Evolutionary Phonology Research Articles

Ambientes linguísticos para a produção das fricativas /z/, /∫/e /ℑ/: variabilidades na aquisição fonológica de seis sujeitos

TEMA: percursos de aquisição fonológica de crianças tratadas com ambientes favoráveis em oposição aos ambientes pouco favoráveis e neutros para a produção de /z/, /∫/e /ℑ/na terapia fonológica. PROCEDIMENTOS: foram selecionadas seis crianças com desvio fonológico e idades entre 4:7 e 7:8 para participarem do estudo. As mesmas estavam devidamente autorizadas por seus responsáveis. Foram realizadas avaliações fonoaudiológicas e complementares para diagnóstico do desvio fonológico. Os sujeitos foram pareados de acordo com a gravidade do desvio fonológico, sexo, faixa etária e aspectos do sistema fonológico em relação aos fonemas alterados. Metade das crianças foi tratada com palavras em que os fonemas /z/, /∫/e /ℑ/encontravam-se em ambientes favoráveis e a outra metade com ambientes pouco favoráveis e neutros. Foram realizadas oito sessões e, após estas, novas avaliações foram realizadas para descrever e comparar qualitativamente os percursos de aquisição fonológica dos sujeitos por meio do Modelo Implicacional de Complexidade de Traços. RESULTADOS: os resultados indicaram discreta vantagem na evolução terapêutica de dois sujeitos tratados com ambientes favoráveis, em relação a seus pares. Porém, uma criança tratada com ambientes pouco-favoráveis e neutros, obteve resultados mais positivos do que seu par. CONCUSÃO: os ambientes favoráveis à produção das fricativas /z/, /∫/e /ℑ/ não determinaram o sucesso terapêutico, porém influenciaram positivamente a evolução fonológica dos sujeitos do estudo.

Sobre as origens da vogal radical /i/ em sigo~siga no verbo galego-português: Um fenómeno de contacto linguístico?

Abstract It is admitted that the origin of the height of the radical vowel of Galician and Portuguese sigo~siga and cubro~cubra is problematic: the expected vowel in that context, through a regular phonological evolution, should be mid-high, not high. Given that Galician, Portuguese, and Spanish, share the unexpected height of the radical vowel, and that it seems the high vowel first appeared and was consolidated in the central dialects of the Peninsula, I will propose that forms like sigo and cubro were originated in those central dialects and were taken and spread into the occidental dialects by a language contact situation. As the contact was more prolonged and intense in Galicia than in Portugal, Galician promoted variants like pido~pides~pide~pida, shared with Spanish, diverging in this respect from Portuguese, which blocked their spreading.

Phonological Traits of Hangzhou Dialect from the Perspective of Comparative Phonology

From the perspective of Chinese historical phonology, we observe that Hangzhou dialect in Zhejiang Province exemplifies the dualism of innovation and conservatism in terms of phonological evolution. Using the comparative method, three strata are recognized: 1. the conservative layer from Qieyun which also appears in modern Wu dialects; 2. the layer of Mandarin from the period of the late Tang Dynasty to Northern Song, which composes the main body of Hangzhou phonology; and 3. the innovative layer of post-Qieyun times both in Hangzhou and other Wu dialects.

Inducing Epenthesis: Phonetic, Phonological and Morphological Considerations

No abstract.

How the Phoneme Inventory Changes its Shape: A Cognitive Approach to Phonological Evolution and Change

In this paper I propose an interpretation of a series of phonological changes in the history of English (including Old English Breaking and the early Modern English Great Vowel Shift) from a cognitive phonology perspective. My analysis is based on Nathan (1886, 1995, 1996), who applies prototype theory to phonological description. In Nathan's analysis, the louder a sound is, the more prototypical effects it possesses. In processes of phonological change, phonemes change their number of prototypical effects. According to this view, we propose a classification that is based on two different prototypicality effects: degree of height and degree of peripherality. By treating both sound and meaning unit as mental categories, I try to show how the principles of categorization and generalization motivate similar diachronic patterns both in the phonological and in the semantic domain.

Historical Phonology and Evolutionary Phonology

Historical Phonology and Evolutionary Phonology

Historical Phonology and Evolutionary Phonology

Historical Phonology and Evolutionary Phonology

Timing effects of syllable structure and stress on nasals: A real-time MRI examination

