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Will the real revised standard theory please stand up?*
Journal of Phonetics (1980) 8, 53 - 62
Will the real revised standard theory please stand up?* Kimball L. Robinson Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, U.S.A. 47907 Received 12 May 1978
Abstract:
A revision of the Standard Theory of generative phonology to express phonologically the unity of the word instead of the unity of the morpheme will have a two-fold benefit: it will resolve an internal conflict in the theory of generative grammar, and it will allow generative phonology to predict phonological identification-something it cannot do in its unrevised form .
The basic assumptions The Standard Theory of generative phonology, principally set forth in Chomsky & Halle (1968; henceforth SPE), is based on many assumptions about the nature of grammars. We shall explore some consequences of two of these assumptions. First, the Standard Theory endorses a claim stating how phonology is related to the grammar as a whole: i.e. phonology is nonautonomous . In such a theory the phonological representations of utterances are governed by the lexical shapes of their constituent parts (perhaps with some readjustment and with contributions from the syntax). By way of contrast, autonomous phonological theories have phonological representations of utterances which are governed by the actual phonetic shapes of those utterances. A second assumption states how the grammar is to be evaluated; i.e. the value of a grammar is the reciprocal of the number of features used . This second assumption is the basis underlying the practice of combining partially similar rules through the use of abbreviatory conventions, and of seeking to maximize the use of rules, when once motivated, through the judicious choice of underlying representations . We shall focus here on only one quite specific methodological consequence of the second assumption, one which describes how generative phonologists of the standard persuasion decide whether two surface segments have the same or different underlying representations. It would generally be held that the stressed vowels of serene and obscene *The allusion to the title of Anderson's (1977) excellent review of the subsequent development of the Standard Theory of generative phonology is not intended to be disparaging. Rather, it is intended to suggest that a revised theory of phonology actually does follow naturally from recent revisions of the lexicon and lexical insertion within the Standard Theory. I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to Robert Hammarberg for an inordinate number of hours of discussion of the topics covered here and for forcing me to rethink the issues involved many times over the past couple of years. Any errors are, of course, my own. 0095-4470/80/010053+10 $02.00/0
© 1980 Academic Press Inc. (London) Ltd.
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must have the same underlying representation since they have the same phonetic realizations in the same environments([£] in laxing positions, [i] otherwise). Furthermore, it would be generally held that the vowel of keen must have this same underlying representation even though it does not occur in all of the same environments (it does not occur in a laxing environment) and does not have all of the same phonetic realizations (it lacks the [£] of the laxing environment). Its range of environment-realization pairings (ERPs) is a proper subset of the ranges of ERPs of the vowels of serene and obscene. Put the other way around , the range of ERPs of the vowel of serene totally includes the ranges of ERPs of the vowels of obscene and k een. We will use in the remainder of this study the following description of this methodological consequence of the second assumption: two segments have the same underlying representations if the range of ERPs of one of them totally includes the range ofERPs of the other. The lexicon revisited Due to the fact that a generative phonology is not an autonomous component, it is constrained by the internal logic of the grammar as a whole and takes part in many implicational relationships obtaining among the major components of the grammar. For example, in early generative phonology it was assumed that the syntax generated a string of morpheme-sized slots. This in turn required the lexicon to be a morpheme list in order for lexical insertion to work properly. Given the evaluation metric of the Standard Theory, the most economical morpheme list would be one in which each morpheme had a single shape. Thus, the phonological expression of the unity of the morpheme followed necessarily from the internal logic of the grammar, but was not itself a primitive of the theory. 1 In such a theory of phonology the English words serene and serenity, if they contain the same morpheme, must have the same phonological representation for this morpheme in both of these occurrences. The establishment of the correct phonological representations of morphemes in such alternations and the discovery of a set of rules which would convert these base forms into phonetic representations is the main descriptive task of such a generative phonology. In Halle (1973) quite a new picture of the lexicon is presented. While Halle still retains a morpheme list, he now also has a list of all of the words in the language with a word formation component mediating the two lists. This word form ation component is designed to account for our knowledge of what is a possible word as regards its morphology. However, he hypothesizes that this word formation component is only used generatively when a new word is coined. In normal sentence generation words are not coined anew, but are simply taken from the dictionary, which contains all of the words in the language, and inserted into word-sized slots generated by the syntax. There is now fairly general (although not universal) agreement that the lexicon is basically a word list, and that the grammar needs some sort of morphologica l component, whether interpretive, as in Jackendoff (1975), or generative, as in Aronoff ( 1974). The only way such drastic changes upstream can fail to have consequences for phonological representations is for the phonological representations to be autonomous of the rest of the grammar. But in the internal logic of a generative grammar an autonomous morphophonemics makes no more sense than an autonomous phonemics.
