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 ...
This volume, aimed at linguists and language students, presents an integrated approach to sound change. It examines change not simply as a series of developments within an abstracted linguistic system,...
This book is as much about phonological theory as about the phonology of English.
This volume showcases the current state of the art in phonologization research, bringing together work by leading scholars in sound change research from different disciplinary and scholarly traditions.
These eighteen original essays pay tribute to Morris Halle, Institute Professor of Linguistics and Philosophy at MIT.
This study is an investigation of three phonological changes from Latin to Spanish and Portuguese: consonant + yod inversion and palatalization, palatalization of Latin and Romance obstruent + lateral clusters,...
" This volume will be important in making readers aware of the range of research relevant to questions of linguistic sound structure.
The analysis draws on phonetically based Optimality-Theoretic models. The book presents valuable information about the medieval poetic canon and elucidates the relationship between orality and literacy in the evolution of English verse.
In this book, Juliette Blevins explores the nature of sounds patterns and sound change in human language over the past 7000–8000 years, the time depth for which the comparative method is reasonably reliable.
Among them are Neil Babitch , Ian Buruma , Frederick C. Crews , Terrence Rafferty , Ira Robbins , Tim Smith , Jeff Starrs and Hans Vandenburg . And if anyone wants to know what my life was like after leaving the wonderful Department of ...