Hostname: page-component-75d7c8f48-9kl9f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-03-15T03:59:29.858Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Abstractness Controversy: Experimental Input from Hindi

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 March 2026

Manjari Ohala
Manjari Ohala*
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

If the grammars which linguists write are to reflect psychologically real constructs, then purely structural evidence is not sufficient proof of them; some form of psychological evidence is required. The psycholinguistic test described here was designed to show whether or not a Hindi word such as [ghõ:sla:] ‘nest’, which appears only in this form on the surface, has an underlying form with an ‘abstract’ , i.e. ghõ:sla:. The results show that some speakers have the abstract underlying form, others do not.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 50 , Issue 2 , June 1974 , pp. 225 - 235
Copyright
Copyright © 1974 Linguistic Society of America

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Bhatia, Tej K., and Kenstowicz, Michael J. 1972. Nasalization in Hindi: a reconsideration. Papers in Linguistics 5. 202–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brame, Michael. 1972. On the abstractness of phonology: Maltese ʕ. Contributions to generative phonology, ed. by Brame, Michael K., 22–61. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Crothers, John. 1971. On the abstractness controversy. Project on Linguistic Analysis, reports, second series, no. 12. Berkeley: Phonology Laboratory, University of California.Google Scholar
Gleitman, Lila R., and Gleitman, Henry. 1970. Phrase and paraphrase: some innovative uses of language. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
Hyman, Larry. 1970. How concrete is phonology? Lg. 46. 58–76.Google Scholar
Kiparsky, Paul. 1968. How abstract is phonology? Bloomington: Indiana University Linguistics Club.Google Scholar
Kiparsky, Paul. 1972. Metrics and morphophonemics in the Rigveda. Contributions to generative phonology, ed. by Brame, Michael K., 171–200. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Kisseberth, Charles W. 1969. On the abstractness of phonology: the evidence from Yawelmani. Papers in Linguistics 1. 248–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Misra, Bal Govind. 1967. Historical phonology of Modern Standard Hindi: Proto-Indo-European to the present. Cornell University dissertation.Google Scholar
Ohala, John. 1973. On the design of phonological experiments. Unpublished.Google Scholar
Ohala, Manjari. 1972. Topics in Hindi-Urdu phonology. UCLA dissertation.Google Scholar
Sherzer, Joel. 1970. Talking backwards in Cuna: the sociological reality of phonological descriptions. Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 26. 343–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Varma, Ram Chandra (ed.) 1958. Sankṣşipt hindī śabdasāgar. Kāśhī: Nāgarī-Pracārini Sabhā.Google Scholar
Zimmer, Karl E. 1969. Psychological correlates of some Turkish morpheme structure conditions. Lg. 45. 309–21.Google Scholar