Phonological Universals Research Articles

Arabic Learners’ Production of Regular English Past Tense Verbs

Previous studies show that second language (L2) learners of English sometimes produce the verb with proper past tense inflectional morphology as in help[t] and sometimes repair the cluster, as in helpø or hel[pəd]. Complicating matters, these studies focused on L2 learners whose native languages disallowed codas or had very restricted codas. Thus, it is difficult to tell whether any problems in producing past tense morphology are due to first language L1-transferred coda restrictions, or an inability to acquire the abstract feature of past tense. To rule out native language syllable structure interference, this paper aims to examine the production of the English regular past tense verb by Arabic L1 ESL learners, a language that allows complex codas. The paper also examines the role of a phonological universal, the Obligatory Contour Principle (OCP) that disallows two adjacent similar sounds, and its effect on learners’ production. The data come from twenty-two English as a Second Language (ESL) students at three levels of proficiency. The task was a sentence list eliciting target clusters in past tense contexts that violate manner in OCP: fricative + stop ([st], [ft]) vs. stop + stop ([pt], [kt]). Results show that L1 Arabic speakers have difficulty in producing past tense morphology, even though their L1 allows complex codas. Fricative + stop clusters are repaired (epenthesis/deletion) at a lower rate (low =25.71%, intermediate = 6.6%, high=11.11%) than stop + stop clusters (low=57.14%, intermediate = 40.27%, high=22.91%). The higher rate of repair is clear in stops + stop clusters suggesting that learners abide by phonological universals and prefer not to violate OCP. Finally, proficiency level has an effect on target-like production, as higher-proficiency learners produce past-tense morphology at a higher rate than lower-proficiency learners. Together, these results indicate that L1 transfer is not the only source of difficulty in the production of past tense morphology, and that the abstract feature of tense is problematic, particularly at the early stages of ESL development.

Sonority as a Phonological Cue in Early Perception of Written Syllables in French.

Many studies focused on the letter and sound co-occurrences to account for the well-documented syllable-based effects in French in visual (pseudo)word processing. Although these language-specific statistical properties are crucial, recent data suggest that studies that go all-in on phonological and orthographic regularities may be misguided in interpreting how—and why—readers locate syllable boundaries and segment clusters. Indeed, syllable-based effects could depend on more abstract, universal phonological constraints that rule and govern how letter and sound occur and co-occur, and readers could be sensitive to sonority—a universal phonological element—for processing (pseudo)words. Here, we investigate whether French adult skilled readers rely on universal phonological sonority-related markedness continuum across the syllable boundaries for segmentation (e.g., from marked, illegal intervocalic clusters /zl/ to unmarked, legal intervocalic clusters /lz/). To address this question, we ran two tasks with 128 French adult skilled readers using two versions of the illusory conjunction paradigm (Task 1 without white noise; Task 2 with white noise). Our results show that syllable location and segmentation in reading is early and automatically modulated by phonological sonority-related markedness in the absence or quasi-absence of statistical information and does not require acoustic-phonetic information. We discuss our results toward the overlooked role of phonological universals and the over-trusted role of statistical information during reading processes.

Comparing phoneme frequency, age of acquisition, and loss in aphasia: Implications for phonological universals

ABSTRACTPhonological complexity may be central to the nature of human language. It may shape the distribution of phonemes and phoneme sequences within languages, but also determine age of acquisition and susceptibility to loss in aphasia. We evaluated this claim using frequency statistics derived from a corpus of phonologically transcribed Italian words (phonitalia, available at phonitalia,org), rankings of phoneme age of acquisition (AoA) and rate of phoneme errors in patients with apraxia of speech (AoS) as an indication of articulatory complexity. These measures were related to cross-linguistically derived markedness rankings. We found strong correspondences. AoA, however, was predicted by both apraxic errors and frequency, suggesting independent contributions of these variables. Our results support the reality of universal principles of complexity. In addition they suggest that these complexity principles have articulatory underpinnings since they modulate the production of patients with AoS, but not the production of patients with more central phonological difficulties.

