Modeling phonological competence

Coursework Notes 7: Dangers and deficiencies in the model

1. Historical background
The model we have developed so far is, in all its essentials, that of classical generative
phonology as exemplified most famously by Chomsky and Halle's Sound Pattern of English.
The model is remarkably simple and not surprisingly, it is found to have deficiencies and less
obviously dangers when it is applied. Today we look at two such cases.

2. Frankenstein's monster or the alchemist's stone

The process style model of phonology we have chosen allows (a) phonological rules which
modify, insert and delete segments and (b) a phonological rule system in which rules are
designated as applying in a given order with the output of rulen supplying the input to rulen+1.
Both of these characteristics were motivated straightforwardly by the Somali data. We
needed a segment modification rule to 'weaken' intervocalic stops, an insertion rule to
provide epenthetic vowels breaking up consonant clusters and a deletion rule to remove the
second of two coronal stops. We also needed to order the vowel insertion rule before the
weakening rule and the coronal stop deletion rule after the weakening rule to guarantee the
correct final output. (If the rules were to be expressed simply, the processes could not
handled by some direct mapping of underlying onto surface forms.)

So far so good. But the system we have created is extremely (overly) powerful.

3. The potential abstractness of underlying forms

In the absence of constraints, a set of ordered phonological rules of the type we propose, can
derive any surface representation from any underlying form. If we want to propose that
French 'haut' (on the surface /o/) has the underlying representation /halt/, it is an easy enough
matter to construct a set of rules which delete initial /h/, vocalise /l/ to /u/ and fuse together
/a/ and /u/ as /o/. And none of the rules is in any way phonetically or phonologically strange.
Chomsky and Halle do something similar with 'right' deriving it from /rixt/ (cf. 'rectitude').

You can easily be more extreme. In an account of Spanish, James Foley proposes that the
underlying representation of 'es' (BE 3rd sing present) is /s+e+twe/ and that of 'amó' (LOVE
3rd sing perfect) is /am+a++m+twe/.

4. Constraints on abstractness
This problem of the 'abstractness' of underlying forms has not surfaced before now, partly
because we have tacitly assumed that the underlying form of a lexical element is the same as
one of its surface alternants. In other words, we have been imposing (intuitively) some form
of constraint on the way in which related deep and surface structures may diverge. You may
think, therefore, that a simple answer to the abstractness problem is to make some such
constraint explicit. But it is worth stopping for a moment to think over the consequences.

Ron Brasington. January 2003.

The distance between underlying and surface representations could be limited in a various
ways. Here are some possibilities:

(i) The basic form is the alternant which occurs in isolation

Effectively, this means that the base form is the form occuring in morphologically simple
word forms – uninflected, underived bases. (On the grounds that such environments are the
most 'neutral'.) But how about the effects of word-final neutralisation in Catalan?

Catalan The basic form is where the contrasts show up

Masc sg Fem sg Masc pl Fem pl

pla plan plans plans
kla klar klas klars
biw bi biws bis
dliw dliw dliws dliws
sek se seks ses
sk sek sks sks
mut mu muts mus
ptit ptit ptits ptits

(ii) The basic form is always a member of the same grammatical category
This would allow us to choose feminine singular forms as basic in Catalan. But then how
about Russian which shows not only neutralisation of stop contrasts (p:b) word finally but
ALSO neutralisation of the contrast between /a/ and /o/ in unstressed syllables?

Russian Basic form (stressed) Basic form (intervocalic)

BREAD nom xlep BREAD gen xleb-a

TABLE nom stol TABLE gen stal-á

(iii) The basic form is any one of the surface alternants

This is clearly even less severe. But how about Tonkawa?
Tonkawa (Texas)
it Verb he them Verb he me Verb he
CUT picn -o we-pcen -o ke-pcen -o pres
picna -n -o we-pcena -n -o ke-pcena -n -o pres progressive
HOE notx -o we-ntox -o ke-ntox -o pres
notxo -n -o we-ntoxo -n -o ke-ntoxo -n -o pres progressive
LICK netl -o we-ntal -o ke-ntal -o pres
netle -n -o we-ntale -n -o ke-ntale -n -o pres progressive

Ron Brasington. January 2003.

