Minimalism and French /ʀ/: Phonological representations in phonetically based phonology

Abstract

ab st rac t This paper examines the phonological structure of French rhotics and their treatment in a production grammar. Assuming emergent featural specification, it is argued that the underlying representation of /R/ contains only values for sonorance, continuance and place of articulation. Grammatical analysis is undertaken in an Optimality Theoretic framework, where evaluation highlights the effect of effort reduction and perceptual augmentation on /R/, also demonstrating that more richly specified segments are unaffected by these constraints. The proposal is shown to be compatible with antecedent analyses and data from regional forms and registers. i nt roduc t i onThis article examines the phonological representation of French /R/. 1 Based on the premise that form emerges from language use and that abstract structure is acquired, rather than innate, it is argued that /R/ is structurally minimal, including only values for continuance and dorsality in most varieties of French. Variable surface forms are shown to be the product of phonetically based constraints, the interaction of which is formalised in a broadly Optimality Theoretic (OT; Prince & Smolensky 1993) grammatical model. It is noted that the unique representational minimalism of /R/ renders this segment particularly sensitive to phonetically based constraints.The article proceeds as follows. The first section examines the phonetic and phonological characteristics of French /R/, surveys previous accounts, and addresses larger issues associated with rhotic sounds. An alternative specification of /R/ is advanced in the second section, drawing upon non innatist and emergent featural theories. The third section focuses on grammatical treatment * I am grateful to three anonymous referees for suggestions in making this paper more coherent. Thanks also to B. Tranel and B. Bullock for useful comments on earlier versions of this work. It goes without saying that all remaining shortcomings are my own.

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