Laryngeal behavior, the speech signal and phonological simplicity.
| Number | 107 |
|---|---|
| Year | 1970 |
| Drawer | 2 |
| Entry Date | 04/08/1998 |
| Authors | Abramson, A. S., & Lisker, L. |
| Contact | |
| Publication | Actes du Xe Congres International des Linguistes, 4, 123-129. |
| url | http://www.haskins.yale.edu/Reprints/HL0107.pdf |
| Abstract | [Introduction] Notions of adequacy and simplicity are invoked as criteria for preferring one among a set of proposed grammars, all of which meet certain formal requirements. “Simplicity” seems to mean much the same thing as “economy”, for which some kind of counting operation provides the measure. Thus one phonology is simpler than another if it posits a smaller inventory of elementary units, if such units can be grouped into a smaller number of classes of subphonemic variants, and if it requires a smaller variety of units to specify different realizations of the morphemes. The simplicity criteria may also include one requiring minimum departure from certain general postulates concerning the phonological properties of language, among them one which asserts the existence of a small set of distinctive features adequate for all languages. Except for this last requirement it seems that the data for which a phonology has to account consist exclusively of statements embodying the linguist’s phonetic impressions. It is reasonable to ask whether such a phonology is not too limited in scope. Certainly the developments in experimental phonetics over the last twenty years have provided us with data that must not be dismissed as irrelevant to linguistic description. To the extent that phonology as currently practiced fails to account for the physiological, acoustical and perceptual aspects of speech communication, it may be said that its simplicity has been bought at the cost of both descriptive and explanatory adequacy. |
| Notes |
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