. Louder segments (e.g., vowels) are generally more sonorous than softer ones (e.g., stop consonants, such as b,p). Note, however, that sonority is defined by the phonological structure of a segment (i.e., its feature composition), rather than by its loudness per se. Accordingly, vowels remain more sonorous than stops even if they are both presented in print. Stem: a word base, used in the formation of complex words. For example, dogs is a complex word, formed by adding the plural morpheme s to the stem dog. Syllable: a meaningless phonological unit that minimally includes a sonority peak (typically, a vowel, e.g., bee) and optionally, lower-sonority margins (typically, consonants, e.g., bar). Syntax: humans' knowledge regarding sentence structure.

In this paper, I will show how an empiricist theory about the substance of phonology accounts in a coherent and typologically adequate way for the acquisition of speech. Paul Boersma: Typology and acquisition in functional and arbitrary phonology 2 functional factors of efficient communication genetic variation and selection Language Acquisition Device Universal Grammar innate parameters or constraints grammar parameter settings or constraint rankings utterances language data Figure 1 The nativist view of the relation between function and grammar perceptual categorization and motor learning General perception and motor systems universal functional factors of efficient communication grammar language-specific functional constraints and their rankings utterances language data

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 2010

Languages are known to exhibit universal restrictions on sound structure. The source of such restrictions, however, is contentious: Do they reflect abstract phonological knowledge, or properties of linguistic experience and auditory perception? We address this question by investigating the restrictions on onset structure. Across languages, onsets of small sonority distances are dispreferred (e.g., lb is dispreferred to bn). Previous research with aural materials demonstrates such preferences modulate the perception of unattested onsets by English speakers: Universally ill-formed onsets are systematically misperceived (e.g., lba 3 leba) relative to well-formed onsets (e.g., bn). Here, we show that the difficulty to process universally ill-formed onsets extends to printed materials. Auxiliary tests indicate that such difficulties reflect phonological, rather than orthographic knowledge, and regression analyses demonstrate such knowledge goes beyond the statistical properties of the lexicon. These findings suggest that speakers have abstract, possibly universal, phonological knowledge that is general with respect to input modality.

Frontiers in Psychology, 2016

Everett (2016b) criticizes The Phonological Mind thesis (Berent, 2013a,b) on logical, methodological and empirical grounds. Most of Everett's concerns are directed toward the hypothesis that the phonological grammar is constrained by universal grammatical (UG) principles. Contrary to Everett's logical challenges, here I show that the UG hypothesis is readily falsifiable, that universality is not inconsistent with innateness (Everett's arguments to the contrary are rooted in a basic confusion of the UG phenotype and the genotype), and that its empirical evaluation does not require a full evolutionary account of language. A detailed analysis of one case study, the syllable hierarchy, presents a specific demonstration that people have knowledge of putatively universal principles that are unattested in their language and these principles are most likely linguistic in nature. Whether Universal Grammar exists remains unknown, but Everett's arguments hardly undermine the viability of this hypothesis.

While morphosyntax and semantics have been studied from afunctional and cognitive perspective, much less emphasis has been placed on phonological phenomena in these frameworks. This paper proposes a rethinking of phonology , arguing that (i) the lexical representation of words have phonetic substance that is gradually changed by phonetic processes; (ii) the spread of these phonetic changes is at least partly accounted for by the way particular items are used in discourse; (iii) the study of exceptions, marginal phenomena , and subphonemic detail are important to the understanding of how phonological information is stored and processed; (iv) generalizations at the morphological and lexical level have radically different properties than generalizations at the phonetic level, with the former having a cognitive or semantic motivation, while the latter have a motor or physical motivation; and (v) that the best way to model the interaction of generalizations with the lexicon is not by separating rules from lists of items, but rather by conceiving of generalizations as patterns or schemas that emerge from the organization of stored lexical units.

