Re: BBC does it again

In article <6bagajF38s8b5U1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Harlan Messinger <hmessinger.removethis@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Brian M. Scott wrote:
On Wed, 11 Jun 2008 12:54:34 -0400, Harlan Messinger
<hmessinger.removethis@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
<news:6baea9F39n29oU1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> in sci.lang:

While at the same time obscuring something that's
important at the level of the abstract phonology.

<shrug> I don't find that it does so.

You don't see a difference between (a) indicating that the two phonemes
are treated as a short/long pair and (b) not so indicating?

I don't think Brian is questioning whether there's a difference. I
think he's questioning whether that difference is important.

As a phonologist (am I the only one here?) with functionalist/phonetic
leanings, I prefer more surface-y phonemic representations. Using
/eI/ and /E/ for English "long e" and "short e" is, to me, more
meaningful, intuitive, and directly relatable to the reality of the
phonetics. I just don't see the real use in playing mental gymnastics
with yourself and your colleagues to jump over arbitrary, self-imposed
hurdles by restricting yourself to arbitrarily a-phonetic abstractions
like /e: e/ or /e E/.

Underspecification in phonology was a fad that went on far too long,
IMO. Thankfully, fewer and fewer phonologists seem to believe in it,
with the rise of such frameworks as exemplar-based phonology (which
directly contradicts underspecification) and Optimality Theory (which
eliminates the need for underspecification, and to some extent, with
lexicon optimization, also directly contradicts underspecification).

Underspecification leads to rather bizarre notions. For example, the
phonetic place of articulation of /tS/ is fully predictable, since all
affricates in English are post-alveolar. All that needs to be
specified to distinguish /tS/ from /t/ is affrication (or
alternatively, place), leading us to posit /ts/ (or retracted /t_-/)
instead, since they don't "needlessly" double-specify the contrast.

Even worse, if you consider radical underspecification (where not only
are redundant features not represented, but the default value of a
feature is not represented either, since it too is predictable), then
you have a lot of abstract wackiness going on.

Consider /t/: it being alveolar is fully predictable, since it isn't
/k/ or /p/; it being voiceless is fully predictable, since it isn't
/d/; it being oral is fully predictable, since it isn't /n/; etc. So
you end up just representing it with some placeholder consonant
symbol, since it is the one consonant that gets all of its feature
values for free, because they're all algorithmically predictable from
the fact that it isn't any of the other consonants.

Nathan

--
Nathan Sanders
Linguistics Program
Williams College
http://wso.williams.edu/~nsanders/
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: BBC does it again
    ... Underspecification in phonology was a fad that went on far too long, ... I just commented on this in another note, but it's relevant here so I'll reiterate it: One of the advantages of underspecification is that you don't restrict the scope of your phonemic model unnecessarily. ... To me it seems to make more sense not to mark a feature in the abstract representation that *may* appear in the realization, than to mark one that *may not*. ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: Cambrige Series (was: Your first "linguistic" memory)
    ... >> reflection not on his textbook, but on the current state of phonology. ... > it hardly representative of the current state of phonological theory. ... > representations, and features, well-known concepts like "Obligatory ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: Cambrige Series (was: Your first "linguistic" memory)
    ... > reflection not on his textbook, but on the current state of phonology. ... it hardly representative of the current state of phonological theory. ... representations, and features, well-known concepts like "Obligatory ...
    (sci.lang)