1
See the section Abstractness of revised representations for more discussion of this point.
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The internal logic which originally required that phonological representations express the unity of the morpheme was based on the supposition that the lexicon is a morpheme list. If one now supposes that the lexicon is a word list, then the same logic should require that phonological representation s express the unity of the word. These two requirements are not necessarily incompatible. Since morphemes are constituents of words, it necessari ly follows that if the constituent parts of words are invariant in their representation , then the words themselves will be invariant in their representation s. In thi s sense the Standard Theory of generative phonology has always met the requirement that phonological representati o ns express the unity of the word . The problem is that the requirement to express phonologically the unity of the word does not entail a requirement to express phonologically the unity of the morpheme. If the word serene is always given a single phonological representation, such as /s"Jrin /, and if the word serenity is a lso always given a single phonologica l representation, such as js"Jr8nltl/ , then the requirement to express phonologically the unity of the word is met, even though the allomorphs of the stem have quite different ph o nological shapes. A consistent internal organization of generative grammar now requires that phonological representations express the unity of the word, but thi s does not in turn require that they express the unity of the morpheme . If that additional requirement is to be imposed on phonological representations independent justification must be provided. Simply stating that we have always done it this way cannot be construed as adequate justification. In the remainder of this paper we will be examining the nature of a phonology in which phonological representations are required to express the unity of the word, but not of the morpheme.
Abstractness of revised representations It should be immediately obvious that the phonological representations in the revised theory will be more concrete, but let us note at the outset that not a ll "morphophonemic" representations (in the sense of autonomous phonemic theories which impose a hiuniqueness condition on phonological representations) will be eliminated by the revision. Indeed some will be required by it, especially in the area of external sa ndhi . A celebrated case where the revision of the Standard Theory will still impose a "morphophonemic" representation is that of the examples used in Halle's ( 1959) argument against the biuniqueness condition. For example, the Ru ssia n word mog "could" has the two phonetic shapes [mog] and [mok] , an alternation which must be considered morphophonemic in autonomous theories of phonology since Russian has both /g/ and / k/. But the requirement to express phonologically the unity of the word imposes a single shape on this word in all of its occurrences, so that it will have the same phonological representation (most likely / mog/) whether its phonetic realization is [mog] or [mok]. Consequently, the phonological representations which follow from the revisions of the syntax and lexicon in the Standard Theory are sti ll sufficiently abstract so as to be incompatible with a hiuniqueness condition in phonology. Halle's argument against the biuniqueness condition is often thought to be the basis for the phonological expression of the unity of the morpheme in the Standard Theory of generative phonology. It should now be quite clear that this is not the case. Rejection of the hi uniqueness condition does not provide a means of choosing between requirements to express the unity of the morpheme or the unity of the word, since both kinds of phonological representation are incompatible with this condition. The only solid basis for this
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requirement in the Standard Theory is the internal logic of a generative grammar with a lexicon as morpheme list.
Concreteness of revised representations Contrast the "morphophonemic" solution required for the Russian obstruent voicing alternation with a more concrete solution required for the English alternation seen in serene and serenity (and more generally for all of the Laxing versus Vowel Shift alternations ofSPE). The requirement to express the unity of the morpheme forced one to infer a single underlying representation for the two allomorphs. But the requirement to express the unity of the word frees one from this obligation. These are quite different words and the shape of one has no necessary implications for the shape of the other. Rather, in the revised version of the Standard Theory they must have quite different phonological representations of their stressed vowels since the second basic assumption only permits the same representation when the range of ERPs of one segment (of a word now, not of a morpheme) totally includes the range of ERPs of another. The range of ERPs of the /i/ of serene does not totally include the range of ERPs of the (£( of serenity and vice versa. Rather, the vowel of serene has precisely the same range of ERPs as the vowel of keen, while the vowel of serenity has the same range of ERPs as the vowel of Ken. The second basic assumption requires that serenity have the same vowel as Ken, and serene have the same vowel as keen . These two vowels must have different phonological representations .