2007

This paper briefly surveys several conceptions of naturalness in phonology, touching primarily on typological frequency and the notion of 'phonetic motivation'. It is argued that typological frequency is not a reliable indicator of what is 'phonetically motivated' as relative frequency patterns are the outcomes of more complex interactions including non-phonetic factors. Phonetic motivations are diverse and include random variations, n o t only deterministic results, as is often desired. Models that view phonological patterns as emerging from complex interactions of a variety of natural factors are the most satisfying.

Journal of Linguistics, 1997

Reviewed by P D, University of Hawai'i at Ma, noa Recent interest in language learnability has prompted interaction between acquisition studies and syntactic theory ; Phonological acquisition and phonological theory aims to provide a similar interchange between acquisition studies and phonology. It includes nine chapters, plus a preface and introduction by the editor, a unified author index, and a subject index. The volume is attractively printed, and it is generally free from typographical errors." The authors share a clear idea of what the object of phonological acquisition is ; their theoretical framework is that of generative phonology, with a focus on autosegmental, featuregeometric, underspecified, and prosodic representations. The volume is a much-needed attempt to interrelate the representations of modern phonological theory, the principles and parameters approach to acquisition, and the problems encountered by a child acquiring a first-language phonology, but the chapters reveal some difficulties in achieving the desired synthesis. John Archibald's introduction describes phonology as a system of interconnected levels of representation which also includes processes that map one type of representation onto another. His emphasis on representations and his view of phonology as a system entirely independent of phonetics are consistent with the rest of the volume. Elan Dresher & Harry van der Hulst discuss ' global determinacy '-their term for the cases where a single phonetic form corresponds to multiple possible phonological representations and a ' global ' knowledge of the language is required to determine a phonological representation. They cite various sources of global determinacy in modern phonological theory, including abstract underlying representations, floating material, underspecification, and variable grouping and dependency. These are problems of learnability ' because a lot must be known about the phonology of specific languages in order to determine which representation is adequate ' (). They note that much modern phonology assumes that the main burden of explanation rests with representations, not rules, and that the rules should follow from the segmental inventory, and they add that other hypotheses are implied : that representations can be established before any rules have been learned, and that representations increase in complexity by adding contrast. Dresher and van der Hulst formulate questions of learnability which phonological analyses should answer, but they offer no solutions here. The authors who deal with segmental acquisition (Keren Rice & Peter Avery, David Ingram, E. Jane Fee, Daniel A. Dinnsen & Steven B. Chin) almost uniformly attribute children's production errors to limitations on their phonological representations. However, they do not reconcile these limited representations with children's perceptual accuracy, or interpret what this accuracy implies about children's phonologies. Some of the authors (like Rice & Avery) disregard this problem ; others (Dinnsen & Chin) take it seriously. Most assume that adults' and children's phonological representations are underspecified, but none actually present any evidence from acquisition data for underspecification. In particular, no evidence is provided for the sorts of perceptual confusion that underspecification would be expected to cause. Underspecification is accepted here despite the fact that it makes incorrect predictions about children's perceptual abilities, differential phonological effects of sounds that children pronounce the same, and the nature of changes in children's productions. A child with representations which lack information regarding Place, for example, should fail to distinguish tea from key perceptually, but does not. Identical (underspecified) representations should not be treated differently by phonological rules, but they often are treated differently. And correction of an error pattern should correct inappropriate forms as well as the appropriate forms if their [] One surprising error, however, () involves ' McCawley () following Hayes … , p. ) ' in his definition of the mora-when, of course, it is Hayes who followed McCawley.     