Aspects of underspecification theory

Archangeli, Diana

doi:10.1017/s0952675700002268

Cited by 350 publications

(217 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…The notion of undcrspecification was independently developed in phonological theory. Archangeli (1988) in particular proposed a theory of "radical underspecification". which claims that only unpredictable features are specified in the lexicon.…”

Section: The Syllabary Theory Reconsideredmentioning

confidence: 99%

Do speakers have access to a mental syllabary?

1994

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The first, theoretical part of this paper sketches a framework for phonological encoding in which the speaker successively generates phonological syllables in connected speech. The final stage of this process, phonetic encoding, consists of accessing articulatory gestural scores for each of these syllables in a "mental syllabary ". The second, experimental part studies various predictions derived from this theory. The main finding is a syllable frequency effect: words ending in a high-frequent syllable are named faster than words ending in a low-frequent syllable. As predicted, this syllable frequency effect is independent of and additive to the effect of word frequency on naming latency. The effect, moreover, is not due to the complexity of the word-final syllable. In the General Discussion, the syllabary model is further elaborated with respect to phonological underspecification and activation spreading. Alternative accounts of the empirical findings in terms of core syllables and demisyllables are considered.

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Section: The Syllabary Theory Reconsideredmentioning

confidence: 99%

Do speakers have access to a mental syllabary?

1994

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“…An important consequence of this proposal is that it undermines what has been considered to be a strong argument for contrastive underspecification. Mester and Itô (1989) argued that the behavior of r in mimetic palatalization constitutes an argument against radical underspecification (Archangeli (1988), Pulleyblank (1988), Archangeli and Pulleyblank (1989)), but for a theory of contrastive underspecification (Clements (1987), Steriade (1987)). Their account is sketched below in (20).…”

Section: Implication For Underspecificationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Conflicting directionality

Zoll

1997

Phonology

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Certain kinds of complex phenomena serve as testing and proving grounds in phonology as theories develop and change. Cases of what I will call CONFLICTING DIRECTIONALITY, exemplified by the stress pattern in Selkup (Ostyak-Samoyed) in (1), constitute one such phenomenon (Halle & Clements 1983, Idsardi 1992). This pattern, first discussed for Eastern Cheremis by Kiparsky (1973) (from Itkonen 1955), has informed all major theories of stress (Hayes 1981, 1995, Prince 1983, Halle & Vergnaud 1987, Kenstowicz 1995, Halle & Idsardi 1995, among others). Descriptively, in Selkup the rightmost heavy (CVV) syllable receives the stress (1a), but if the word contains no heavy syllables, it is the leftmost syllable which is stressed (1b). The term CONFLICTING DIRECTIONALITY describes this elsewhere relationship between the right and left edges of a word. No theory of stress is complete if it cannot account for this pattern.

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“…Labrune (2014) argues that /r/ is in a sense a special segment in Japanese, and attempts to explain its behavior in terms of the Underspefication Theory (e.g. Archangeli 1988 andSteriade 1995 for overviews of this theory). This reply instead uses violable constraints to explain the behaviors of /r/.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Japanese /r/ is not feature-less: A rejoinder to Labrune (2014)

Kawahara

2015

Open Linguistics

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Labrune (2014) argues that Japanese /r/ is structurally empty. This reply points out that the phonological characteristics of /r/ which are discussed by Labrune (2014) come with many systematic exceptions, and hence they are better modeled by violable constraints. To illustrate how violable constraints accommodate such systematic exceptions, alternative analyses based on Optimality Theory (Prince & Smolensky, 2004) are presented. This reply also points out that the three constraints on /r/ that are discussed by Labrune (2014) are in fact not specific to /r/, and therefore, motivating structural emptiness based on these patterns would face a problem of not being able to distinguish /r/ from other segments. Based on these considerations, this reply concludes that /r/ (and other segments) in Japanese should have segmental contents.Keywords: phonology, Japanese, /r/ 1 Introduction Labrune (2014) argues that Japanese /r/ is "phonologically empty" (p. 1). Building on previous studies making use of the Underspefication Theory (e.g. Mester & Ito 1989), Labrune (2014) says that /r/ is "totally featureless at the abstract level" (p.14). This reply article reexamines some of the evidence that is discussed in Labrune (2014), and shows that the behavior of /r/ actually shows that it has features.¹ In particular, this paper argues that the phonological characteristics of /r/ which are discussed by Labrune (2014) come with many systematic exceptions, and hence should instead be modelled by using violable constraints. To provide explicit accounts of the behavior of /r/ using violable constraints, alternative analyses in terms of Optimality Theory (Prince & Smolensky, 2004) are presented.² In addition, this reply also points out that the three constraints on /r/ that are discussed by Labrune (2014) are in fact not specific to /r/, and therefore, motivating structural emptiness based on these patterns would face a problem of not being able to distinguish /r/ from other segments. Based on these considerations, *Corresponding Author: Shigeto Kawahara: Keio University, Tokyo, Japan; Email: kawahara.research@gmail.com 1 Although some pieces of evidence in Labrune (2014) come from patterns of Old Japanese and historical developments of /r/, Labrune (2014) makes it explicit that the same argument holds for Modern Japanese-that Japanese /r/ is synchronically structurally empty (p.2). The current reply is exclusively about the synchronic phonology of Modern Japanese, and has nothing to say about the diachronic nature of /r/. Pellard (2014) develops an extensive critique on the diachronic claims made by Labrune (2014); readers who are interested in diachronic claims of Labrune (2014) are referred to that work. 2 Despite the fact that Labrune (2014) argues that /r/ is phonologically empty, the same paper develops an Optimality Theoretic analysis to derive /r/ to break up vowel sequences (pp. 16-21). This analysis assumes that /r/ is featurally-specified, because it uses feature-agreement constraints, which would not be computable...

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Aspects of underspecification theory

Cited by 350 publications

References 16 publications

Do speakers have access to a mental syllabary?

Do speakers have access to a mental syllabary?

Conflicting directionality

Japanese /r/ is not feature-less: A rejoinder to Labrune (2014)

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