This class first introduces Substance-free Phonology (SFP, Hale & Reiss 2000 and following), which is just what its name says it is: no phonetics in phonology. That is, phonology operates without any reference to phonetics, and without knowing that the units manipulated will at some point be pronounced and have a phonetic existence (just syntax has no clue that the objects manipulated will eventually have a phonological or phonetic guise). It is shown how phonology works in absence of phonetic information, what kind of consequences that has and which predictions are made. Matters discussed include:
- primes: arbitrarily chosen and interchangeable, i.e. α, β, γ (instead of [labial] etc.)
- the labour they do: express contrast and allow for phonological computation
- spell-out: phonetic correlates of phonological items come into being only post-phonologically when the speaker accesses a list of correspondences, converting phonological primes into phonetic items (e.g. α ↔ labiality). This is exactly parallel to the spell-out between syntax and phonology.
- computation: how it works
- consequence: no naturalness (due to phonology): phonology is happy with natural, unnatural and crazy patterns alike since it has no clue that anything is natural, unnatural or crazy.
- two schools in SFP: primes and their association with phonetic correlates are universal and innate (Concordia, e.g. Hale et al. 2007: 647f, Volenec & Reiss 2018) vs. emergent (non-Concordia, e.g. Boersma 1998: 461ff, Mielke 2008, Dresher 2014, Iosad 2017, Odden 2022, Scheer 2022)
- on the emergentist take, the association of primes and phonetic correlates is arbitrary
The goal of the class is to show that SFP, and particularly its central instrument spell-out, makes good on Saussure’s (1916) promise that there is no phonetics (Parole) in phonology (Langue). Since day one, though, structuralist and generative practice grants phonetic properties to phonological items: most structuralists, including Trubetzkoy, Jakobson and Martinet, accepted that phonemes have phonetic content, even though they were acutely aware of the fact that this is sin (Jakobson’s 1949 word) against the first commandment of structuralism. Jakobson says that a phonetic identification of phonemes is necessary, since “[o]therwise even a rudimentary listing of the phonemes of a given language becomes a scientifically insoluble problem”: without phonetic identification of phonemes, it would be impossible to know which one is which.
But there were also righteous structuralists who made good on Saussure’s promise: Baudoin de Courtenay and Hjelmslev.
The phonetic content of phonological items was handed down from structuralist to generative times in perfect continuity, Roman Jakobson being the connecting link with his student Morris Halle. Thus generative phonology has lived in sin since day one, or rather, it has embraced what was sin in the older conviction: the commandments of Saussure having no governance anymore, Morris Halle and further generativists could sin without being sinners.
Structuralists, and in their wake generativists, were forced to live in sin because they had not thought of the instrument that enables phonology to be substance-free: spell-out.
The class is based on a forthcoming paper: Scheer (to appear).
Readings
Boersma, Paul 1998. Functional Phonology. Formalizing the interactions between articulatory and perceptual drives. The Hague: Holland Academic Graphics.
Dresher, Elan 2014. The arch not the stones: Universal feature theory without universal features. Nordlyd 41: 165-181.
Hale, Mark, Madelyn Kissock & Charles Reiss 2007. Microvariation, variation and the features of Universal Grammar. Lingua 117: 645-665.
Hale, Mark & Charles Reiss 2000. Substance Abuse and Dysfunctionalism: Current Trends in Phonology. Linguistic Inquiry 31: 157-169.
Iosad, Pavel 2017. A Substance-free Framework for Phonology. An Analysis of the Breton Dialect of Bothoa. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Jakobson, Roman 1949. On the identification of phonemic entities. Travaux du Cercle Linguistique de Copenhague 5: 205-213.
Mielke, Jeff 2008. The Emergence of Distinctive Features. Oxford: OUP.
Odden, David 2022. Radical Substance Free Phonology and Feature Learning. Canadian Journal of Linguistics 67: 500-551.
Saussure, Ferdinand de 1972 [1916]. Cours de linguistique générale. Paris: Payot.
Scheer, Tobias 2022. 3xPhonology. Canadian Journal of Linguistics 67: 444-499.
Scheer, Tobias to appear. Phonetics in phonology: why Jakobson, Trubetzkoy, Martinet and others had to live in sin. Glossa, Special issue on Substance-Free Phonology: Principles, Reasearch Directions, & Current Issues, edited by Bridget Samuels & Veno Volenec.
Volenec, Veno & Charles Reiss 2018. Cognitive Phonetics: The Transduction of Distinctive Features at the Phonology–Phonetics Interface. Biolinguistics 11: 251-294.