The coordination of velum and oral gestures for English [n] is studied using real-time magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) movies to reconstruct vocal tract aperture functions. This technique allows for the examination of parts of the vocal tract otherwise inaccessible to dynamic imaging or movement tracking. The present experiment considers syllable onset, coda, and juncture geminate nasals and also addresses the effects of a variety of word stress patterns on segment internal coordination. We find a bimodal timing pattern in which near-synchrony of velum lowering and tongue tip raising characterizes the timing for onsets and temporal lag between the gestures is characteristic for codas, supporting and extending the findings for [m] of Krakow [(1989). The articulatory organization of syllables: A kinematic analysis of labial and velar gestures. Doctoral Dissertation, Yale University, New Haven, CT; (1993). Nonsegmental influences on velum movement patterns: Syllables, sentences, stress, and speaking rate. In M. A. Huffman, R. A. Krakow (Eds.), Nasals, nasalization and the velum (phonetics and phonology V) (pp. 87–116). New York: Academic Press]. Intervocalic word-internal nasals are found to have timing patterns that are sensitive to the local stress context, which suggests the presence of an underlying timing specification that can yield flexibly. We consider these findings in light of the gestural coupling structures described by Goldstein and colleagues [Goldstein, L., Byrd, D., & Saltzman, E. (2006). The role of vocal tract gestural action in units understanding the evolution of phonology. In M. Arbib (Ed.), Action to language via the mirror neuron system (pp. 215–249). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Goldstein, L., Nam, H., Saltzman, E., & Chitoran, I. (2008). Coupled oscillator planning model of speech timing and syllable structure. In Proceedings of the 8th phonetics conference of China and the international symposium on phonetic frontiers; Nam, H., Goldstein, L., & Saltzman, E. (in press). Self-organization of syllable structure: A coupled oscillator model. In Chitoran, Coupe, Marsico, & Pellegrino (Eds.), Approaches to phonological complexity].

Diachronic Explanations of Sound Patterns

AbstractPhonological systems show clear signs of being shaped by phonetics. Sound patterns are overwhelmingly phonetically ‘natural’, in that they reflect the influence of physical constraints on speech production and perception, and categorical phonological processes often mirror low‐level gradient phonetic effects. The question of how best to explain and model the influence of phonetics on phonology has been approached in different ways, one of which situates the locus of explanation in the diachronic domain of language change, in particular sound change. On this view, recurrent sound patterns merely reflect recurrent sound changes with phonetic origins, typically in speech perception. Explicit models of sound change are reviewed and illustrated, in particular Ohala's listener‐based model and Blevins’ Evolutionary Phonology framework, and the relevance of exemplar‐based models of speech production and perception is also noted. Current issues of controversy regarding the adequacy of diachronic vs. synchronic explanations for the typology of sound patterns are surveyed.

The Role of Phonetic Knowledge in Phonological Patterning: Corpus and Survey Evidence from Tagalog Infixation

INSERT ABSTRACT A current controversy in phonological theory concerns the explanation of crosslinguistic tendencies. It is often assumed that crosslinguistic tendencies are explained by mental bias: a pattern is common because it is favored by learners/speakers. But work by Blevins and colleagues in EVOLUTIONARY PHONOLOGY has argued that many crosslinguistic tendencies can be explained without positing such bias. This would mean that crosslinguistic tendencies cannot be unproblematically used as evidence about the mental machinery that humans bring to learning and using language. In response, many researchers have looked at different types of data, such as processing, learning of real and artificial languages, and literary invention. This article presents another type of data: extension of native-language phonology to words with novel phonological structure, in this case infixation in Tagalog into loanwords with novel initial consonant clusters. The data come from a written corpus and a survey. Tagalog speakers’ treatment of these clusters parallels Fleischhacker’s crosslinguistic findings of cluster splittability. This article argues that explaining the data requires attributing to Tagalog speakers phonetic knowledge and a bias about how to apply that knowledge.

Domains and directionality in the evolution of German final fortition

Laryngeal realism (Honeybone 2005) holds that thoroughly voiced stops in a language like Dutch will be represented phonologically with the feature [voice], leaving the voiceless unaspirated stops laryngeally neutral, whereas the typically aspirated stops of a language like German are marked with the feature [spread glottis], rendering the passively voiced stops in this language neutral. These two languages also merge laryngeal oppositions in final environments, Dutch undergoing final devoicing but German final fortition. We apply the findings of Evolutionary Phonology (Blevins 2004, 2006b) to these distinctions in final laryngeal neutralisation, underscoring that the evolutionary approach to phonological alternation allows for non-assimilatory feature addition as well as loss. We examine in particular the known history of final fortition in German and find that the reference standard form of the language has evolved an alignment condition to the effect that a fortified syllable edge must match up with the morpheme edge.

Juliette Blevins, Evolutionary phonology: the emergence of sound patterns. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Pp. xix+366.

<b>Juliette Blevins</b>, <i>Evolutionary phonology: the emergence of sound patterns</i>. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Pp. xix+366.

Coronals and Velars: Support for Blust

Robert Blust raises the issue of the *t &gt; k change that is widely attested in Austronesian languages, but infrequently in other language families. He offers both structural and perceptual explanations for the "naturalness" of this change, but admits that the data raise more questions than can be answered. I offer support for the view that this change is not unnatural, based on the distribution of stop types cross-linguistically, and the patterns that are found. I introduce another kind of argumentation, that of typologically determined systemic naturalness, in the spirit of Evolutionary Phonology.