underlying representations do not differ, but this rarely happens (for example, in a child who says [t] for adult [k], [t] and [k] are both supposedly unspecified for Place, but when the child learns to pronounce velars, only the adult-[k] words change to [k]). These indications regarding children's representations have been pointed out repeatedly (Stampe , , Smith , Barton , etc.). Daniel A. Dinnsen & Steven B. Chin are to be credited for recognizing and describing these problems. But, having criticized underspecification, Dinnsen & Chin make a surprising attempt to save it with a theory of ' shadow specification '. They say that, for any merged pair (or series), the segments the child produces correctly are specified for the distinguishing feature, and the segments the child produces incorrectly are ' shadow ' specified for the distinguishing feature (for example [t] is unspecified for Place, and [k] is specified for Place as [Coronal]). This proposal is hard to swallow : the child's feature specification reflects his or her own pronunciation,      . That is, the child is said to specify a segment as coronal only when he or she knows it to be -coronal. Further, no basis is provided for the regularity of children's mispronunciations-since they are not determined by universal processes or by redundancy rules, we still need an explanation of the fact that a child specifies adult velars  as coronals, and not randomly as coronals, labials, glottals, etc. The proposal also predicts that a child who produces a three-way merger (such as [t] for [p, t, k] or [t] for [t, H, s] would mark both ' erroneous ' segments with the same wrong feature ([Coronal] or [kContinuant], respectively). When a new articulation is required, a change rule that affected the mis-specified segments would necessarily change them all to the newly acquired sound-which does not always happen. When the only proposal in the volume which confronts the problems of underspecification has these effects, one may well look again at a possibility Dinnsen & Chin reject : that the child's underlying forms are accurately specified and that articulatory constraints cause substitutions that prevent their accurate realization. Prosodic and tonal issues are not neglected : Jane Fee provides a discussion of how UG rules for building melodic and prosodic structures may dictate the shape of children's early productions, John Archibald surveys the acquisition of stress in first and second languages, focusing on whether stress is learned lexically or by rule and whether there are default parameter settings regarding foot type, extrametricality, etc., and Katherine Demuth presents a case study of the acquisition of some morphologically conditioned tone rules in Sesotho. Both Fee and Archibald propose a bisyllabic trochee as the unmarked metrical unit, instead of a bimoraic trochee, on the grounds that open syllables are more common in many children's productions ; neither considers early monosyllables with long vowels as potential evidence for a bimoraic unit. On the second-language acquisition front, Ellen Broselow and Hye-Bae Park present an interesting analysis of vowel epenthesis in the Korean pronunciation of English words, which considers Korean speakers' perception and production in terms of parameter settings, and Thomas Scovel offers a chapter on the discrimination of foreign accents. The learnability questions that Dresher & van der Hulst raise, and the objections to underspecification outlined by Dinnsen & Chin are important problems for phonological theory and for acquisition, and it is not clear how they can be resolved. Questions about the relationship between perception and representation-how a phonetic signal is processed into a phonological representation-go unanswered (Rice & Avery) or are insufficiently answered (Ingram, Archibald). And important aspects of the relationship between phonological representation and production are glossed over (as in Fee's claim that although phonology constrains production, ' lexically learned ' forms may be produced which violate UG constraints on phonological form ()). Through much of the volume, there is an assumption (stated most clearly by Ingram ()) that the principles that govern the acquisition of phonology should be the same as those which govern the acquisition of syntax. Some learning principles may, of course, be common to both, but this assumption overlooks the more direct relation of phonology to the learner's perception and production abilities-to phonetics. The authors hold the learner's phonological system responsible for his production errors, but the features, representations, prosodic structures, and rules of this system are unconnected to their phonetic realizations, where many of the learner's difficulties lie. Default parameter settings and the redundancy rules for default feature specification are simply attributed to UG, as if no articulatory or perceptual explanation were involved. Phonetic inabilities (absence of particular phonetic skills) are not even considered as a potential source of negative phonological constraints. This isolation of phonology from phonetics is assumed without discussion. Phonological theory and studies of language acquisition often seem unconnected ; this book    works from the phonology side to bridge that gap. Most of the chapters are attempts to show how the segmental, prosodic or tonal systems of a current model of phonology can be acquired. The attempt is welcome, but the bridge is incomplete ; many difficulties regarding the connection remain.

