Implications of linguistic change for concrete phonology

Abstract

In recent years linguists have looked to linguistic change for empirical support for various proposed constraints on the form of grammars. This orientation of diachronic studies is reflected, for example, in Kiparsky (1968a) where linguistic change is characterized as “a window on the form of linguistic competence.” Arguments based partly on diachronic evidence are advanced by Kiparsky (1968b) in support of his contention that the standard theory of generative phonology as outlined in Chomsky and Halle (1968) should be modified to include a condition which, in its strong form, would not permit rules of absolute neutralization in synchronic phonological descriptions. More recently, Hooper (1976) also appeals to evidence from linguistic change in support of a theory of phonology which differs significantly from the standard theory referred to as transformational generative phonology (TGP). Hooper’s theory of natural generative phonology (NGP) is supposed to be characterized by greater concreteness of descriptions than is achieved in the framework of TGP. This greater concreteness of descriptions is supposed to be guaranteed in Hooper’s theory by the inclusion of two constraints on rules. One constraint, the True Generalization Condition, requires that “all rules express transparent surface generalizations, generalizations that are true for all surface forms.” The second constraint, the No-Ordering Condition, does not permit a grammar to contain rules which must be extrinsically ordered. In addition to these constraints, Hooper adopts a model of lexical representation according to which alternants of morphemes must be directly represented in the lexicon in certain cases. In such cases, the lexically specified allomorphs are correctly distributed by morphophonemic (MP) rules. Hooper (1976:23-41) claims that evidence from some phonological developments in certain dialects of Spanish points to the correctness of NGP and, ipso facto, shows the inadequacy of a theory such as TGP which permits the violation of the two conditions mentioned above.