Overuse of Contractible Copula in Patients with Agrammatic Aphasia

Overuse of Contractible Copula in Patients with Agrammatic Aphasia

Early phonetic development in typically developing children: A longitudinal investigation from Cypriot-Greek child data

ABSTRACTThe current longitudinal study examined the acquisition of consonantal singleton segments in Cypriot-Greek. The study’s aims were: (a) to determine the acquisition of segments for manner and place of articulation as a function of age and word position, (b) to provide preliminary normative data, and (c) to further support the cross-linguistic data pool regarding developmental phonology patterns. Participants were 14 Cypriot-Greek speaking typically developing toddlers, examined at ages 24, 28, 32 and 36 months. Spontaneously produced and elicited glossable utterances were used in constructing each child’s inventory. Findings revealed an increase of segmental acquisition across all age levels. Group trend analysis for manner and place of articulation indicated bilabial and alveolar stops and nasals to be among the earlier segments to develop. A word medial position advantage was also evident. The findings are discussed in terms of phonological universals and language-specific factors. Implications for early evidence-based phonetic assessment are discussed.

Framing a socio-indexical basis for the emergence and cultural transmission of phonological systems

Moulin-Frier, Diard, Schwartz, and Bessière (2015) proffer a conceptual framework and computational modeling architecture for the investigation of the emergence of phonological universals for spoken languages. They validate the framework and architecture by testing to see whether universals such as the prevalence of triangular vowel systems that show adequate dispersion in the F1–F2–F3 space can fall out of simulations of referential communication between social agents, without building principles such as dispersion directly into the model. In this paper, we examine the assumptions underlying the framework, beginning with the assumption that it is such substantive universals that are in need of explanation rather than the rich diversity of phonological systems observed across human cultures and the compositional (prosodic) structure that characterizes signed as well as spoken languages. Also, when emergence is construed at the time-scales of the biological evolution of the species and of the cultural evolution of distinct speech communities, it is the affiliative or affective rather than the referential function that has the greater significance for our understanding of how phonological systems can emerge de novo in ontogeny.

Can phonological universals be emergent?: Modeling the space of sound change, lexical distribution, and hypothesis selection

This article is an analysis of the claim that a universal ban on certain (‘anti-markedness’) grammars is necessary in order to explain their nonoccurrence in the languages of the world. Such a claim is based on the following assumptions: that phonological typology shows a highly asymmetric distribution, and that such a distribution cannot possibly arise ‘naturally’—that is, without a universal grammar-based restriction of the learner's hypothesis space. Attempting to test this claim reveals a number of open issues in linguistic theory. In the first place, there exist critical aspects of synchronic theory that are not specified explicitly enough to implement computationally. Second, there remain many aspects of linguistic competence, language acquisition, sound change, and even typology that are still unknown. It is not currently possible, therefore, to reach a definitive conclusion about the necessity, or lack thereof, of an innate substantive grammar module. This article thus serves two main functions: acting both as a pointer to the areas of phonological theory that require further development, especially at the overlap between traditionally separate subdomains, and as a template for the type of argumentation required to defend or attack claims about phonological universals.

Can phonological universals be emergent? Modeling the space of sound change, lexical distribution, and hypothesis selection: Online appendices

Can phonological universals be emergent? Modeling the space of sound change, lexical distribution, and hypothesis selection: Online appendices

Deletion or epenthesis? On the falsifiability of phonological universals

This paper presents a revised typology of consonant epenthesis and explores the theoretical implications of such a typology. Through careful re-analysis, the basis for a proposed universal of coronal preference and dorsal avoidance is shown to be lacking in evidential support. In fact, epenthesis as a verifiable phenomenon – and not just a theory-internal label – is called into question once careful attention is paid to the issue of choosing between epenthesis and deletion as competing analyses of the same data. The ambiguity between multiple possible analyses, and the lack of formal transformations (from ‘data’ to ‘evidence’) are shown to be general problems within phonological theory. Phonological ‘universals’ can be invoked to arbitrate between competing analyses, but when the typological evidence for those ‘universals’ is derived from the same data, a problem of circularity arises. In order to break this closed loop, a quantitative evaluation metric is proposed that is theory-independent with regards to substantive universals. This metric is essentially a statistical threshold for learnability (itself empirically testable) that allows for independent testing of certain theoretical claims.

Sensitivity to Phonological Universals: The Case of Stops and Fricatives

Linguistic evidence suggests that syllables like bdam (with stop-stop clusters) are less preferred than bzam (with stop-fricative combinations). Here, we demonstrate that English speakers manifest similar preferences despite no direct experience with either structure. Experiment 1 elicited syllable count for auditory materials (e.g., does bzam have one syllable or two?); Experiment 2 examined the AX discrimination of auditory stimuli (e.g., is bzam = bezam?); whereas Experiment 3 repeated this task using printed materials. Results showed that syllables that are dispreferred across languages (e.g., bdam) were prone to misidentification relative to preferred syllables (e.g., bzam). The emergence of this pattern irrespective of stimulus modality--for auditory and printed materials--suggests that misidentification does not solely stem from a phonetic failure. Further, the effect remained significant after controlling for various statistical properties of the materials. These results suggest that speakers possess broad linguistic preferences that extend to syllables they have never encountered before.

