Chapter 3. What are grammars made of?
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Juliette Blevins
Abstract
The 21st century has brought major advances in our understanding of sound patterns, their phonetic basis, and their cross-linguistic diversity. Properties that were once thought to be universal, from phonological features to prosodic units like the syllable, have shown themselves to be highly variable across languages, and to sometimes fail at the very specific organizational role they are meant to play within sound systems. The goal of this chapter is to summarize evidence from the diversity of phonological systems that may inform areas of disagreement in modeling phonological grammars, with special attention to the locus of explanation in phonological theory. General arguments against phonological universals and phonological markedness in grammar are presented, including distinctive features, the sonority scale, and the prosodic hierarchy. Arguments for language-specific sound patterns and extra-grammatical explanations are also presented, including rare phoneme inventories, rare phonotactics, and distinct modality-specific properties of spoken versus signed languages.
Abstract
The 21st century has brought major advances in our understanding of sound patterns, their phonetic basis, and their cross-linguistic diversity. Properties that were once thought to be universal, from phonological features to prosodic units like the syllable, have shown themselves to be highly variable across languages, and to sometimes fail at the very specific organizational role they are meant to play within sound systems. The goal of this chapter is to summarize evidence from the diversity of phonological systems that may inform areas of disagreement in modeling phonological grammars, with special attention to the locus of explanation in phonological theory. General arguments against phonological universals and phonological markedness in grammar are presented, including distinctive features, the sonority scale, and the prosodic hierarchy. Arguments for language-specific sound patterns and extra-grammatical explanations are also presented, including rare phoneme inventories, rare phonotactics, and distinct modality-specific properties of spoken versus signed languages.
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Acknowledgments vii
- Introduction ix
- Chapter 1. Markedness in substance-free and substance-dependent phonology 1
- Chapter 2. Contrast is irrelevant in phonology 23
- Chapter 3. What are grammars made of? 47
- Chapter 4. Consonant epenthesis and markedness 69
- Chapter 5. On silent markedness 101
- Chapter 6. The phonetic salience of phonological head-dependent structure in a modulated-carrier model of speech 121
- Chapter 7. Markedness and formalising phonological representations 153
- Chapter 8. Are there brain bases for phonological markedness? 191
- Chapter 9. There is no place for markedness in biologically-informed phonology 219
- Index 233
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Acknowledgments vii
- Introduction ix
- Chapter 1. Markedness in substance-free and substance-dependent phonology 1
- Chapter 2. Contrast is irrelevant in phonology 23
- Chapter 3. What are grammars made of? 47
- Chapter 4. Consonant epenthesis and markedness 69
- Chapter 5. On silent markedness 101
- Chapter 6. The phonetic salience of phonological head-dependent structure in a modulated-carrier model of speech 121
- Chapter 7. Markedness and formalising phonological representations 153
- Chapter 8. Are there brain bases for phonological markedness? 191
- Chapter 9. There is no place for markedness in biologically-informed phonology 219
- Index 233
