Re: THEORY: no more URs! [was: Re: Optimum number of symbols]

Quoting Raymond Brown <ray.brown@...>:

> At 2:43 am -0400 24/5/02, Roger Mills wrote:
> >Tom Wier wrote:
> [snip]
> >>(TW)I see that I have confused, rather than enlightened, my intended
> >>audience.  My point in using phonological notation rather than
> >>phonetic was to reinforce the point that /d/ and /t/ constitute
> >>a salient distinction in German phonology generally, outside this
> >>word, and that when this distinction is neutralized, it is
> >>neutralized  to one of these two phonemes, but not both.
>
> Is it? Is it not just as logical to regard [t] as the syllable final
> allophone of /d/?  And if neutralized, why pick /t/ rather than /d/, except
> for phonetic rather than phonemic reasons?
But that's precisely the point.  When learners are assessing data
from the environment around them, they tend to associate the phonetic
form with the phoneme that is most featurally like it.  In terms of
the OT framework, this is called "Lexicon Optimization":

  "Suppose that several different inputs I1, I2, ... In when parsed
  by a grammar G lead to corresponding outputs O1, O2, ... On, all of
  which are realized as the same phonetic form [Phi] -- these inputs
  are phonetically equivalent with respect to G. Now one of these forms
  outputs must be the most harmonic, by virtue of incurring the least
  significant violation marks: suppose this one is labelled Ok. Then
  the learner should choose, as the underlying form for [Phi] the
  Input Ik."  (René Kager, "Optimality Theory", p. 32)

> What I meant was just common sense to spell _Rad_ as _Rad_.
I agree, since, as I said, I do believe the underlying forms are
in fact /Rad/ and /Rat/, despite my earlier confusing way of trying
to get Mike to look at it another way.

> It is a darn
> sight easier to have a rule which says that final {d}, {b}, {g} are
> pronounced the same as final {t}, {p} and {k} than it would be having to
> learn which words ending in {d} kept the {d} when you add endings and which
> changed the {d} to {t}.
But in German, final orthographic <g>s are not predictably pronouned
as [k]:  the suffix -ig is usually pronounced as [IC], as [+continuous].

> It seems to me we don't need any theories about phonemic spelling,
> morphemic spelling or morphophonemic spelling, about surface forms and
> 'underlying forms', to explain this particular aspect of German spelling.
> One just needs, to quote Umberto Eco, "to bring an oft neglected character
> back to the stage, namely, common sense."
I've always found the notion of "common sense" imminently dubious --
different people are notorious for having differing intuitions about
what is simple.   :)

> [KANT AND THE PLATYPUS, p.5]
A book I have on my bookshelf, but which I have alas not had enough
time to read of late.

=====================================================================
Thomas Wier          "...koruphàs hetéras hetére:isi prosápto:n /
Dept. of Linguistics  mú:tho:n mè: teléein atrapòn mían..."
University of Chicago "To join together diverse peaks of thought /
1010 E. 59th Street   and not complete one road that has no turn"
Chicago, IL 60637     Empedocles, _On Nature_, on speculative thinkers

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