Arbitrariness in grammar: Palatalization effects in Polish

It is argued that palatalization effects in Polish have no phonological basis in the generative sense. The applicability and the type of palatalization is morpheme specific and cannot be reliably predicted on the basis of phonological universals, such as features or elements. Further, the idiosyncrasies of particular affixes cannot be accounted for in terms of natural classes without losing insight. The learnability of such phonologically-arbitrary patterns undermines the role of phonological naturalness in shaping mental grammars. It is proposed that structuralist and generative accounts of palatalization be abandoned in favor of markedness-free analogical accounts based on rich-memory representations. The proposal to directly encode palatalization effects in lexical representations renders the concept of Underlying Representation obsolete. Pattern extension is analyzed as a phonologically-neutral process driven by analogy.

Phonological Universals in Early Childhood: Evidence from Sonority Restrictions

Across languages, onsets with large sonority distances are preferred to those with smaller distances (e.g., bw>bd>lb; Greenberg 1978). Optimality Theory (Prince & Smolensky 2004) attributes such facts to grammatical restrictions that are universally active in all grammars. To test this hypothesis, here we examine whether children extend putatively universal sonority restrictions to onsets unattested in their language. Participants (M = 4;03) were presented with pairs of auditory words—either identical (e.g., lbif⇉lbif) or epenthetically related (e.g., lbif⇉lebif)—and asked to judge their identity. Results showed that, like adults, children's ability to detect epenthetic distortions was monotonically related to sonority distance (bw>bd>lb), and their performance was inexplicable by several statistical and phonetic factors. These findings suggest that sonority restrictions are active in early childhood, and their scope is broad.

Two Case Studies in Phonological Universals: A View from Artificial Grammars

This article summarizes the results of two experiments that use artificial grammar learning in order to test proposed phonological universals. The first universal involves limits on precedence-modification in phonological representations, drawn from a typology of ludlings (language games). It is found that certain unattested precedence-modifying operations in ludlings are also dispreferred in learning in experimental studies, suggesting that the typological gap reflects a principled and universal aspect of language structure. The second universal involves differences between vowels and consonants, and in particular, the fact that phonological typology finds vowel repetition and harmony to be widespread, while consonants are more likely to dissimilate. An artificial grammar task replicates this bias in the laboratory, suggesting that its presence in natural languages is not due to historical accident but to cognitive constraints on the form of linguistic grammars.

Experimental approaches to phonology (review)

