Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-jr42d Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-18T20:11:51.741Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Today the world, tomorrow phonology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 October 2008

James D. McCawley
James D. McCawley*
Affiliation:
University of Chicago
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Generative phonological research has typically relied heavily on gratuitous assumptions about the particular morphemic decompositions that are by convention treated as data, about the relevance of those decompositions to the determination of underlying forms, and about the individuation of linguistic phenomena. I discuss a number of topics that take on a different complexion when these gratuitous assumptions are avoided: the identification of particular segments as making up underlying forms, which is far more problematic than has hitherto been recognised; various prior studies that can be interpreted as showing that ‘Vowel Shift’, while playing some role in the competence of speakers of English, has much less generality than standard tenets of generative phonology would lead one to expect; and individual variation in perceived morphemic relations among words. I report on an experiment that demonstrates the existence of such variation and provides evidence for individual differences in the system of vowel alternations and in the status of vowel shift alternations in that system.

Type
Research Article
Information
Phonology , Volume 3 , May 1986 , pp. 27 - 43
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1986

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.)

Footnotes

*

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the conference ‘Uses of Phonology’ at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, February 1983, and appears in Southern Illinois Occasional Papers in Linguistics 12 (1984); that version of the paper includes individual subject data that is omitted here. I am grateful to John J. Ohala and Jeri J. Jaeger for valuable comments on the pre-final version of this paper, and to Valerie Reyna for valuable advice about the design of the experiment reported in Y§3 and for help in understanding the issues that it touches on.

References

Armbruster, Thomas (1978). The psychological reality of the vowel shift and taxing rules. PhD thesis, University of California, Irvine.Google Scholar
Berko, Jean (1958). The child's learning of English morphology. Word 14. 150–177.Google Scholar
Bolinger, Dwight (1965). Forms of English. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Carlson, Greg … Tanenhaus, Michael (1982). Some preliminaries to psycholinguistics. CLS 18. 48–60.Google Scholar
Cena, R. M. (1978). When is a phonological generalization psychologically real? Indiana University Linguistics Club.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam (1980a). Rules and representations. The Behavioral and Brain Sciences 3. 1–15.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam (1980b). Reply to McCawley (1980). The Behavioral and Brain Sciences 3. 47–48.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam … Halle, Morris (1968). The sound pattern of English.New York: Harper … Row.Google Scholar
Derwing, Bruce L. (1976). Morpheme recognition and the learning of rules for derivational morphology. Canadian Journal of Linguistics 21. 38–66.Google Scholar
Halle, Morris … Mohanan, K. P. (1985). Segmental phonology of modern English. LI 16. 57–116.Google Scholar
Jaeger, Jeri J. (1980). Categorization in phonology: an experimental approach. PhD thesis, University of California, Berkeley.Google Scholar
Jaeger, Jeri J. (1984). Assessing the psychological status of the Vowel Shift Rule. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 13. 13–36.Google Scholar
Joos, Martin (ed.) (1958). Readings in linguistics 1. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Kuroda, S.-Y. (1967). Yawelmani phonology. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Lightner, Theodore M. (1972). Problems in the theory of phonology. Edmonton: Linguistic Research.Google Scholar
McCawley, D. (1967). Sapir's phonologic representation. IJAL 33. 106–111. Reprinted in McCawley (1979b). 3–9.Google Scholar
McCawley, James D. (1969). Length and voicing in Tübatulabal. CLS 5. 407–415.Reprinted in McCawley (1979b). 30–40.Google Scholar
McCawley, James D. (1974). Review of Chomsky … Halle (1968). IJAL 40. 50–88.Google Scholar
McCawley, James D. (1979a). Remarks on Cena's vowel shift experiment. In Paul Clyne, William Hanks … Carol Hofbauer (eds.) The elements: parasession on linguistic units and levels. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society. 110–118Google Scholar
McCawley, James D. (1979b). Adverbs, vowels, and other objects of wonder. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
McCawley, James D.(1980). iTabula sí, rasa no! The Behavioral and Brain Sciences 3. 26–27.Google Scholar
Mandelbaum, David G. (ed.) (1949). Selected writings of Edward Sapir in language, culture, personality. Berkeley … Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Moskowitz, Breyne (1973). On the status of vowel shift in English. In Moore, T. E. (ed.) Cognitive development and the acquisition of language. New York: Academic Press. 223–260.Google Scholar
Myerson, R. F. (1976). Children's knowledge of selected aspects of ‘Sound pattern of English’. In Campbell, R. N. … Smith, P. T. (eds.) Recent advances in the psychology of language: formal and experimental approaches. New York: Plenum Press. 377–402.Google Scholar
Ohala, John J. (1974). Experimental historical phonology. In Anderson, J. M. … Jones, C. (eds.) Historical linguistics. Vol. 2. Amsterdam: North-Holland. 353–389.Google Scholar
Ohala, Manjari … Ohala, John J. (in press). Psycholinguistic probes of native speakers' phonological knowledge. In Dressier, W. U. (ed.) Phonologica 1984. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Sapir, Edward (1925). Sound patterns in language. Lg 1. 37–51. Page references to reprint in Mandelbaum (1949). 33–45.Google Scholar
Sapir, Edward (1933). La réalité psychologique des phonèmes. Journal de Psychologie Normale et Pathologique 30. 247–265. Page references to translation 'The psychological reality of phonemes' in Mandelbaum (1949). 46–60.Google Scholar
Steinberg, Danny … Krohn, Robert (1975). The psychological validity of Chomsky and Halle's Vowel Shift Rule. In Koerner, E. (ed.) The transformational-generative paradigm and modern linguistic theory. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 233–259.Google Scholar
Swadesh, Morrish … C. F. Voegelin (1939). A problem in phonological alternation. Lg 15. 1–10. Reprinted in Joos (1958). 88–92.Google Scholar
Twaddell, W. Freeman (1935). On defining the phoneme. Language Monograph 16. Reprinted in Joos (1958). 55–80.Google Scholar
Wescott, Roger W. (1984). Consonant apophony in English. In Agard, F.Kelley, D.Makkai, A. … Makkai, V. (eds.) Essays in honor of Charles F. Hockett. Leiden: Brill. 202–218.Google Scholar