LINGUIST List 21.2565
Fri Jun 11 2010
Diss: Phonetics/Phonology: Kaplan: 'Phonology Shaped by Phonetics: ...'
Editor for this issue: Mfon Udoinyang
<mfonlinguistlist.org>
1. Abby
Kaplan,
Phonology Shaped by Phonetics: The case of intervocalic lenition
Message 1: Phonology Shaped by Phonetics: The case of intervocalic lenition
Date: 09-Jun-2010
From: Abby Kaplan <kaplanasgmail.com>
Subject: Phonology Shaped by Phonetics: The case of intervocalic lenition
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Institution: University of California, Santa Cruz
Program: Department of Linguistics
Dissertation Status: Completed
Degree Date: 2010
Author: Abby Kaplan
Dissertation Title: Phonology Shaped by Phonetics: The case of intervocalic lenition
Dissertation URL: http://people.ucsc.edu/~kaplanas/CV/dissertation.pdf
Linguistic Field(s):
Phonetics
Phonology
Dissertation Director:
Armin Mester
Jaye Padgett
Keith Johnson
Grant McGuire
Dissertation Abstract:
The goal of this dissertation is to explore the phonetic bases ofintervocalic lenition -- specifically, voicing and spirantization ofintervocalic stops. A traditional understanding of phonological patternslike these is that they involve articulatory effort reduction, in thatspeakers substitute an easy sound for a hard one. Experiment 1 uses anovel methodology to investigate whether voiced and spirantized productionsare truly easier than their unlenited counterparts: the speech ofintoxicated subjects is recorded and compared with their speech whilesober, on the hypothesis that intoxicated subjects expend less articulatoryeffort. This experiment thus attempts to observe effort reduction inaction in the laboratory. The results of Experiment 1 do not provideevidence that voicing and spirantization are effort-reducing; rather,intoxicated subjects exhibit an overall contraction of the articulatoryspace. Experiments 2 - 4 investigate whether an alternative account oflenition based on the P-map is viable. Results suggest that attestedalternations such as spirantization of voiced stops are preferred onperceptual grounds to unattested alternations such as intervocalicdevoicing. Thus, the P-map can explain the broad strokes of lenition,although differences by place found in Experiment 3 do not match well withthe typology. I conclude with an analysis of intervocalic spirantizationcouched within Optimality Theory, and particularly Dispersion Theory, usingconstraints motivated by Experiments 1 - 4. Unlike previous accounts oflenition, this analysis involves no constraints that directly favor lenitedforms over unlenited ones, since no such constraints were motivated byExperiment 1. The constraints that are made available by the experimentalresults are nevertheless able to account for a sizeable portion of thetypology of lenition. I conclude that articulatory factors say less aboutlenition than traditionally thought, and that perceptual factors say more -and that theories of phonology that are committed to taking phoneticsseriously must take notice.
Page Updated: 11-Jun-2010
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