LINGUIST List 25.1019
Sat
Mar 01 2014
Review: Phonology: Carr
& Montreuil (2013)
Editor for this issue:
Rajiv Rao <rajivlinguistlist.org>
Date: 24-Jan-2014
From: Snezhina Dimitrova
<snezhinad
hotmail.com>
Subject: Phonology, 2nd
edition
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Book announced at
http://linguistlist.org/issues/24/24-3302.html
AUTHOR: Philip Carr
AUTHOR: Jean-Pierre Y. Montreuil
TITLE: Phonology, 2nd edition
SERIES TITLE: Palgrave Modern Linguistics
PUBLISHER: Palgrave Macmillan
YEAR: 2013
REVIEWER: Snezhina Dimitrova, University of
Sofia
SUMMARY
The second edition of Philip Carr and
Jean-Pierre Montreuil’s “Phonology” is aimed at
the beginner student who has elementary
knowledge of articulatory phonetics, but no
previous experience with phonology. In the
Preface, the authors describe their motivation
for writing the textbook as follows: “This book
is an attempt at a solution to a problem. The
problem is this: how to introduce generative
phonology, without trivializing the subject,
within the confines of a ten-week course, to
students who major in subjects other than
linguistics, and thus may not take their study
of the subject any further” (pp. x-xi). The
book’s potential audience is thus clearly
defined, and the aim of the book could hardly
be any more ambitious.
The book adopts a historical perspective and
can be divided into two parts. The first part
is an introduction to the terminology and
methodology of phonological analysis. It guides
students from an introduction of the phonemic
principle, through an outline of some of the
problems which it poses, and then searches for
solutions to these problems through the
adoption of the classical generative phonology
model outlined in Chomsky and Halle’s (1968)
“The Sound Pattern of English” (SPE). The first
five chapters of the second edition are similar
to the respective chapters in the first
edition, with some new exercises added to them,
while Chapters 6 and 7 have been conflated and
updated.
The introductory chapter, “Revision of
Phonetics”, reviews basic phonetic terminology
used for consonant and vowel description:
consonantal places and manners of articulation,
the vowel space and the cardinal vowels, as
well as the symbols for their representation,
including major diacritics. At the end of this
introduction, the latest revision of the
International Phonetic Alphabet is included for
further reference -- a very helpful addition
for the novice to phonology who is about to be
faced with language data from a variety of
languages throughout the book.
Chapter 1, “The Phonemic Principle”, introduces
students to basic concepts such as phonemes and
allophones, contrastive, complementary and
parallel distributions, free variation, minimal
pairs, phonemic rules and the notation for
writing them, etc. The emphasis is on
motivating the need for phonological analysis
in order to express generalizations about
speakers’ unconscious phonological knowledge.
The authors thus address a major question which
beginner students with some knowledge of
phonetics usually ask, namely, “What do we need
phonology for?” The chapter is rich in examples
and exercises from a range of languages, thus
involving students from the start in “doing
phonology”: there are as many as 9 in-chapter
exercises, and 5 more exercises
at the end.
Chapter 2, “Alternations”, explains how
phonemic representations are mapped onto
phonetic representations through a set of
ordered phonological rules. It demonstrates how
such an approach enables phonologists to
express generalizations regarding
morphophonological alternations. The sections
on testing hypotheses about rules and
representations and on choosing between
analyses offer a step-by-step guide on how to
make decisions about the merits of alternative
analyses and how to give clear arguments in
support of the particular choices that have
been made. Again, the chapter abounds in
examples and exercises from a variety of
languages, ranging from English to Hungarian to
Lumasaaba.
Chapter 3, “Features, Classes and Systems”,
begins by addressing another question which
newcomers to the field of phonology are likely
to ask, namely, “Why use features rather than
phonemes?” The distinctive feature theory which
has been adopted is largely inspired by that
outlined in Lass (1984). Students are shown how
to write generative rules, and are presented
with a detailed outline of the advantages of
feature-based over phonemic rules, both for the
expression of important generalizations as well
as for making explicit the phonetic motivation
behind the rules.
Chapter 4, “Problems with the Phonemic
Principle”, presents several case studies of
neutralization and of the application of the
minimal pair criterion, and demonstrates how
insistence on a distinction between
morphophonemic and phonological rules and on
two distinct levels of representation above the
phonetic level causes analyses to lose
generalizing power. The authors thus make their
case for the adoption of the Generative
Phonology (GP) approach to linguistic analysis
in the rest of the book.
