| ROA: | 162 |
|---|---|
| Title: | Cues or Contexts in Feature Licensing Constraints |
| Authors: | Robert Kirchner |
| Comment: | |
| Length: | 10 |
| Abstract: | This paper explores a problem raised by current research into the phonetic bases of sound patterns. Steriade (1993, 1995, 1996) has proposed that the distribution of phonological contrasts is explained, not by a principle of Prosodic Licensing (Ito 1986, Goldsmith 1990) (licensing of features only in certain prosodic positions, e.g. onset position), but rather by the presence of sufficiently audible phonetic cues in the relevant contexts that signal these contrasts (these can be expressed as feature/cue cooccurrence constraints). The problem, as Steriade observes, is that the presence or absence of a cue in a given token of some utterance is often not dispositive of the distribution of a licensed feature specification. Rather, it is whether the licensing cue is TYPICALLY present or absent. My proposed solution involves consideration of the distinct effects of feature cooccurrence constraints (and surface well-formedness constraints generally) on speech recognition and production. I show that surface well-formedness constraints play no direct role in the recognition task: only input/output faithfulness constraints are active. Consequently, hearers can correctly recognize a contrastive distinction produced by someone else, although it would be neutralized in the output of their own grammar, due to the absence of the licensing cue in that token (cf. Smolensky 1996, contra Reiss and Hale 1996). As an aside, I consider how OT grammars can be applied to certain problems of speech recognition, including interspeaker variation and the role of top-down knowledge. As for production, the stability of the feature, notwithstanding variation of in the presence of the licensing cue in particular tokens, can be understood in terms of the effect of the feature cooccurrence constraint on underlying representations, a species of Stampean Occultation (Prince and Smolensky 1993, ch. 9). |
| Type: | Paper/tech report |
| Area/Keywords: | |
| Article: | Version 1 |