tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5659270781112607019.post7137597993511954030..comments2018-03-03T03:30:24.451-08:00Comments on Mathematical Linguistics etc.: Chapter 3 of Kornai's bookSean Fulophttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06610398963994746965noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5659270781112607019.post-19460062032081701842010-09-08T02:58:22.378-07:002010-09-08T02:58:22.378-07:00To correct myself, it wasn't Trager, it was Tw...To correct myself, it wasn't Trager, it was Twaddell who, in a 1935 Language Monograph, famously suggested the phoneme should be a convenient fiction.Sean Fulophttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06610398963994746965noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5659270781112607019.post-1879597099055264482010-03-23T02:02:34.960-07:002010-03-23T02:02:34.960-07:00Hi Andras,
you certainly hit the nail on the head...Hi Andras,<br /><br />you certainly hit the nail on the head when you said "in general our goal would seem to be minimizing reliance on it." I am all for universal grammar, indeed my own work speaks to the necessity of many innate things for language learning, but I believe that the mainstream line of thought is rather to *maximize* reliance on innateness as a first methodological principle. Isn't this the essence of Principles and Parameters? It sort of trivializes the learning problem to one of finite combinatorics. This approach seems to be favored because of people being overawed by the so-called "poverty of the stimulus." I'm sympathetic to Pullum and Scholz (2002, The Linguistic Review), and quite sceptical of the stimulus poverty arguments.Sean Fulophttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06610398963994746965noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5659270781112607019.post-85635534231535884812010-03-18T01:06:38.577-07:002010-03-18T01:06:38.577-07:00As far as autosegmental theory based purely on fea...As far as autosegmental theory based purely on features, yes, for all intents and purposes this is what we have today. In such a theory the phoneme is no longer a primitive notion -- it is _derived_ as the total featural content associated to a timing unit (root node, CV unit, take your favorite theory of temporal organization). If some unit associates both to a stop and a fricative this is not a problem for the theory. The issue of learnability is greatly complicated by the fact that there seems to be a huge amount of innateness in the system. As is well known (which is a polite way of saying I don't have the time to dig out the reference) language learners start out with devoicing word-final stops even in languages that _have no_ voiceless stops! Whatever else our `language organ' does (and in general our goal would seem to be minimizing reliance on it) it's absolutely jam-packed with phonetic/phonological information that is hugely successful in accelerating phonetic/phonological development.Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01890025759071802840noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5659270781112607019.post-13693481722016711292010-03-16T01:15:12.773-07:002010-03-16T01:15:12.773-07:00Ah well,
I got the classic Schane paper from Lang...Ah well,<br /><br />I got the classic Schane paper from Language, and it says right on the first page that he is only concerned with neutralization, and will have no solution for "the problems considered by Chao" for phonemicization. Schane takes a phonemic inventory as given to start with.<br /><br />This really steps over the main problem I'm concerned about with phonemes---namely the unlearnability of a phonemic inventory from data, because the problem is underdetermined.Sean Fulophttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06610398963994746965noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5659270781112607019.post-13875086930348098182010-03-15T02:06:49.803-07:002010-03-15T02:06:49.803-07:00OK now,
though I must defer somewhat to your broa...OK now,<br /><br />though I must defer somewhat to your broader phonology knowledge (I still have a copy of your dissertation after all), I will try to go and read some of the references you cite. I have read the Port/Leary paper you mention, and yes, Bob Port is still crusading against "formal phonology." But just offhand for the moment, it does seem funny to use autosegmental phonology to rescue the phoneme as a useful concept. Doesn't it? Can't autosegmental phonology stand on its own with just features and no phonemes? I mean, you would have to replace phonemes with some other basic organization unit, such as syllables, but otherwise it seems to me a functionally equivalent scheme of autosegmental phonology could be devised that would never use phonemes. So given this, I don't see what phonemes are really for besides a (rather peculiar) methodological choice.Sean Fulophttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06610398963994746965noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5659270781112607019.post-69177094406950300032010-03-12T15:17:10.067-08:002010-03-12T15:17:10.067-08:00Hi Sean, sorry for the belated reply, it took me l...Hi Sean, sorry for the belated reply, it took me longer than I thought to recover the Joos reader where the Chao paper is reprinted. I read this as a student, and always thought that the problem of absolute neutralization was an issue only for a certain kind of surface phonemics, and not for generative phonology where underlying representations are available. Rereading the paper didn't change my mind, I still see no reason for the phonemic baby to be thrown out with the allophonic bathwater. The matter is covered quite cogently by Sandy Schane in his "On the Non-Uniqueness of Phonological Representations" Language, Vol. 44, No. 4 (Dec., 1968), pp. 709-716<br />As for the monophonemic vs biphonemic analysis of affricates this is another problem that disappears once autosegmental representations are available, if my memory serves Clements-Keyser cover the gamut of pertinent cases in their "CV phonology" book. There was a paper a few years back in Lg by Port and Leary rehashing the same old arguments, as far as I could see they didn't even come close to casting serious doubt on the phoneme.Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01890025759071802840noreply@blogger.com