Having motivated the need for a theoretical
approach that abandons the phoneme concept in
favor of a view that better accounts for
“unconscious” (p. 93) human knowledge of
language, in Chapter 5 -- “The Organisation of
the Grammar” -- the textbook proceeds to
present an outline of the model of Generative
Grammar adopted in Chomsky and Halle’s (1968)
SPE, emphasizing the model’s modularity and the
relationships between the phonological
component, the lexicon and morphology. Several
claims are made which relate to the
interactions which take place between different
kinds of linguistic knowledge, the ordering of
phonological rules, and the relationship
between phonetics and phonology and the
abstractness of phonological representations in
the lexicon.
Chapter 6, “Abstractness, Psychological Reality
and the Phonetics/Phonology Relation”, looks at
the consequences of some of the claims made in
Chapter 5, namely, those concerning rule
ordering and abstractness. The authors show
how, within a GP model, the distance between
phonetic and phonological representations may
be such that a large number of rules may apply
in the derivation, and thus, the phonetic
representations of segments may differ
considerably from underlying ones. A crucial
issue which is addressed next is whether
allowing for such a degree of abstractness is
desirable and “psychologically real” (p. 117).
The search for an answer prepares the student
for the introduction of some of the major
extensions and revisions of the theory in the
second part of the book.
Chapter 7, “The Role of the Lexicon”, largely
corresponds to Chapter 8 in the first edition.
It introduces Lexical Phonology (LP), a major
post-SPE development which seeks to address the
issue of rule ordering through a revision of
the organization of grammar and the
introduction of a level-ordered model of
affixation in morphology. Examples of the
operation of the LP model are drawn from
several varieties of English and from Standard
Malay. The last section of the chapter
introduces some ways, proposed within
Underspecification Theory, in which the
specification of feature values in underlying
representations may be reduced.
Chapter 8, “Representations Reconsidered (i):
Phonological Structure above the Level of the
Segment”, considers, first of all, syllable
structure and the way in which lexical rules
enforce the phonotactic constraints in a
language. Some syllable-based generalizations
which are discussed concern nasalization, the
distribution of mid vowels in French,
resyllabification, extrasyllabicity and liaison
and its consequences for abstractness. A
solution to the SPE problem of formalizing
rules which involve segment length is suggested
through the introduction of the CV-tier (i.e.
the skeletal tier in later work). Lexical
stress assignment in some languages is also
shown to be best described with reference to
syllable structure. Furthermore, the student is
introduced to another major post-SPE
development -- Metrical Phonology -- and speech
rhythm, and nuclear, compound, and phrasal
stress assignment in English are discussed
within its framework. Finally, there is a brief
outline of the prosodic hierarchy and the
syntax-phonology relationship, with detailed
notes at the end of the chapter for those who
may want to pursue some of these questions
further.
Chapter 9, “Representations Reconsidered (ii):
Autosegmental and Subsegmental Phonology”, is
devoted to post-SPE theoretical developments
which depart from the classical view of linear
transmission of phonological properties from
one segment to another. A discussion of
Autosegmental Phonology and how autosegments
are associated with elements on the segmental
tier highlights the greater generalizing power
of the autosegmental approach, e.g., in dealing
with nasality and vowel harmony in a number of
languages. In addition, the idea that feature
bundles have internal structure is discussed
within the framework of Feature Geometry, and
is combined with the idea of
underspecification.
Chapter 10, “Phonological Weight”, constitutes
a new addition to the second edition of the
book. The validity of the mora as a basic unit
of weight in Moraic Theory (MT) and the place
of the mora at the bottom of the prosodic
hierarchy are discussed and amply illustrated.
The weight of syllable codas is reconsidered
under MT and the question about the correlation
between weight and stress is addressed.
Finally, an MT account of compensatory
lengthening in several languages is put
forward.
