Fall, 2008 Seminar L700/Q700/27390
``What is phonology?’’
MW 2:30 3:45, RM. TBA


The seminar will explore some new ideas about the sound systems of
languages that take experimental research on speech much more
seriously than is typically done by linguists. Fifty years of speech
research have shown that the phonology of most languages involves
much richer representations than the minimal, schematic, abstract,
segmental descriptions usually employed by linguists (e.g., using
the ``distinctive features’’ of Jakobson or Chomsky & Halle,
1968).   Languages constrain the temporal details and rhythm of a
language, and details of context bias such phonetic details as vowel
quality, voice-onset time, and intonation.  Nevertheless, clearly
most languages can be described fairly crudely using a small
inventory of features, and alphabetical orthographies typically
exploit the approximate low-dimensional description that many
languages approach so a language can be written fairly well using an
alphabetical orthography that relies on a small inventory.  It turns
out that these approximate low-dimensional descriptions are shaped
over time by the whole community of speakers and do not represent
the coding of language in speakers’ memory.

Topics:
1. Traditional view: Saussure, Jakobson, Chomsky, Halle, Hock
2. Temporal patterns in languages:  Klatt, Lehiste, Dorman-Liberman,
Port
3. Syllable structures, segment and feature inventories
4. Dialect and style variation; historical change, sociolinguistics
5. Language as a social institution rather than a psychological
structure