Volume 45, Issue 1 - Natural Phonology. Edited by Katarzyna Dziubalska-Kolaczyk

Hypotheses of Natural Phonology Natural Phonology characterizes production and perception of speech in terms of a set of universal phonetically motivated phonological processes. Before their first words, infants identify some processes as inapplicable in their language, which narrows their perceptual universe to its phonemic system and enables them to hear the intention rather than the actuation of speech. They then gradually inhibit the inapplicable processes to achieve mature pronunciation. If some inhibitions are not fully mastered, the child's speech seems to have a sound change, or perhaps a variable pronunciation, or a speech deficit. Processes that remain active govern allophony, variation, automatic alternations, one's native "accent", and one's "foreign" accent in second-language learning. Inactive processes may (re-)emerge to cope with stresses like injury or fatigue. This paper surveys some of the principal hypotheses of Natural Phonology, and we briefly compare them with Optimality Theory and recent neo-empiricist phonology. We argue that abstraction from actions to intentions is fundamental to learning and understanding language at every level from phonetics to pragmatics.

Natural Phonology as Part of Natural Linguistics In the history of phonology, no model of phonology (e.g. Trubetzkoy's model or Optimality Theory) has stayed for any considerable time alone on its own, i.e. without parallel models of syntax and morphology. Thus, Stampean Natural Phonology has been complemented in Europe by Natural Morphology, Natural Syntax and Natural Text Linguistics. In this way, Natural Phonology can be integrated into an overall model of Natural Linguistics. This model has been further unified by giving it the status of a preference theory and by providing functionalist epistemology and a semiotic metatheory for all of its parts, including Natural Phonology. This unity of Natural Linguistics is demonstrated with the universal preference parameters of figure vs. ground sharpening, binarity, iconicity, indexicality and the naturalness scale biuniqueness > uniqueness > ambiguity. The final argumentation focuses on the "weak claim" of universality of preferences (against the "strong claim" of innate phonological processes) by understanding universal preferences (including phonological processes) as plausible constructivist "software" strategies which are constructed in language acquisition for overcoming universal innate "hardware" problems.

Natural Phonology as a Functional Theory This paper presents Natural Phonology as a functional theory. Natural Phonology is shown to be functional in two senses: as focusing on explanation and thus increasing our understanding of how language works, and as having practical applications, especially to second language acquisition and speech therapy. The contribution argues that crucial as formalism is in computational linguistics and speech technology, Natural Phonology, with less rigid and less formalized claims, has important applications in the areas where language and not totally predictable human factors are involved. The paper discusses approaches to autonomy in language, explanation and hypothesis in Natural Phonology, and applications of Natural Phonology.

NP Extension: B&B Phonotactics This paper will report on an extension of the framework of Natural Phonology in the area of syllable phonology and phonotactics. In particular, it will present a universal model of phonotactics constructed within Beats-and-Binding Phonology (B&B Phonology, cf. Dziubalska-Kołaczyk 2002) - a syllable-less theory of phonology embedded in Natural Phonology. The thrust of the theory is the claim that intersegmental cohesion determines syllable structure, rather than being determined by it (if one insists on the notion of the "syllable" which is epiphenomenal here). The core of B&B phonotactics is the Net Auditory Distance Principle, according to which phonological naturalness of clusters can be evaluated.

Formal is Natural: Toward an Ecological Phonology Naturalism Phonology (NP) has a history of opposition to abstractness, to generative linguistics, to formalist approaches, and differs from these in its strong focus on external rather than distributional, structural evidential domains. But evidence domains are orthogonal to empirical and formal methods, and, like formalist theories such as Optimality Theory (OT), the pedigree of NP includes structuralist and generative phonology. In an analysis which is sympathetic to both NP and OT, this contribution examines the relation between NP and OT, analyses a classic OT case study of syllabification in Tashlhiyt Berber, and presents computational linguistic analyses of this case, as well as of English syllable phonotactics and of tone language tonotactics. The contribution advocates an opening towards these methods, and the adoption of explicit, consistent, precise, complete and sound formal criteria for theories, which enable an exact interpretation in terms of operational models and computational implementations, and practical applications. The general frame of reference is a the Ecological Cycle in theory formation, from clarification of the domain through theory construction, interpretation with a model, evaluation and application in the original evidential domain, with payback to the language community from which the evidence was gained.