The vowels which appear and disappear (systematically) are clearly different for each
lexeme. This information must therefore be included in each dictionary entry and the obvious
way to achieve this is to treat the vowels as elements of the base forms. So we have:

CUT picena; HOE notoxo; LICK netale (none of which appear on the surface)

cf Russian HEAD galavá nom sg; gólavu acc sg; galóf gen pl – hence basic form golov.

(iv) Each of the constituent SEGMENTS of the basic form appears in some alternant
We are now getting pretty relaxed. But how about Turkish?
Turkish
NOM kap kep tat at yt sat merak inek renk
GEN kab kepi tad at ydy sat merak inei reni
The alternation inek ~ ine and the absence of VgV suggests an underlying form /ineg/!
(v) Each of the constituent segments of the basic form appears contrastively in at least some
forms in the language

This is now quite weak. The aim is to exclude pseudo-phonological segments being used to
mark superficially similar forms which alternate differently from one another. COUGH
plural is /kofs/ but LEAF plural is /livz/. Why? An answer might be that COUGH has the
underlying representation /kof/ but leaf has the underlying representation /li/ But obviously
/f/ and // never contrast in any environment in English. To rectify this on the surface we
would need a process of absolute neutralization - which might well be outlawed on principle.

But even then there are at least plausible cases which we might not want to exclude. Does
French have an underlying /h/ to account for /ariko/ behaving like a consonant-initial word?
les souris les animaux les haricots les habitants
/le suri/ /lez animo/ /le ariko/ /lez abitã/
5. How well founded are patterns of alternation?
In the light of the above examples it is clearly difficult to impose restrictions tighter than the
last without invalidating many commonly accepted analyses. However, there is perhaps
another tactic we could use to ensure an appropriate distance betweeen surface and
underlying forms - access native speaker intuitions directly (experimentally). We might, for
example, reject base forms whose construction depends on the acceptance of alternations
which speakers do not recognize as such?

Are English speakers aware, for example, of a phonological relationship between 'sign' and
'significance' or 'night' and 'nocturnal' or 'moon' and 'month'? Do French speakers connect
'oeuf' and 'ovipare'? Do Spanish speakers identify the roots of 'leche' and 'lactal'? All of these
pairings might well be used to motivate underlying forms – but should they be?

Ron Brasington. January 2003.

6. Naturalness (or not)
So far we have focused on the difficulty of controlling the distance between related
underlying and surface forms. But the process by which we get from the one to the other is
also not without problems. In Coursework Notes 2 we saw that an alternation like Somali
gaan ~ gam could be seen as motivated if we assumed a base gam and processes gam#Æ
gaam#Æ gaan# (the last being a 'natural' neutralisation of place word-finally). Now the
notion of phonological process certainly allowed us to express the necessary directionality
but you are deceived if you believe that the mere ability to postulate a phonological rule like
(i) [+nas] Æ [+cor] / _______ #
establishes the naturalness of the process or even guarantees the direction of modification.

In fact, nothing in the structure of our model stops us from expressing processes which are
completely unnatural. For example, we could just as easily have used [+lab] as the change in
the rule above and come up with a rule allowing the counterfactual gaan#Æ gaam#

(ii) [+nas] Æ [+lab] / _______ #

The problem is that the while our model operates with phonetic features, it deals with them
as if they had no phonetic meaning, no real connection with physical events. They are treated
simply as abstract symbols which can be freely manipulated. Switch every feature value in a
set of phonological rules - the results might be crazy but the system would still 'work'.

7. Do we need a more natural system?

Arguably, a phonological system which is constructed (restricted) in such a way that the only
processes it can handle are natural processes, would provide a better model of human
phonological capabilities. It might as a result also suffer less from the problem of
abstractness we looked at earlier.

But before accepting that proposition without question, look at the following Somali forms
deliberately excluded from the dataset of Coursework Notes 2. Do we want to insist that all
phonological rules must be natural? What about the processes which convert underlying
holta to hooa , especially the chane lt Æ ?
Singular Sing Def Plural
downpour hool hooa holo
hole bohol bohoa boholo
month bil bia bilo
mule baal baaa balo
place meel meea meelo

Ron Brasington. January 2003.