Phonology and phonological perception Introduction Just what is the relation between the phonological representations of a language and the perception of the sounds of that language by its speakers is a question which has been variously answered in the history of linguistics. Swadesh (1934 : 32) held that "The phonemes of a language are, in a sense, percepts to the native speakers of the given language who ordinarily hear speech entirely in terms of these percepts." The opposing position in the heyday of phonemics was that speech perception is at best a " mentalistic" business and thus is outside the bounds of legitimate scientific inquiry. In generative phonology it is quite clear that speech perception, in particular the phenomenon of discrimination among speech sounds , is a matter to be taken seriously. In SPE there are numerous passages claiming that the phonetic representations are percepts to the native speaker. A person who knows the language should " hear" the predicted phonetic shapes . In particular, the careful and sophisticated impressionistic phonetician who knows the language should be able to bring this perceptual reality to the level of awareness, and there is ample evidence that phoneticians are capable of doing this . We take for granted, then, that phonetic representations describe a perceptual rea lity (p. 25).
However, there is a certain unease in SPE as to the perceptual status of phonological representations and how such representations relate to the phenomenon of identification of speech sounds. On the one hand, they suggest tha t maybe the morphophonemic representations they use have some perceptual reality : Correspondingly it would not be surprising to discover that an adequate theory of the production and perception of speech will find a place for a system of representation not unlike orthography, though there is, for the moment, little evidence that phonemic transcription is a "psychologically real" system in this sense (p. 49).
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On the other hand they are at some pains to explain why their systematic phonemic representations are also not psychologically real (not predictive of identifications?). They suggest that the reason for this is that language acquisition is not an instantaneous phenomenon. We have been describing acquisition of language as if it were an instantaneous process. Obviously, this is not true. A more realistic model of language acquisition would consider the order in which primary linguistic data are used by the child and the effects of preliminary " hypotheses" developed in the earlier stages of learning on the interpretation of new, often more complex, data . . . . this idealization must be kept in mind when we think about the problem of the "psychological reality" of the postulated mental structures (p. 331).
We feel, with Chomsky & Halle, that the phoneme-percept is not correctly predicted by autonomous phonemic representations. See Robinson, Daniloff & Green (1977) for an experimental verification of this position. We also believe, again with Chomsky & Halle, that the systematic phonemic representations of the Standard Theory are not percepts per se. See Robinson, 1978, for an extensive demonstration of this point. However, we are very hopeful that the revision of the Standard Theory to express phonologically the unity of the word, rather than of the morpheme, will result in phonological representations which are classificatory percepts that are predictive of identifications.
Phonological identification The fact that speakers of human languages identify quite different phonetic stimuli as being the same is a totally noncontroversial fact. The fact that speakers are able to perform these identifications at all is also of central importance in the study of speech perception. For example, the entire literature on categorical perception in phonology is based on the correlation between the results of two kinds of tests : discrimination tests and identification tests. The Standard Theory of generative phonology has never been successful as a predictor of identifications. It contains two systematic levels of representation : phonetic and morphophonemic. As a predictor of identifications the phonetic level fails, since it wrongly predicts that allophones will regularly be identified differently. But the morphophonemic level likewise fails since it wrongly predicts that allomorphs will regularly be identified as being phonologically the same. All substantive theories of phonology must have some language-independent form of phonetic representation, and this level of representation will never be a successful predictor of identifications in any theory of phonology, since the same stimuli will be identified quite differently in numerous instances from one language to another. 2 Therefore one must seek the reason for the Standard Theory's inability to predict identifications in its morphophonemic representations. The revision of the lexicon and of lexical insertion in the Standard Theory has the effect of permitting phonological representations which are much more concrete than morphophonemic representations, but which are still more abstract than phonetic or autonomous (biunique) phonemic representations. Thus they show strong promise of being able to correctly predict phonological identifications. 2
See Scholes (1968) for a demonstration of this point.