This paper will discuss the ways in which Cognitive Grammar (CG) has integrated the fundamental concepts of phonology. Phonology has traditionally been the neglected stepchild of CG, in part because the initial excitement of CG revolved around the insightful semantic analyses of what had previously been thought to be purely syntactic or arbitrary lexical puzzles, and phonology is, by definition, about meaningless units. Additionally, phonology deals with the coordination of motor activity and auditory perception, areas that initially didn’t seem to lend themselves to the conceptual tools of CG. Unlike much work on syntax and semantics, research within several of the generative and functional traditions turns out to be adaptable to CG’s view of the nature of phonological processing. The primary source of useful insights is the work of the Natural Phonologists (Donegan and Stampe) who argued for non-modular cognitive realism and against Chomskyan innatism independently from CG theorists. Furthermore, some work by recent offshoots of Generative Phonology turn out to have useful things to say about how CG might understand the structure of sounds in language. The earliest writing on the subject (Nathan) examined ways in which the core categorization concepts in early CG (radial prototype categories, image schema transformations, basic level categorization) could be utilized to explain traditional phonological concepts such as the phoneme, allophones and (natural) phonological processes. In more recent research, the conceptual tools of usage-based models have also been used to account for some aspects of phonological behavior, leading some researchers to question the relevance even of such traditional phonological constructs as the phoneme/allophone contrast (Bybee) or the distinction between abstract phonemic representation and representations of individual instances of particular utterances (Pierrehumbert). Additionally, the question of the boundary between phonology and morphology has been raised, with some researchers (such as the present author) arguing for a sharp, functional boundary based on the varying cognitive and physiological resources involved, while others (Nesset, Kemmer) arguing for a more generalized schematization model covering all aspects of phonological as well as morphological and syntactic generalizations. After reviewing relevant issues this paper argues that evidence from early aspects of child language acquisition, such as the onset and development of babbling (MacNeilage), the embodied nature of perception (Johnson), and other research on the acquisition and processing of complex motor skills, shows that phonology requires a more active conception of the storage and production of stored heard instances. Phonology is based upon speakers’ knowledge of the nature and capabilities of their vocal tracts and deals with how speakers actively construct utterances based on their knowledge of their individual language(s)’ conventionalized responses to those physiological and acoustic constraints.

Studia Linguistica, 2002

It is argued here that most phonological theory is not theoretical, but based on primitives and axioms (the so-called`constraints') which derive directly from the data they are supposed to explain. This article attempts to show what a non-circular conception of phonological theory may look like. The number of segmental primes, their markedness value, phonological content, and combinatory properties, as well as currently assumed constraints on syllable structure are shown to follow from a Boolean algebra, and, thus, to be independently motivated theory-grounded theorems. Hence, for example, neither the onset nor the no-coda constraints posited by OT are required. Another issue of the present theory is that segmental content and syllable structure and interdependent aspects, which emerge from the determination of skeletal units.

2007

This special session discusses the issue if there is a biological grounding of phonology. By reviewing current and past work from different speech research disciplines we suggest that (1) biological factors provide the limits, the frame of reference for phonology, (2) phonology is shaped by opti- mization processes taking into account the nonlinear relations of different representations of speech (acoustics, articulation, speech perception), and (3) sociolinguistic factors and communicative usage affect, for instance, speech acquisition and sound change. The first of the three suggestions is biological in nature whereas the last represents the non-biological nature of speech.

1976

This paper is concerned with the-Aristotelian notion of nuniversalli as applied to phonological phenomena. It is claimed ,that speech production in children and adults, in normal end deviantspeakers, and in a variety of languages, can all be.descrO.bed according to the same universal phonological rules which 'constitute 'the universal process of grammar optimalization, that is, theprocess 'bf working toward the replication of some.standard adult scdel. For diverse reasons, the linguistically deviant fail to optimalize their grammars. It is concluded that the:phonological rules of language acquisition are universal and finite:in number, that these same rules are found in deviant language acquisitlon, that they are:also found in adult dissolution of language-facility, and that.they are the motivation for the diachronic phenomena studied by historical : linguists since the time of Bask, Grimm, Bopp, Pott, and Schleicher.

Oxford University Press eBooks, 2000