Reviewed by: Experimental approaches to phonology Marie Huffman Experimental approaches to phonology. Ed. by Maria-Josep Solé, Patrice Speeter Beddor, and Manjari Ohala. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. Pp. 465. ISBN 0199296820. $65. This book is a satisfyingly diverse and interesting collection of papers on experimental approaches to phonology. As a de facto festschrift for John J. Ohala, the book is intended to reflect [End Page 950] his influence on ‘the empirical methods that shape phonological inquiry’ (xi). Since Ohala has been consistently involved in big ideas, his influence ranges widely and there are many types of experimental inquiries that have been influenced by him. This book is a thoughtfully planned and organized collection of papers on a diverse set of topics. The papers are divided into five parts, under loosely organizing titles that strain at times to capture the diverse character of the papers they represent. Due to practical space limits the book cannot present a comprehensive view of the wide range of fields it touches on, leaving coverage feeling a bit uneven at times. However, it is a rich and stimulating collection of papers worth reading. Part 1, ‘Theory and background’, begins with the conceptual introduction to the book, given in ‘Methods in phonology’ by John J. Ohala, a very short sketch of critical questions and principles that should guide experimental investigations of these questions. Ohala remains neutral on these matters, resisting any urge to nudge the field toward one or the other direction (or method) of inquiry. ‘Elicitation as experimental phonology’, by Larry Hyman, is an elegant demonstration of a complex set of tonal patterns in Thlantlang Lai, which can be found through systematic investigation of noun paradigms. The chapter demonstrates what is possible with one-to-one linguist/consultant ‘field’ (or office) work, at least when the linguist is a particularly talented practitioner of this analysis method. ‘Decisions and mechanisms in exemplar-based phonology’, by Keith Johnson, discusses the grounding of exemplar-based theories in cognitive psychology and presents varied illustrations of how such representations could account for systematic and/or abstract generalizations about language. ‘Beyond laboratory phonology’ by Klaus Kohler uses examples of F0 alignment with articulation to argue that if (communicative) function, time, and the listener are given a central place in the study of speech, a more rational set of descriptive and theoretical constructs will emerge. ‘Area functions and articulatory modeling as a tool for investigating the articulatory, acoustic and perceptual properties of sounds across languages’, by Jacqueline Vaissière, illustrates application of Shinji Maeda’s articulatory model to fine acoustic and articulatory details of French. The discussion relies on a new phonetic notation system, a proposed alternative to the IPA, which, though provocative, is likely to be unfamiliar to many readers and as such slows one’s ability to assimilate the material. The paper is a solid reminder of the vast extent of language-specific differences even in sounds that we might comfortably transcribe with the same symbol. Part 2, ‘Phonological universals’, consists of a varied collection of papers exploring phonetic evidence for phonological universals. ‘Phonological universals and the control and regulation of speech production’, by Didier Demolin, reports on a detailed analysis of physiological data—measurements of both intraoral and subglottal pressure—arguing for the independence of control mechanisms for the two. This independence suggests new explanations for common patterns in tonal declination and segment lenition. ‘Issues of phonological complexity’, by Ian Maddieson, is a brief illustration of how a language database like UPSID can be applied to questions about patterns within language inventories, specifically questions of compensation in phonological complexity. ‘Linking dispersion-focalization theory and the maximum utilization of the available distinctive features principle in a perception-for-action-control theory’, by Jean-Luc Schwartz, Louis-Jean Boë, and Christian Abry, adds a notion of local salience to a computational approach to perceptual conditioning of the crosslinguistic distribution of vowels and consonants in phonetic space. Part 3, ‘Phonetic variation and phonological change’, is in some ways the conceptual heart of the book and is the best single collection...

Unveiling phonological universals: A linguist who asks “why” is (inter alia) an experimental psychologist

Evans and Levinson are right to hold theories of language accountable for language diversity, but typological data alone cannot determine the structure of mental phonological grammars. Grammatical universals are nonetheless testable by formal and experimental methods, and the growing research in experimental phonology demonstrates the viability of a comparative experimental evaluation of the UG hypothesis.

Listeners' knowledge of phonological universals: evidence from nasal clusters

Optimality Theory explains typological markedness implications by proposing that all speakers possess universal constraints penalizing marked structure, irrespective of the evidence provided by their language (Prince & Smolensky, 1993/2004). An account of phonological perception sketched here entails that markedness constraints reveal their presence by inducing perceptual 'repairs' to structures ungrammatical in the hearer's language. As onset clusters of falling sonority are typologically marked relative to those of rising sonority (Greenberg, 1978), we examine English speakers' perception of nasal-initial clusters-lacking in English. We find greater accuracy for rising-sonority clusters, evidencing knowledge of markedness constraints favoring such onset clusters. The misperception of sonority falls cannot be accounted for by stimulus artifacts (the materials are perceived accurately by speakers of Russian-a language allowing nasal-initial clusters) nor by phonetic failure (English speakers misperceive falls even with printed materials) nor by putative relations of such onsets to the statistics of the English lexicon.

A retrospective study of phonetic inventory complexity in acquisition of Spanish: Implications for phonological universals

This study evaluates 39 different phonetic inventories of 16 Spanish‐speaking children (ages 0;11 to 5;1) in terms of hierarchical complexity. Phonetic featural differences are considered in order to evaluate the proposed implicational hierarchy of Dinnsen et al.'s phonetic inventory typology for English. The children's phonetic inventories are examined independently and in relation to one another. Five hierarchical complexity levels are proposed, similar to those of English and other languages, although with some language‐specific differences. These findings have implications for theoretical assumptions about the universality of phonetic inventory development, and for remediation of Spanish‐speaking children with phonological impairments.

