| ROA: | 330 |
|---|---|
| Title: | Lexical Phonology and the Lexicon |
| Authors: | James Myers |
| Comment: | 97 pp., Word 6 (for Mac) version requires IPAPhon, available at http://www.chass.utoronto.ca:8080/~rogers/fonts.html |
| Length: | 97 |
| Abstract: | Lexical Phonology and the Lexicon James Myers National Chung Cheng University, Taiwan This paper develops an Optimality-Theoretic model which views the knowledge of lexical phonology as essentially identical to knowledge of the surface forms of whole words listed in a specific lexicon, with generalizations arising from these words via analogy. This view is far more consistent with psycholinguistic evidence than standard generative approaches to lexical phonology, but it has hitherto been neglected due to two false assumptions: (a) analogy has no important empirical consequences for phonological theory; (b) analogy cannot be formalized within a generative approach. This paper refutes both of these assumptions. First, it is demonstrated that many familiar patterns of English lexical phonology are best described as emerging from interactions among specific words, rather than being imposed on the lexicon by general rules or universal constraints. For example, vowel shift, vowel shortening, and the Scottish Vowel Length Rule are shown to interact with irregular inflection in a way that cannot be handled in standard rule-based or constraint-based approaches, but can be handled quite intuitively with analogy. Second, it is demonstrated that analogy can be formalized within OT by simply combining three devices that are already independently motivated in the literature: parochial constraints (i.e. universal constraints parameterized to apply only to specific lexical items), output-output correspondence, and constraint conjunction. The formalism relies primarily on Faithfulness to enforce lexical patterns, specifically forbidding phonetically-motivated markedness constraints from playing a direct role in lexical phonology. This claim is supported through novel arguments involving the role of lexical frequency in lexical phonology, leading to the conclusion that unmarkedness in lexical phonology arises through Lexicon Optimization during language acquisition rather than through the high ranking of markedness constraints in the adult grammar. The Word 6.0 for the Mac version requires IPAPhon, available at http://www.chass.utoronto.ca:8080/~rogers/fonts.html. |
| Type: | Paper/tech report |
| Area/Keywords: | |
| Article: | Version 1 |