Table Of ContentShaping Phonology
Shaping Phonology
EDITED BY DIANE BRENTARI AND
JACKSON L. LEE
The University of Chicago Press Chicago and London
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
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ISBN-13: 978-0-226-56245-2 (cloth)
ISBN-13: 978-0-226-56259-9 (e- book)
DOI: https:// doi . org / 10 . 7208 / chicago / 9780226562599 . 001 . 0001
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Brentari, Diane, editor. | Lee, Jackson L., editor.
Title: Shaping phonology / edited by Diane Brentari and Jackson L. Lee.
Description: Chicago ; London : The University of Chicago Press, 2018. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017051657 | ISBN 9780226562452 (cloth : alk. paper) |
ISBN 9780226562599 (e-book)
Subjects: LCSH: Grammar, Comparative and general—Phonology. |
Autosegmental theory (Linguistics) | Computational linguistics—
Methodology. | Computational learning theory.
Classification: LCC P217.3.S53 2018 | DDC 414—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017051657
This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992
(Permanence of Paper).
Contents
Preface v ii
PART ONE Autosegmental Phonology
A. History
1 The Secret History of Prosodic and Autosegmental Phonology 3
John Coleman
2 A Brief History of Autosegmental Phonology with Special
Reference to Its Found er 26
William R. Leben
B. Applications to Tone
3 The Autosegmental Approach to Tone in Lusoga 47
Larry M. Hyman
4 Tonal Melodies in the Logoori Verb 70
David Odden
C. Extensions of the Theory
5 Autosegments Are Not Just Features 97
D. Robert Ladd
6 The Importance of Autosegmental Repre sen ta tions for Sign
Language Phonology 119
Diane Brentari
7 Abstract Under lying Repre sen ta tions in Prosodic Structure 146
Bert Vaux and Bridget D. Samuels
8 Sonority Waves in Syllabification 182
Caroline Wiltshire
9 Toward Pro gress in Theories of Language Sound Structure 201
Mark Liberman
PART TWO Computation and Unsupervised Learning
10 On the Discovery Procedure 2 23
Jackson L. Lee
11 Model Se lection and Phonological Argumentation 234
James Kirby and Morgan Sonderegger
12 The Dynamics of Prominence Profiles: From Local Computation
to Global Patterns 253
Khalil Iskarous and Louis Goldstein
13 French Liaison in the Light of Corpus Phonology: From Lexical
Information to Patterns of Usage Variation 278
Bernard Laks, Basilio Calderone, and Chiara Celata
14 A Phonological Approach to the Unsupervised Learning of Root-
and- Pattern Morphology 309
Aris Xanthos
Contributors 3 29
Index 3 33
Preface
Within the last forty years, the field of phonology has
under gone several impor tant theoretical shifts with regard
to phonological repres en ta tion that have now become part
of standard practice in the field. The two shifts that will
be taken up in this volume have some properties in com-
mon: (1) both have had the effect of taking phonological
analy sis “off the page,” which made it necessary to think
of phonology in multidimensional space; and (2) John
Goldsmith has been a major force in bringing about these
changes. Part 1 of this volume has to do with a radical elab-
oration of the abstract domains (or units of analys is) that
come under the purview of phonology, along with a more
multidimensional approach to considering their role in
the system. Autosegmental phonology (Goldsmith 1976)
and feature geometry (Clements 1985; Sagey 1986) dem-
onstrated this multidimensionality of phonological repre-
sen ta tion. The second radical shift, which occurred in the
mid-1990s, has to do with machine learning and the com-
putational techniques that phonologists had begun using
to analyze large amounts of data. The empiricist view to lin-
guistics (Goldsmith 2015) makes us rethink what doing
linguistics really means. With the ability to employ com-
putational tools that allow for the analys is of larger and
larger data sets, the field has shifted from being satisfied to
look for key examples that demonstrate a part ic ul ar gen-
eralization to striving for statistical generalizations across
large corpora of relevant data.
This volume includes fourteen chapters that follow
these two shifts from the perspective of one protagonist
vii
PREfACE
responsible for making them a part of our fundamental phonologist’s
tool kit. That protagonist is John Goldsmith.