Implicational phonological universals

The UPSID database, comprising the segment inventories of 451 languages, was computationally inspected for implicational universals of type “If Segment A, then Segment B”. The system found 146 statistically significant (near) universals that are supported by languages from at least two language families from at least two geographical areas. Some implications of these findings are discussed. A principle holding for implicational phonological universals is proposed, stating that the antecedent and the consequent of an implicational universal must share at least one feature and, additionally, the consequent must have an equal or smaller number of features than the antecedent. The principle is both statistically significant and highly predictive (valid in 94.5% of all found universals).

Universals in Phonology

UC Berkeley Phonology Lab Annual Report (2007) (Commissioned for special issue of The Linguistic Review, 2008, Harry van der Hulst, ed.) Universals in Phonology Larry Hyman A BSTRACT This article asks what is universal about phonological systems. Beginning with universals of segment inventories, a distinction is drawn between descriptive universals (where the effect of different theoretical frameworks is minimized) vs. analytic universals (which are specific-theory- dependent). Since there are few absolute universals such as “all languages have stops” and “all languages have at least two degrees of vowel height”, theory-driven or “architectural” universals concerning distinctive features and syllable structure are also considered. Although several near- universals are also mentioned, the existence of conflicting “universal tendencies” and contradictory resolutions naturally leads into questions concerning the status of markedness and synchronic explanation in phonology. While diachrony is best at accounting for typologically unusual and language-specific phonological properties, the absolute universals discussed in this study are clearly grounded in synchrony. Introduction My colleague John Ohala likes to tell the following mythical story about a lecture that the legendary Roman Jakobson gives upon arrival at Harvard University some time in the 1940s. The topic is child language and phonological universals, a subject which Prof. Jakobson addresses in his Kindersprache, Aphasie und allgemeine Lautgesetze (1941). In his also legendary strong Russian accent, Jakobson makes the pronouncement, “In all languages, first utterance of child, [pa]!” 1 He goes on to explain that it is a matter of maximal opposition: “[p] is the consonant most consonant, and [a] is the vowel most vowel.” As the joke continues, a very concerned person in the audience raises his hand and is called on: “But, professor, my child’s first utterance was [tSik].” Prof. Jakobson carefully considers this surprising remark. In his mind he systematically compares [tS] and [p], [i] and [a], and [k] and O, obviously with some concern. He then asks the man the following questions: “Did your child have any other initial consonant than [tS]?” The man answers no. “Did your child have any other vowel than [i]?” Again, the man answers no. “My last question: Did your child always have the final [k]?” “Yes,” the man replies. At this point Prof. Jakobson’s face lights up as he triumphantly exclaims: “Axa! Don’t you see? Phonyetic [tSik], phonological /pa/!” The above joke, I assume totally fabricated, never fails to get a laugh out of phonologists, who, I suspect, see a bit of themselves in this caricature. While funny, there is in fact a serious undertone to the above exchange. The story is quite impressive in how succinctly it reveals several major questions we face as phonologists interested in universal properties of sound systems: (1) What level of representation are we interested in? (2) How different can the levels be from each other? (3) What are the limits of theoretical interpretation? (4) How can claims of universality be validated or falsified? In other words, if [tSik] is not a counterexample to the claim, what would be? Cf. “Ordinary child language begins, and the aphasic dissolution of language preceding its complete loss ends, with what psychopathologists have termed the ‘labial stage’. In this phase speakers are capable only of one type of utterance, which is usually transcribed as /pa/” (Jakobson and Halle 1956:37).

Phonological acquisition of a Korean child: An acoustic study

Studies on child phonology suggest that there exist phonological universals in the timing of phonological events and the ordering of phonological categories, but the acquisition of speech sounds is influenced by the language-specific aspects of the ambient language such as phonetics, phonology, and the frequency of the sound in child-directed speech. This study investigates a Korean child’s phonological acquisition based on tape recordings of longitudinal data (from 2 months to 2 years, recorded in 1- to 2-week intervals). Special attention is given to the change in prosody and the acquisition of the Korean three-way manner contrast (fortis, aspirated, lenis). It is known that Korean fortis and aspirated obstruents trigger high pitch at vowel onset while lenis obstruents trigger low pitch [Jun (1993), (1998)]. Preliminary results suggest that fortis obstruents are acquired first, followed by aspirated, and then lenis. The segmental properties (e.g., voice onset time, breathy phonation) appropriate for the lenis category were acquired later than the pitch. In addition, unlike the universal tendencies, velar and labial consonants were acquired earlier than alveolar consonants. Factors affecting the order of acquisition, including frequency effect and perceptual salience, will be discussed.