Developmental Origins of Adult Phonology: The Interplay between Phonetic Emergents and the Evolutionary Adaptations of Sound Patterns
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Björn Lindblom
Abstract
In this paper fragments of a theory of emergent phonology are presented. Phonological patterns are seen as products of cultural evolution adapted to universal biological constraints on listening, speaking and learning. It is proposed that children develop adult phonology thanks to the interaction of the emergent patterning of phonetic content and the adaptive organization of sound structure. Emergence – here used in the technical sense of qualitatively new development – is illustrated with examples from the study of perception, motor mechanisms and memory encoding. In this framework, there is no split between ‘behavioral phonetics’ and ‘abstract phonology’. Phonology differs qualitatively from phonetics in that it represents a new, more complex and higher level of organization of speech behavior. Accordingly, the phonology that the child ends up with as an adult is neither abstract nor independent of use. It represents an emergent patterning of phonetic content.
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© 2000 S. Karger AG, Basel
Articles in the same Issue
- Special Section
- Title Page
- Foreword
- Acoustic Patterning of Speech Its Linguistic and Physiological Bases
- Investigating Unscripted Speech: Implications for Phonetics and Phonology
- Emotive Transforms
- The Source-Filter Frame of Prominence
- The C/D Model and Prosodic Control of Articulatory Behavior
- Diverse Acoustic Cues at Consonantal Landmarks
- Perceptual Processing
- Modeling and Perception of ‘Gesture Reduction’
- General Auditory Processes Contribute to Perceptual Accommodation of Coarticulation
- Adaptive Dispersion in Vowel Perception
- Language Acquisition as Complex Category Formation
- Biology of Communication and Motor Processes
- Singing Birds, Playing Cats, and Babbling Babies: Why Do They Do It?
- The Phonetic Potential of Nonhuman Vocal Tracts: Comparative Cineradiographic Observations of Vocalizing Animals
- Dynamic Simulation of Human Movement Using Large-Scale Models of the Body
- En Route to Adult Spoken Language / Language Development
- An Embodiment Perspective on the Acquisition of Speech Perception
- Speech to Infants as Hyperspeech: Knowledge-Driven Processes in Early Word Recognition
- The Construction of a First Phonology
- Auditory Constraints on Sound Structures
- Searching for an Auditory Description of Vowel Categories
- Commentary
- Imitation and the Emergence of Segments
- Deriving Speech from Nonspeech: A View from Ontogeny
- Paper
- Developmental Origins of Adult Phonology: The Interplay between Phonetic Emergents and the Evolutionary Adaptations of Sound Patterns
- Further Section
- Publications Björn Lindblom
- Index autorum Vol. 57, 2000
- Contents Vol. 57, 2000
Articles in the same Issue
- Special Section
- Title Page
- Foreword
- Acoustic Patterning of Speech Its Linguistic and Physiological Bases
- Investigating Unscripted Speech: Implications for Phonetics and Phonology
- Emotive Transforms
- The Source-Filter Frame of Prominence
- The C/D Model and Prosodic Control of Articulatory Behavior
- Diverse Acoustic Cues at Consonantal Landmarks
- Perceptual Processing
- Modeling and Perception of ‘Gesture Reduction’
- General Auditory Processes Contribute to Perceptual Accommodation of Coarticulation
- Adaptive Dispersion in Vowel Perception
- Language Acquisition as Complex Category Formation
- Biology of Communication and Motor Processes
- Singing Birds, Playing Cats, and Babbling Babies: Why Do They Do It?
- The Phonetic Potential of Nonhuman Vocal Tracts: Comparative Cineradiographic Observations of Vocalizing Animals
- Dynamic Simulation of Human Movement Using Large-Scale Models of the Body
- En Route to Adult Spoken Language / Language Development
- An Embodiment Perspective on the Acquisition of Speech Perception
- Speech to Infants as Hyperspeech: Knowledge-Driven Processes in Early Word Recognition
- The Construction of a First Phonology
- Auditory Constraints on Sound Structures
- Searching for an Auditory Description of Vowel Categories
- Commentary
- Imitation and the Emergence of Segments
- Deriving Speech from Nonspeech: A View from Ontogeny
- Paper
- Developmental Origins of Adult Phonology: The Interplay between Phonetic Emergents and the Evolutionary Adaptations of Sound Patterns
- Further Section
- Publications Björn Lindblom
- Index autorum Vol. 57, 2000
- Contents Vol. 57, 2000