Inertial and Non-Inertial Lenition Processes This study aims at determining the influence of vocal tract inertia on the following lenition processes: phonetic vowel reduction, vowel deletion, spirantisation, place assimilation and consonant cluster simplification. Since speech has to be realised within the limits imposed on the speaker by the physical properties of the speech apparatus, even universally preferred sound combinations, i.e. strings of CV syllables, can constitute an articulatory difficulty at fast rates due to the inertia of the active speech organ. Under such circumstances, speakers of various languages frequently apply lenitions that are not employed in their language in natural speech and, most importantly, there are striking similarities in how certain difficulties are overcome. The major conclusion that can be drawn from the data is that lenitions affecting CVC and VCV sound sequences are inertial, whereas those affecting consonant clusters are non-inertial.

Phonology, Naturalness and Universals This paper briefly surveys several conceptions of naturalness in phonology, touching primarily on typological frequency and the notion of "phonetic motivation". It is argued that typological frequency is not a reliable indicator of what is "phonetically motivated" as relative frequency patterns are the outcomes of more complex interactions, including non-phonetic factors. Phonetic motivations are diverse and include random variations, not only deterministic results, as is often desired. Models that view phonological patterns as emerging from complex interactions of a variety of natural factors are the most satisfying.

Where is the Natural Phonology Phoneme in 2009? The phoneme in Natural Phonology (NP) has a different status from that which it has in most versions of "generative" phonology and also from several other current functionalist phonological models. Unlike the generative view, the NP phoneme is a mental image of a fully specified sound. On the other hand, unlike the usage-based view, there is a single mental image which is modified online in production, while perception "undoes" the modification according to the speaker/hearer's dialect. This paper presents some arguments for the continuing validity of the NP view.

Listener Oriented Representations in Natural Phonology While Natural Phonology has long contended that phonemes are specified for their phonetic properties, followers of the theory have concentrated primarily on phonological processes, instead of delving into the details of pronounceable representations. In the area of representation, NP has thus failed to pursue its claim that systematic articulatory and perceptual phenomena below the level of segmental contrast must be treated phonologically. By building an explicit model of representation in NP, we may help the theory to meet one of its primary challenges: "to confirm the hypothesis that speech processing is categorical, or phonological, down to the level of the actual phonetic (pronounceable) representation" (Donegan 2002: 79). Prominence Phonology (Schwartz, in press) is an NP-inspired model that seeks to take Donegan's call to action to heart, introducing new and phonetically explicit representations based upon scalar yet monovalent elemental primes. This paper introduces these representations with the goal of refining our view of the signal so as to develop a phonological view of speech.

Comparing and Contrasting Natural Phonology, Optimality Theory and the Theory of Phonology as Human Behavior This paper compares and contrasts the theories of Natural Phonology, Optimality Theory and Phonology as Human Behavior from diverse theoretical and methodological aspects including: the interaction between the opposing forces of markedness (the human factor) and faithfulness (the communication factor); the sentence-oriented versus sign-oriented approaches; and the concepts of naturalistic versus generative research paradigms. Despite these basic differences, similarities are also found in their shared functional basis which is discussed in the context of the natural phonological processes of Natural Phonology. I will further show how each theory views the notion of language universals. The concepts of combinatory phonology, phonotactics, and diachronic, developmental and clinical phonology will be discussed as measures of defining and determining the concept of language universals. The author maintains that biological, physiological, cognitive, psychological, sociological and other universals of human behavior are merely reflected in language rather than being specific "language universals" per se.