The last two chapters in the second edition of
“Phonology” are also new. Their aim is to
introduce the student to a constraint-based
model of generative grammar which appeared
around the time of publication of the first
edition of the book, and has since become very
influential. Chapter 11, “Optimality Theory”,
begins by outlining the basic architecture of
the Optimality Theory (OT) model: the set of
constraints, the generating function and output
candidates, and the evaluation function. The
roles of markedness and faithfulness
constraints are discussed and illustrated with
the help of tableaus that progressively
increase in complexity. Positional constraints
are introduced later in the chapter, and the
nature of the input in OT, the prosody- melody
interface, as well as the concept of positional
faithfulness are discussed.
Chapter 12, “Issues in Optimality”, focuses on
some problems which the classical version of OT
outlined in Chapter 11 has encountered. The
first part of the chapter deals with opacity
issues: opaque ordering, paradigm pressure,
derived environment effects and chain shifts --
cases with which an output-driven theory
struggles to deal. The second half of the
chapter reviews some of the ways in which
opacity problems have been addressed through
“enhancements” to the classical version of OT,
such as local conjunction, enriched outputs and
the stratal OT approach, the extent of success
which they have had in dealing with various
opacity issues, and the challenges to some of
the basic tenets of classical OT which they
pose.
EVALUATION
The overall structure and the content of the
textbook under review are logical and
straightforward, and are obviously based on its
authors’ rich professional experience of
teaching phonology to beginners. Given the
target audience of the book, the authors’
decision to start off by ensuring that the
students have brushed up on their basic
phonetics, with the help of a revision chapter,
is to be lauded. The latest version of the IPA
at the beginning (p. 11) and the feature
specification matrices for consonants at the
end (pp. 312-313) are useful references for the
beginner student.
However, the term “palato-alveolar” (p. 3),
which no longer appears on the IPA chart, and
the use of the non-IPA symbols č and ǰ for the
representation of the post-alveolar affricates
in the feature matrix (p. 312) and in many
other instances (see, e.g., p. 74 and elsewhere
for Polish, p. 76 for Hungarian, pp. 82-83 for
Russian, etc.) are likely to be confusing for
the newcomer to the discipline. The same is
true of the use of š and ž for the
post-alveolar fricatives, especially in Polish
data throughout the book. This use comes in
spite of the initial claim, on p. 4, that the
post-alveolars will be represented by their IPA
symbols. This use of symbols, together with
some (presumably typographic) errors (see,
e.g., p. 83 line 19 from top, p. 157 line 2
from bottom, p. 229 lines 9 and 10 from top)
may turn into something of a stumbling block
for less ambitious students.
Phonology is best learned through doing
phonological analysis, so students are urged to
work through a variety of exercises from the
very beginning of the course (and to keep their
answers in order to refer to them at a later
stage). The distinctive features introduced in
Chapter 3 are defined in a way which beginners
with only a basic knowledge of phonetics are
likely to find comprehensible and
straightforward. Even though at times one may
feel that there is too much illustrative
material, the variety of languages from which
the examples are drawn is certainly a major
strength of the book. Even lecturers who teach
the phonology of a particular language may be
able to pick and mix data suited to the needs
of the courses which they are teaching.
As an introduction to Generative (and major
post-Generative) approaches to phonological
analysis, the second edition of “Phonology”, by
Philip Carr and Jean-Pierre Montreuil,
certainly meets its objectives. The preface to
the first edition says that the text falls into
two parts, and this is also true of the second
edition, which may best be used as a
two-semester course, or as two separate courses
– one introductory, and a second one for those
who want to learn about more recent
developments in phonological theory. The first
part in particular is fairly gently paced, rich
in illustrative materials from a diversity of
languages, and intended to guide the student
through the initial stages of not only learning
about, but also doing phonology. The second
part of the book is likely to be harder for the
beginner. Hopefully, a beginner, who by this
time has found phonological analysis exciting,
will be willing to invest the extra time and
effort needed to
work through the second half of this excellent
textbook.
REFERENCES
Carr, Philip. 1993. Phonology. London:
Macmillan.
Chomsky, Noam & Morris Halle. 1968. The
Sound Pattern of English. New York: Harper
& Row.
Lass, Roger. 1984. Phonology: An Introduction
to Basic Concepts. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Snezhina Dimitrova is an Associate Professor at
the Department of English and American Studies,
Sofia University 'St Kliment Ohridski' in
Bulgaria, where she teaches English phonetics
and phonology, English pronunciation, Varieties
of English, etc.
Page Updated: 01-Mar-2014