John Goldsmith is a h ouse hold name in linguistic circles, particu-
larly in phonology, but not exclusively so. Most associate him with the
creation of autosegmental phonology in 1976. But autosegmental pho-
nology was like a pebble thrown into a pond—it created waves of in-
novation in the field that lasted for dec ades. The paradigm shift that
occurred as a result of autosegmental phonology meant that phono-
logical repre sen ta tions were no longer considered bundles of features
that could be org a nized on a two-d imensional surface, but instead t hose
repre sen ta tions were units similar to molecules in which submolecular
units were in n- dimensional space. In essence, Goldsmith and the col-
leagues he worked with at the time, many of whom are represented in
this volume, freed us from the notion that phonological analy sis pro-
vided generalizations over types of notations on cards and in notebooks
and allowed us to see more clearly that our results pertained to mental
repre sen ta tions that could have n- dimensions in a way that was similar
to that which occurs in other branches of natur al science. The study
of these vari ous new dimensions of phonological representation— the
autosegment, the syllable, and other prosodic units—h as been at the
top of the agenda of the field for several de cades. The contributions in
part 1 address domains both smaller and larger than the segment. Until
the late 1970s, the segment and the distinctive feature w ere still consid-
ered the primary units of phonological analy sis.
In addition to new repres en ta tional units, the field began to open up
to new tools of analys is in the early 1990s, and Goldsmith was a pro-
tagonist in this charge as well. In his pre sen ta tions, seminars, and edito-
rial proj ects, he was adamant in encouraging students and colleagues
not to rely on examples from previous works, which were often cited
but seldom verified, but rather to seek out fresh sources of data to con-
firm the generalizations that are often taken for granted. This started
with Goldsmith’s work on the topics of the syllable and sonority (e.g.,
Goldsmith and Larson 1990), but quickly expanded to include new ar-
eas of linguistic inquiry in phonology and morphology. The availability
of large corpora made it increasingly pos si ble to state generalizations as
statistical probabilities rather than as absolutes based on a small set of
elicited examples. Parallel to the use of large data sets is the evolving un-
derstanding of what the goal of linguistic theory is in light of machine
learning, visualization, and other computational tools that have been
brought into the picture. The contributions in part 2 address profound
insights to be gained by looking at the patterns in large sets of data.
viii
PREfACE
These insights challenge what we know about certain well-s tudied phe-
nomena, such as French liaison, and show us that sometimes the facts
about them that we think are very clear are actually more complex and
nuanced than we had previously thought.
This volume is org a nized around t hese two developments in the
field of phonological theory. Chapters 1 and 2, by John Coleman and
William Leben, respectively, are concerned with the historical roots of
autosegmental phonology. They examine the links that autosegmen-
tal phonology has to the history of the field more generally, including
a few nuggets of historiographical interest, and outline the role of
tone, accent, and syllable structure, which are elem ents of the prosodic
system that were major interests of autosegmental phonology from the
very start. Chapters 3 and 4, by Larry Hyman and David Odden, are spe-
cific case studies of two Bantu languages—L usoga and Logoori— within
autosegmental phonology. These contributions showcase the theory’s
methodological strength in capturing complex interactions between
the morphological structure on the one hand and tones, syllables, and
words as phonological units on the other hand.
Chapters 5 through 9 are analyses that are extensions of autoseg-
mental phonology, addressing its specific implications on theories of
phonological repre sen ta tion. Robert Ladd (chapter 5) discusses issues
about the autosegment itself and how the field has obscured some of its
most impor tant implications in recent years. Diane Brentari (chapter 6)
outlines the impact of autosegmental tiers on sign language phonology.
Bert Vaux and Bridget Samuels (chapter 7) address how autosegmental
phonology fits into our understanding of underl ying repre sen ta tions,
abstractness, and opacity within the prosodic system, and Caroline
Wiltshire (chapter 8) discusses the usefulness of a dual role for sonority
in syllabification, with examples ranging across alternations in native
language use, loanword adaptations, and second language acquisi-
tion. Mark Liberman (chapter 9) concludes part 1 as a kind of bridge
between the two parts of the book, carefully examining the difference
between symbolic (phonological) and signal (phonetic) accounts of two
widely discussed examples of allophony, and arguing that signal-b ased
accounts (purely phonetic ones) should be taken more seriously as a
null hypothesis when considering the efficacy of the range of symbolic
(phonological) accounts. Such phonetic-b ased analyses have only been
feasible recently with the sorts of corpus work and computational tools
that are used in part 2.
Chapters 10 through 14 all employ large sets of data in answer-
ing questions about phonology and morphology, and they utilize the
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