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K. L. Robinson The nonautonomy of phonological perception
While phonemic representations have traditionally done better than morphophonemic representations as predictors of identifications, autonomous phonemic representations fail to account for important facets of phonological perception. Consider, for example, the phenomenon of"phonemic restoration" (see Warren 1978 for a review of the literature on this and related phenomena). It has been shown that if a phoneme is excised from a sentence and is replaced with some noise (a cough, click , tone, buzz, etc.) subjects listening to the sentence are unable to determine which phoneme is missing (Warren, 1970). The missing phoneme is as real to them as if it were actually physically present. It cannot possibly be claimed that the phonemes perceived under phonemic restoration are justified by the actual phonetic shape of the utterance, as is required for autonomous phonemes. The perception of a phoneme which is not physically present in a sentence must be explained on some basis other than a simple template theory in which phonemes can be correctly identified only after being correctly pronounced . The perception of phonemes which are not physically present is more consistent with an analysis-by-synthesis theory (Halle & Stevens, 1964) in which the phoneme may be restored by the hearer from his own lexicon. The phonemes which follow from the revision of the Standard Theory are much like autonomous phonemes in that they do well as predictors of identifications, but they are "nonautonomous phonemes" and as such are also able to account for such phenomena as phonemic restoration. The nonautonomous nature of phonological perception has also been reported by linguists, even by some to whom the phenomenon may not have seemed attractive. For example, Contreras and Sa porta ( 1960) explored the possibility of validating phonological grammars experimentally. They restricted their study to the use of nonsense words (where, of course, the user's lexicon cannot supply the phonemes) presented to informants for repetition and judgments of grammaticality. The study was restricted to nonsense words because For example. an informant confronted with the pair wines-winds can ass ure us that they are different, even if he does not make any difference in his rendition of the items (p. 4).
In addition, they note that It became apparent during a pilot study that one potential variable in determining informants' response was whether or not one of the members was in fact a Spanish word . .. [This is] so strong a factor. that repetiti ons of the grammatical nonsense syllable [klu] 11·ere consistently repeated as the meaningful [kl ub ] 'club' of questionab le gramma ticalness (p . 8n) .
It would seem that these perceptions are only explainable on the basis of a nonautonomous phonology, but someone might object that these a re perceptions caused by the speaker's knowledge o f spelling. Consider next a case "hich cannot be attributed to spelling. Such a case is reported by Gudschinsky (1958) 11here the in1estiga tors 11ere attempting to develop an easily learned orthography for 1\lazatec. Gudschinsky discusses the behaviour of an informant (pp . 342- 343) in dealing 11 ith the identity of 11·ords a nd of phrases in a case where the phrases have phonetically identical tone patterns. but 11here their constituent word s have contrasting tone pa tterns 11 hen given in isolation . The informant judges the phrases to be different despite their phonetic identity. She sums up her results as follows:
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We concluded from our observations that for the Mazatecs the word was a basic unit-a psychologically real unit. This conclusion led to an immediate practical application; we adopted a semi-phonemic notation for our practical orthography; we wrote each word as it occurs in isolation . Morphemes within each word were written in the particular sandhi variant that resulted from internal sandhi: but nowhere did we let external sandhi be represented in writing. This notation proved highly satisfactory in teaching pupils to read and write tone, and the conclusions we had drawn from observing the informant's reaction were reinforced by comparable incidents in the classroom (p. 344).
