Against formal phonology

Against formal phonology (2005)

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by Robert F. Port , Adam P. Leary

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Datum	Value	Source
TITLE	Against formal phonology	INFERENCE
AUTHOR NAME	Robert F. Port	SVM HeaderParse 0.2
AUTHOR AFFIL	Indiana University Indiana University	SVM HeaderParse 0.2
AUTHOR NAME	Adam P. Leary	SVM HeaderParse 0.2
AUTHOR AFFIL	Indiana University Indiana University	SVM HeaderParse 0.2
ABSTRACT	Chomsky and Halle (1968) and many formal linguists rely on the notion of a universally available phonetic space defined in discrete time. This assumption plays a central role in phonological theory. Discreteness at the phonetic level guarantees the discreteness of all other levels of language. But decades of phonetics research demonstrate that there exists no universal inventory of phonetic objects. We discuss three kinds of evidence: first, phonologies differ incommensurably. Second, some phonetic characteristics of languages depend on intrinsically temporal patterns, and, third, some linguistic sound categories within a language are different from each other despite a high degree of overlap that precludes distinctness. Linguistics has mistakenly presumed that speech can always be spelled with letter-like tokens. A variety of implications of these conclusions for research in phonology are discussed.* The generative paradigm of language description (Chomsky 1964, 1965, Chomsky & Halle 1968) has dominated linguistic thinking in the United States for many years. Its specific claims about the phonetic basis of linguistic analysis still provide the cornerstone of most linguistic research. Many criticisms have been raised against the phonetic claims of the Sound pattern of English (Chomsky & Halle 1968), some from early on	SVM HeaderParse 0.2
YEAR	2005	INFERENCE
VENUE	Language	INFERENCE
VENUE TYPE	JOURNAL	INFERENCE
PAGES	927--964	INFERENCE
VOLUME	81	INFERENCE
CITATIONS	126 found	ParsCit 1.0