An evaluation metric in Universal Grammar provides a means of selecting between possible grammars for a particular language. The evaluation metric as conceived in Chomsky & Halle (1968; henceforthSPE) prefers the grammar in which only the idiosyncratic properties are lexically listed and predictable properties are derived. The essence of underspecification theory is to supply such predictable distinctive features or feature specifications by rule. Viewed in this way, the general idea of underspecification has always been a part of any theory of phonology that includes such an evaluation metric.
Although formulated by Weinreich, Labov, and Herzog in 1968, the actuation problem has remained an unsolved problem in understanding sound change: if sound change is conceived as the accumulation of coarticulation, and coarticulation is widespread, how can some speech communities resist phonetic pressure to change? We present data from American English s-retraction that suggest a partial solution. S-retraction is the phenomenon in which /s/ is realized as an [ʃ]-like sound, especially when it occurs in an /stɹ/ cluster (‘street’ pronounced more like [ʃtɹit] than like [stɹit]). The speech of English speakers judgednotto exhibit s-retraction shows a large coarticulatory bias in the direction of retraction. Further, there is also substantial interspeaker variation in the extent of this bias. We propose that this interspeaker variation, coupled with the coarticulatory bias, facilitates the initiation of sound change. In this account, sound change begins when a listener accidentally interprets an extreme case of a phonetic effect as an articulatory target and then adjusts her own speech in response. This adoption of a new target requires phonetic variation that predates the change. Thus, sound change is predicted to be biased toward phonetic effects that exhibit interspeaker variability, and if sound change requires an accident that is rare, then sound change itself is correctly predicted to be rare as well.
The canonical image of vowel harmony is of a particular feature distributed throughout a word, leading to symmetric constraints like AGREE or SPREAD. Examination of the distribution of tongue-root advancement in Kinande demonstrates that harmonic feature distribution is asymmetric. The data argue that a formal (yet asymmetric) constraint (like ALIGN) is exactly half right : such a constraint correctly characterises the left edge of the harmonic domain. By contrast, the right edge is necessarily characterised by phonetically grounded restrictions on feature co-occurrence. Of further interest is the role of morphological domains : the interaction between domain restrictions on specific constraints and unrestricted constraints suggests a formal means of characterising the overwhelming similarity between constraint hierarchies at different morphological levels while at the same time characterising the distinctions between levels.
We compare the complexity of idiosyncratic sound patterns involving American English /ɹ/ with the relative simplicity of clear/dark /l/-allophony patterns found in English and other languages. For /ɹ/, we report an ultrasound-based articulatory study of twenty-seven speakers of American English. Two speakers use only retroflex /ɹ/, sixteen use only bunched /ɹ/, and nine use both /ɹ/ types, with idiosyncratic allophonic distributions. These allophony patterns are covert, because the difference between bunched and retroflex /ɹ/ is not readily perceived by listeners. We compare this typology of /ɹ/-allophony patterns to clear/dark /l/-allophony patterns in seventeen languages. On the basis of the observed patterns, we show that individual-level /ɹ/ allophony and language-level /l/ allophony exhibit similar phonetic grounding, but that /ɹ/-allophony patterns are considerably more complex. The low complexity of language-level /l/-allophony patterns, which are more readily perceived by listeners, is argued to be the result of individual-level contact in the development of sound patterns. More generally, we argue that familiar phonological patterns (which are relatively simple and homogeneous within communities) may arise from individuallevel articulatory patterns, which may be complex and speaker-specific, by a process of koineization. We conclude that two classic properties of phonological rules, phonetic naturalness and simplicity, arise from different sources.*
This article addresses the interaction of syllabification and templatic morphology inYawelmani. The morphological templates (in CV terms, CVCC, CVVCC, and CVCVVC) do not parse directly into well-formed Yawelmani surface syllables (CV, CVV, CVC). Nonetheless, as argued here, these templates can be expressed in terms of legitimate prosodic units, thereby supporting the prosodic morphology hypothesis (McCarthy and Prince 1986, 1990. The basic idea is that segments map from left to right to the template, but if a template is too small, any leftover stem consonants simply undergo right to left syllabification. This analysis accounts for the general templatic mapping of verbs and nouns as well as the different kinds of reduplication in Yawelmani. It also provides a more explanatory account of the "ghost' consonantsinitial consonants of some of the suffixes which surface only when the stem is biconsonantal, but not if the stem is larger. The analysis not only provides support for the prosodic morphology hypothesis, it also argues in favor of a templatic view of syllabification (It6 1986(It6 , 1989) and a rule of Weight-by-Position (Hayes 1989) operating independently of the general syllabification process.
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