Sound Structure In Language

This book presents Jørgen Rischel's most important work on linguistic sound structure, its relation to other aspects of language, and its variation across the world's languages. This includes some of the most original and groundbreaking research of the last four decades.

These eighteen original essays pay tribute to Morris Halle, Institute Professor of Linguistics and Philosophy at MIT. Halle's impact on the study of language has been enormous; he and his students represent a continuous and coherent tradition which is unique in modern linguistics. Although they range from poetry to phonetics, the contributions share the common method of formal phonological analysis which reflects Halle's own work. With the exception of Roman Jakobson, his teacher, all of the contributors are Morris Halle's PhD students.Contributors include Roman Jakobson, Samuel J. Keyser, Paul Kiparsky, Sanford A. Schane, Arnold M. Zwicky, James W. Harris, Stephen R. Anderson, Elisabeth Selkirk, William R. Leben, Shosuke Haraguchi, Mark Liberman, Janet Pierrehumbert, Alan S. Prince, John Goldsmith, Jill Carrier Duncan, Joan Mascaro, John J. McCarthy, Bruce Hayes, Rochelle Lieber, and Moira Yip.

Research in linguistics, as in most other scientific domains, is usually approached in a modular way – narrowing the domain of inquiry in order to allow for increased depth of study. This is necessary and productive for a topic as wide-ranging and complex as human language. However, precisely because language is a complex system, tied to perception, learning, memory, and social organization, the assumption of modularity can also be an obstacle to understanding language at a deeper level. This book examines the consequences of enforcing non-modularity along two dimensions: the temporal, and the cognitive. Along the temporal dimension, synchronic and diachronic domains are linked by the requirement that sound changes must lead to viable, stable language states. Along the cognitive dimension, sound change and variation are linked to speech perception and production by requiring non-trivial transformations between acoustic and articulatory representations. The methodological focus of this work is on computational modeling. By formalising and implementing theoretical accounts, modeling can expose theoretical gaps and covert assumptions. To do so, it is necessary to formally assess the functional equivalence of specific implementational choices, as well as their mapping to theoretical structures. This book applies this analytic approach to a series of implemented models of sound change. As theoretical inconsistencies are discovered, possible solutions are proposed, incrementally constructing a set of sufficient properties for a working model. Because internal theoretical consistency is enforced, this model corresponds to an explanatorily adequate theory. And because explicit links between modules are required, this is a theory, not only of sound change, but of many aspects of phonological competence. The book highlights two aspects of modeling work that receive relatively little attention: the formal mapping from model to theory, and the scalability of demonstration models. Focusing on these aspects of modeling makes it clear that any theory of sound change in the specific is impossible without a more general theory of language: of the relationship between perception and production, the relationship between phonetics and phonology, the learning of linguistic units, and the nature of underlying representations. Theories of sound change that do not explicitly address these aspects of language are making tacit, untested assumptions about their properties. Addressing so many aspects of language may seem to complicate the linguist's task. However, as this book shows, it actually helps impose boundary conditions of ecological validity that reduce the theoretical search space.

This innovative work highlights interdisciplinary research on phonetics and phonology across multiple languages, building on the extensive body of work of Katarzyna Dziubalska-Kołaczyk on the study of sound structure and speech. // The book features concise contributions from both established and up-and-coming scholars who have worked with Katarzyna Dziubalska-Kołaczyk across a range of disciplinary fields toward broadening the scope of how sound structure and speech are studied and how phonological and phonetic research is conducted. Contributions bridge the gap between such fields as phonological theory, acoustic and articulatory phonetics, and morphology, but also includes perspectives from such areas as historical linguistics, which demonstrate the relevance of other linguistic areas of inquiry to empirical investigations in sound structure and speech. The volume also showcases the rich variety of methodologies employed in existing research, including corpus-based, diachronic, experimental, acoustic and online approaches and showcases them at work, drawing from data from languages beyond the Anglocentric focus in existing research. // The collection reflects on Katarzyna Dziubalska-Kołaczyk’s pioneering contributions to widening the study of sound structure and speech and reinforces the value of interdisciplinary perspectives in taking the field further, making this key reading for students and scholars in phonetics, phonology, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, and speech and language processing.

Phonological Structure and Phonetic Form brings together work from phonology, phonetics, speech science, electrical engineering, psycho- and sociolinguistics. The chapters are organized in four topical sections. The first is concerned with stress and intonation; the second with syllable structure and phonological theory; the third with phonological features; and the fourth with "phonetic output." This volume will be important in making readers aware of the range of research relevant to questions of linguistic sound structure.

A comprehensive, detailed, and well-illustrated undergraduate French language/linguistics textbook with CD-ROM. The book focuses on pronunciation of Modern Standard French, and incorporates regional and social variations, abbreviatory processes and 'word play'. It looks at historical phonological changes which continue through today. Perfect for readers and learners with little or no formal training in linguistics. The CD-ROM provides invaluable oral examples crucial to linguistic study.

Designed as a university level text for intermediate and advanced courses, this volume will be of value to anyone interested in recent theoretical developments in the field of formal English.