Archisegmental representations and phonological perception In early generative phonology archisegmental representations were quite normal as phonological representations, but after Stanley (I 967) such representations were highly restricted in the Standard Theory. Recently Hooper (I 976) has again defended the use of archisegmental phonological representations, on the grounds that Stanley's arguments against them only become relevant in a phonology containing ordered rules, and that her phonology does not have ordered rules. Her solution is to use a quite Praguian kind of phonological representation with extensive use of archisegmental representations. Let us consider the effect that such extensive use of archisegmehtal representations will have on the adequacy of phonological representations as predictors of phonological identifications. All of the features of the first segment of spill are predictable once it is known that it is word-initial, that it is a consonant, and that it is followed by a consonant. If it is represented phonologically as simply [+consonantal], there are two possible identifications which might be predicted. One might predict that it is identified as the same as segments which have identical specifications, and different from all other segments. This correctly predicts that it is identified as the same as the first consonant of still, but it incorrectly predicts that it is identified as being different from the first consonant of silly. The j sj of silly has a different specification in that it is fully specified. The second prediction is that the first consonant of spill will be identified as being the same as all segments from which it is nondistinct. This correctly predicts that this segment will be identified as being the same as the first consonant of spill and the first consonant of silly, but it fails in the case of any member of the natural class of consonants except /s/ . A consonant specified solely as [+consonantal] is nondistinct from all members of the class defined by this feature, and so one should predict that the first consonant of spill will be identified as the same as the first consonant ofjoolish. The only possible way in which the identifications of the first consonant of spill can be correctly predicted is for this consonant to have fully the same specification as the first consonant of silly, which must be fully specified . Thus, it may not have an archisegmental representation if it is to be predictive of identifications. Note, however, that a more restricted use of archisegmental representations does seem to follow from the basic assumptions of the Standard Theory in its revised form . Consider the implications of the second basic assumption. Thus addition and edition, while they may often be homophonous, will have different underlying representations since the ranges of ERPs of the initial vowels of each is from schwa to a different full vowel. Neither range of ERPs totally includes the other. What, however, of the vowel of the suffix -ion? This vowel has no other realization than schwa, and this schwa is totally included in the range of ERPs of many English vowels. Obviously, it cannot simultaneously have all of those
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phonological representations, so the natural solution (which is actually used in SPE) is to leave it unspecified for those features which distinguish them. How does thi s fit in with predictions of identifi cation in phonology? One finds that the theory cannot make a uniqu e deci sion as to which of the vowels of English thi s schwa should be identified with, and on thi s basi s perha ps one should predict that English speakers also will have difficulty in maki ng the same deci sion. In other words, the Standard Theory as revised now seems to predict that there wi ll be in some cases confident j udgments of identification, probably made quickly by subjects and with a high degree of agreement. It also seems to predict that in other cases there will be insecure judgments of identification probably with slower decisions on the part of the subject, and with more disagreement. This difference in the degree of confidence in the informant' s identifications is well known to linguists. For example, Martinet (1961, p. 7) asserts, " .. . no one can question the fact that there is between big and beg a difference, lying somewhere in the middle of the two utterances . . . [but] it is far more risky to state that the two vowels of k itchen are the same." Our Revised Standard Theory makes precisely the prediction that the last vowel of kitchen, since it is al ways schwa, will have an archisegmental representation because its range of ERPs is totally included in the ranges of ERPs of many English vowels, and that the identification of this vowel with any of them will therefore be an insecure decision. Phonetic representations and phonological perception Venneman (1974) has suggested that detailed phonetic representations be entered into the lexicon in the case of nonalternating forms, even to the degree of indicating in the lexicon of English that the vowel of mint is to be specified as [+nasal] while the vowel of bit is to be specified as [-nasal]. Consider the effect of such a requirement on the ability of the phonology to predict phonological identifications. These two vowels would have different phonological representations and different phonetic representations, so that there is no possibility of predicting that English speakers will identify them as being the same. Yet English speakers do identify them as being the same. No such requirement follows from the Standard Theory as revised. Rather, the vowels will have precisely the same range of alternation as they are moved into the same range of environments (in spoonerisms etc.) and so must have the same phonological representations in the Standard Theory. The revised theory and other concrete theories In Kiparsky (1968) one finds the beginning of a movement to restrict the abstractness of phonological representations by adding various constraints to an otherwise standard generative phonology. His phonological representations are sufficiently concrete so that nonalternating forms will always have phonological representations which are transparent. The low level phonetic rules which follow them never cause neutralizations. This same theme is picked up again in Schane (1971) where rules are defined as being morphophonemic if they cause mergers of underlying representations, and phonemes are defined as being the output of morphophonemic rules. The most recent version of this theme seems to be put forth in Houlihan and Iverson (1977) where rules are yet again considered morphophonemic if they cause mergers of underlying representations. Note that in any case where a rule of external sandhi is a rule causing neutralization, the phonological representations of the revised Standard Theory can be more abstract
