Re: THEORY: phonemes and Optimality Theory tutorial

dirk elzinga sikayal:

> On Thu, 9 Nov 2000, jesse stephen bangs wrote:
>
> > dirk elzinga sikayal:
> >
> > > [snip]
> >
> > How is this different from the normal feature-marking theory.  We would
> > just say that the features [+labial, -nasal] are enough to distinguish
> > /p/, with the rest of the features like [-voice] specified by
> > language-specific rules for filling out a pronounciation.
>
> It isn't different from the "normal" feature-marking theory. The
> underspecification debate once upon a time was about how fully
> specified underlying phonemes really are. Are all features and their
> values (even redundant ones) present underlyingly, or just
> unpredictable ones? If not all features or their values are present
> underlyingly, then how are they filled in? Are only the redundancies
> which have to do with noncontrativeness omitted (contrastive
> underspecification; see Steriade 1995), or are *all* redundant
> features and values omitted, even ones that are active phonologically
> (i.e., can be potentially contrastive: see Archangeli 1988)? The idea
> isn't as simple as it seems, and it may rest on a faulty understanding
> on how humans actually encode information. In many biological systems
> there are numerous redundancies built in; why should language be
> different?
I agree.  Intuitively, it seems that the "underlying" form should be fully
specified as something and not just a loose, unpronounceable set of
possibilities.  But this makes the problem of underspecification merely
one of uncertainty--we can't know *which* is the underlying form based on
surface forms, but this doesn't affect the constancy of the form
itself.  I don't see why such uncertainty should be raised to the level of
law, instead of simply taken as an unfortunate side effect.

>
> Not at all. Native speakers will definitely have intuitions about
> this. I *think* my consultants considered the underlying sound to be
> /b/. I say this because I asked them to write out a couple of words
> for me, and they consistently used <b> rather than <p>, even
> initially where the phone is voiceless. I'm hedging because I suspect
> some English orthographic interference. Initial voiceless stops are
> unaspirated and therefore resemble English "voiced" stops more than
> they do English voiceless stops. I haven't trained them to transcribe
> their own speech using a consistent system.
>
> When I say that either [p] or [b] could be selected as the phoneme,
> what I mean is that the choice of [p] or [b] isn't forced by the
> theory; the theory can allow either. It's up to you whether you
> consider this to be a failure or fortunate result. One the one hand,
> it offers a potential explanation for sound change: some speakers
> "phonemicize" [p], others [b]. Whichever group gains linguistic
> dominance gets to "determine" the next generation's grammar. Under a
> strict phonemicist position, this explanation for sound change is not
> available, since one or the other *must* must be chosen.
But not consistently.  Well, maybe I'm not a strict phonemicist, but it
seems reasonable that when surface forms are ambiguous, different speakers
can choose different underlying forms, just like linguists do.  And this
*does* explain some sound changes, so I'll put this gap in the theory in
the category of "fortunate result."  You could experimentally verify this
by noting whether [p] or [b] tends to occur in slips of the tongue and
which one appears in innovations or child speech, etc.

>
> > I don't see the advantages over
> > the traditional generative view here.  How does Optimality Theory deal
> > with the famous writer/rider problem?
>
> I have never seen the 'writer/rider' contrast verified instrumentally,
> and I doubt that it exists now (if it ever did). But the potential
> problem that it raises for OT is a real one; it is the problem of the
> intermediate representation. There are several ways of dealing with
> it, none of them very satisfying.
The distinction between 'writer/rider' is quite alive in my dialect, and
there's quite a clear difference between [RVidR=] and [RaidR=].  Most
native speakers here will flawlessly distinguish the two and furthermore,
if asked "Which sound is different," will say "The 't'."  This could be
orthographic interference, but the phonetics are clear to my ear.  BTW, I
discovered this example on my own long before I discovered it in a ling
text, soon after I had learned the idea of a phoneme and started analyzing
my own speech :-).

> Dirk
>
> --
> Dirk Elzinga
> dirk.elzinga@m.cc.utah.edu
>
Jesse S. Bangs jaspax@u.washington.edu
"It is of the new things that men tire--of fashions and proposals and
improvements and change.  It is the old things that startle and
intoxicate.  It is the old things that are young."
-G.K. Chesterton _The Napoleon of Notting Hill_