This chapter looks deeper into the nature of underlying forms by

A fundamental characteristic of the rules discussed up to this point is that they have described totally predictable allophonic processes, such as aspiration in English or vowel nasalization in Sundanese. For such rules, the question of the exact underlying form of a word has not been so crucial, and in some cases a clear decision could not be made. We saw that in Sundanese every vowel becomes nasalized after a nasal sound, and every phonetic nasal vowel appears after a nasal. Nasality of vowels can always be predicted by a rule in this language: all nasal vowels appear in one predictable context, and all vowels are predictably nasal in that context. It was therefore not crucial to indicate whether a given vowel is underlyingly nasal or underlyingly oral. If you assume that vowels are underlyingly oral you can write a rule to derive all of the nasal vowels, and if you contrarily assume that vowels are all underlyingly nasal you could write a rule to derive all of the oral vowels. The choice of underlying sound may make a considerable difference in terms of simplicity and elegance of the solution, and this is an important consideration in evaluating a phonological analysis, but it is possible to come up with rules which will grind out the correct forms no matter what one assumes about underlying representations in these cases. This is not always the case.

This chapter explores the extent to which underlying and surface forms can be different – what constraints if any are tenable within the formal theory, what the issues are in limiting abstractness, and how to address these questions empirically. The central question raised in this chapter is “what counts as evidence for a phonological analysis?”

A fundamental question in the theory of phonology has been “how abstract is phonology?”, specifically, how different can the underlying and phonetic forms of a word be? The essential question is whether grammars use entities that are not directly observed. Related to this is the question whether a linguistic model requiring elements that cannot be directly observed reflects what the human mind does. The very concept of a mental representation of speech, such as a phonological surface form like [sɔks] socks which is not itself an observable physical event, requires abstracting away from many specifics of speech. Without generalizing beyond the directly observable, it would be impossible to make even the most mundane observations about any language. The question is therefore not whether phonology is abstract at all, but rather what degree of abstractness is required.

In this chapter, you will broaden your understanding of how phonological systems work by

Phonological systems are not made up of isolated and unrelated phonological rules: there are usually significant interactions between phonological processes. This chapter concentrates on two related topics. First, a seemingly complex set of alternations can be given a simple explanation if you separate the effect of different rules which may happen to apply in the same form. Second, applying rules in different orders can have a significant effect on the way that a given underlying form is mapped onto a surface form.

Separating the effects of different rules

Very often, when you analyze phonological alternations, insights into the nature of these alternations are revealed once you realize that a word may be subject to more than one rule, each of which can affect the same segment. You should not think of a phonology as being just a collection of direct statements of the relation between underlying segments and their surface realization. Such a description is likely to be confusing and complex, and will miss a number of important generalizations. Look for ways to decompose a problem into separate, smaller, and independent parts, stated in terms of simple and general rules. The different effects which these rules can have on a segment may accumulate, to give a seemingly complex pattern of phonetic change.

This chapter explores the theory for representing language sounds as symbolic units. You will:

We have been casual about what sounds as cognitive units are made of, and just treated them as letters labeled by traditional articulatory descriptions. It is time now to raise a fundamental question: are segments further analyzed into “parts” that define them, or are they truly atomic – units which are not further divisible or analyzable?

Scientific questions about speech sounds

One of the scientific questions that need to be asked about language is: what is a possible speech sound? Humans can physically produce many more kinds of sounds than are used in language. No language employs hand-clapping, finger-snapping, or vibrations of air between the hand and cheek caused by release of air from the mouth when obstructed by the palm of the hand (though such a sound can easily communicate an attitude). A goal of a scientific theory of language is to systematize such facts and explain them; thus we have discovered one limitation on language sound and its modality – language sounds are produced exclusively within the mouth and nasal passages, in the area between the lips and larynx.

This chapter explores a subset of the phonologies of a number of languages. The purpose of this chapter is to make explicit the reasoning typically applied to the task of solving a phonology problem. By studying models of problem solving, you not only better understand the logic of problem solving, you will also gain experience with rules and issues regarding underlying representations encountered in the languages of the world.

Analyzing a system of phonological alternations is not trivial: it requires practice, where you gain experience by solving phonological problems of increasing complexity, experience which facilitates subsequent problem solving. The wider your experience is with actual phonological processes and problem solving, the better able you will be to appreciate what processes are common in the languages of the world, and to understand the dynamics of hypothesis formation, testing, and revision. The first analyses given here will be more explicit about the reasoning that goes into solving data sets of this nature, in some cases deliberately going down the wrong analytical path, so that you have the opportunity to recognize the wrong path, and see how to get back on the right path. In practice, many of the calculations that are involved here are done without explicitly thinking about it – once you have suitable experience with problem solving.

This final chapter introduces an alternative model of how sounds are represented, the nonlinear theory. The purpose of this chapter is to show how troublesome facts can lead to a reconceptualization of a domain which seemed to be understood, leading to an even better understanding of the nature of language sounds. This will also help you to understand how and why theories change.

The theoretical model we have been assuming – known as the linear theory of representation – was quite successful in explaining a number of facts about sound systems. An essential characteristic of the theory is that segments are matrices of feature values, where every segment has a specification for each of the two dozen distinctive features. There was one phonological realm which the theory had largely ignored, and that was tone, and that had significant repercussions.

The autosegmental theory of tone: the beginnings of a change

There were a few proposals regarding tone features, but they did not reach the degree of acceptance that those for other features reached. One of the primary problems regarding tone was how to represent contour tones such as rising and falling.

One of the main goals of many phonologists is to explain why certain phonological patterns are found in numerous languages, while other patterns are found in few or no languages. This chapter looks at phonological typology – the study of common versus uncommon phonological rules.

A widely invoked criterion in deciding between analyses of a language is whether the rules of one analysis are more natural, usually judged in terms of whether the rules occur frequently across languages. As a prerequisite to explaining why some processes are common, uncommon, or even unattested, you need an idea of what these common patterns are, and providing such survey information is the domain of typology. While only a very small fraction of the roughly 7,000 languages spoken in the world have been studied in a way that yields useful information for phonological typology, crosslinguistic studies have revealed many recurrent patterns, which form the basis for theorizing about the reason for these patterns.

Inventories

A comparative, typological approach is often employed in the study of phonological segment inventories. It has been observed that certain kinds of segments occur in very many languages, while others occur in only a few. This observation is embodied in the study of markedness, which is the idea that not all segments or sets of segments or rules have equal status in phonological systems. For example, many languages have the stop consonants [p t k], a system that is said to be unmarked, but relatively few have the uvular [q], which is said to be marked. Markedness is a comparative concept, so [q] is more marked than [k] but less marked than [ʕ].

This chapter begins the analysis of phonological processes. You will:

As explained in the preceding chapter, the focus of phonology is the mental rules which govern the pronunciation of words in a given language. Certain facts about pronunciation simply cannot be predicted by rule, for example that in English the word sick is pronounced [sɪk] and sip is pronounced [sɪp]. Hence one fundamental component of a language is a lexicon, a list of words (or morphemes – parts of words), which must provide any information which cannot be predicted by rules of the language. However, much about the pronunciation of words can be predicted. For example, in the word tick the initial voiceless consonant t is phonetically aspirated, and is phonetically [thɪk]. This aspiration can be demonstrated visually by dangling a tissue in front of the mouth when saying the word: notice that when you pronounce t, the tissue is blown forward. In comparison, t in the word stick is not aspirated (thus, the tissue is not blown forward), so this word is transcribed as [stɪk]. This fact can be predicted by rule, and we now consider how this is done.