Embedded structure and the evolution of phonology

This paper explores a structure ubiquitous in grammar, the embedded tree, and develops a proposal for how such embedded structures played a fundamental role in the evolution of consonants and vowels. Assuming that linguistic capabilities emerged as a cognitive system from a simply reactive system and that such a transition required the construction of an internal mapping of the system body (cf. Cruse 2003), we propose that this mapping was determined through articulation and acoustics. By creating distinctions between articulators in the vocal tract or by acoustic features of sounds, and then embedding these distinctions, the various possible properties of consonants and vowels emerged. These embedded distinctions represent paradigmatic options for the production of sounds, which provide the basic building blocks for prosodic structure. By anchoring these embedded structures in the anatomy and physiology of the vocal tract, the evolution of phonology itself can be explained by extra-linguistic factors.

Peak Shift, Behavioral Contrast, and Phonological Evolution with Explanations of the Great English Vowel Shift and Grimm's Law

Peak shift is a universal result of most discrimination learning: if an organism is taught to respond to one stimulus and not to respond to another stimulus lying along the same perceptual continuum, it shows maximal responsiveness not to the target stimulus but to a stimulus displaced along the continuum in a direction away from the unreinforced stimulus. It also responds more vigorously to the displaced stimulus than it would have to the target stimulus had discrimination training not occurred. This is the phenomenon of behavioral contrast. On the level of preference, peak shift means that if we prefer something, we shall like something a bit more extreme even more. Peak shift and behavioral contrast are probably the most important causes of sound change in language, but this has never been pointed out. The relevance of peak shift and behavioral contrast to phonological change is explained. Their most general consequence is that the phonetic realization of phonemes is usually in a continual state of evo...

New Perspectives on English Sound Patterns

Principles of Evolutionary Phonology are applied to a selection of sound changes and stable sound patterns in varieties of English. These are divided into two types: natural phonetically motivated internal changes and all others, which are classified as unnatural. While natural phonetically motivated sound change may be inhibited by external forces, certain phonotactic patterns show notable stability in English and are only eliminated under particular types of contact with languages lacking the same patterns. Within the evolutionary model, this stability is expected since natural sound changes involving wholesale elimination of these patterns are not known.

Mimetic gemination in Japanese: A challenge for Evolutionary Phonology

Blevins's Evolutionary Phonology attempts to derive most if not all synchronic phonological patterns from diachronic changes: “[R]ecurrent synchronic sound patterns are a direct reflection of their diachronic origins, and, more specifically … regular phonetically based sound change is the common source of recurrent sound patterns. Evolutionary Phonology … investigates this hypothesis and explores its consequences for phonological theory” (Blevins 2006: 120). Evolutionary Phonology suggests that, to avoid duplication in linguistic theory, diachronic explanations must take priority over synchronic explanations whenever possible: “[P]rincipled diachronic explanations for sound patterns replace, rather than complement, synchronic explanations, unless independent evidence demonstrates, beyond reasonable doubt, that a separate synchronic account is warranted” (Blevins 2004a: 5).

The Amphichronic Program vs. Evolutionary Phonology

Evolutionary Phonology. Evolutionary Phonology seeks to derive typological generalizations from recurrent patterns of language change, themselves assumed to be rooted in perception, production, and acquisition. The goal is to eliminate UG by providing diachronic explanations for the cross-linguistic evidence that has been used to motivate it.

On the use of Evolutionary Phonology for phonological theory

Theoretical phonology centrally focuses on representing the implicit knowledge that speakers have of the sound patterns in their language, as Blevins (this volume) points out on the first page of her synopsis. Equally important, according to Blevins, is it to provide explanations for the dis- tribution of sound patterns across attested spoken languages. While this has been aimed at in numerous studies in dierent frameworks, Blevins mentions Generative Phonology and Optimality Theory in this context, the alternatively proposed Evolutionary Phonology (henceforth: EP) is claimed to dier from previous work in maintaining a principled distinc- tion between phonological and extra-phonological explanations for sound patterns. For this purpose, EP focuses on diachronic processes and tests the hypothesis that ''regular phonetically based sound change is the com- mon source of recurrent sound patterns'' (p. 2). In the following I argue that EP is only of limited use for phonological theory. I focus on Blevins' criticism of alternative accounts (§2), EP's sup- posed simplification of phonological theory by ascribing the occurrence of typological patterns to sound change (§3), and a short description of the grammar model by Boersma (§4), which follows restrictions similar to those posed in EP.

An evolutionary perspective on stop inventories

Evolutionary Phonology attempts to explain the sound patterns that are recurrent in the world's languages, including the distributions of sounds within segment inventories. Perhaps one of the strongest arguments made by Evolutionary Phonology concerns the nature of explanation.