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than those permitted by the "no-neutralization" theories. For example, Schane (1971 ) explicitly cites the Russian obstruent voicing rule as being morphophonemic in the case of Russian mag and mok , and the phonemes are the output of this rule. Our nonautonomous phonemes, however, must be sufficiently abstract so as to be the input to this rule, making our phonological representations incompatible with " phonemes" in a no-neutralization scheme. In several versions of Natural Phonology the abstractness of phonological representations seems to be identical to the abstractness of those of the Revised Standard Theory. For example, in Stampe (1 973) the phonological representations are largely phonemic, but morphophonem ic in cases of external sandhi such as for German final obstruents. It is argued by Natural Phonologi sts that the phonological representations follow necessarily from the interplay of natural processes, and it seems to us that this is quite probably true. However, there does not yet exist an inventory of the full set of natural processes, and one must still do phonological analysi s. Conclusions It has not been our purpose here to strongly defend the Standard Theory of generative
phonology against attacks from various other current phonological theories. Rather, we hope to have made clear that a relatively simple modification elsewhere in the grammar results in the abstractness and power of the Standard Theory being sharply weakened without the need to add ever more constraints and conditions to the unrevised model. If this goal is so naturally achieved-a goal which is held by a clear majority of practicing phonologists-then the revised Standard Theory should be carefully examined to see whether the revision which allowed this goal to be achieved holds up when subjected to more careful scrutiny in the areas covered here and in many others as well. We invite discussion of this topic. References Anderson, S. (1977). On the subsequent development of the standard theory in phonology. Paper read at the Conference on the Differentiation of Phonological Theories, Indiana University, September, 1977. Aronoff, M. (1974). Word Formation. MIT Ph.D. Dissertation. Chomsky, N. & Halle, M. (1968). Sound Pahern of English . New York: Harper and Row. Contreras, H. & Saporta, S. (1960). The validation of phonological grammars. Lingua 9, 1-15. Gudschinsky, S. (1958). Native reactions to tones and words in Mazatec. Word 14, 338-345. Halle, M. (1959) . Th e Sound Pattern of Russian. The Hague : Mouton. Halle, M. (1973). Prolegomena to a theory of word formation. Linguistic Inquiry 4, 3-16. Halle, M. & Stevens , K. N . (1964). Speech recognition : a model and a program for research. In The Structure of Language Fodor, J. & Katz, J. eds), pp. 604-612. Englewood Cliffs : Prentice Hall. Hooper, J. (1976). An Introduction to Natural Generative Phonology. New York: Academic Press. Houlihan, K. & Iverson, G . (1977). Functionally-constrained Phonology. Paper read at the Conference on the Differentiation of Phonological Theories, Indiana University, September, 1977. Jackendoff, R. (1975). Morphological and Semantic Regularities in the Lexicon. Language 51, 639-671. Kiparsky, P. (1968). How AbSlract is Phonology ? Bloomington: Indiana University Linguistics Club. Makkai, V. B. (1972). Phonological Theory: Evolution and Current Practice. New York : Holt, Rinehart, & Winston. Martinet, A. (1961). A Functional View of Language. Oxford: The Clarendon Press. Robinson, K. (1978). Generative Phonology and Phonological Identification. To appear in Journal of Phonetics. Schane, S. (1971). The Phoneme Revisited . Language, 47, 503-521. Scholes, R. J. (1968). Phonemic Interference as a Perceptual Phenomenon. Language and Speech 11, 86-103.
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Stampe, D . (1973). A Dissertation in Natural Phonology. University of Chicago Ph.D. Dissertation . Swadesh, M. (1934). The Phonemic Principle. Phonological Theory: Evolution and Current Practice . (Makkai, V. B. ed.). New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1972, 32-39. Venneman, T. (1974). Word and Syllables in Natural Generative Phonology. Parasession on Natural Phonology. pp. 346- 374. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society. Warren, R. (1970). Perceptual Restoration of Missing Speech Sounds . Science 167, 392-393. Warren, R. (1976). Auditory Illusions and Perceptual Processes. In Contemporary Issues in Experimental Phonetics (Lass, N . J. ed.) New York : Academic Press.
Will the real revised standard theory please stand up?* Kimball L. Robinson Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, U.S.A. 47907 Received 12 May 1978
Abstract:
A revision of the Standard Theory of generative phonology to express phonologically the unity of the word instead of the unity of the morpheme will have a two-fold benefit: it will resolve an internal conflict in the theory of generative grammar, and it will allow generative phonology to predict phonological identification-something it cannot do in its unrevised form .
The basic assumptions The Standard Theory of generative phonology, principally set forth in Chomsky & Halle (1968; henceforth SPE), is based on many assumptions about the nature of grammars. We shall explore some consequences of two of these assumptions. First, the Standard Theory endorses a claim stating how phonology is related to the grammar as a whole: i.e. phonology is nonautonomous . In such a theory the phonological representations of utterances are governed by the lexical shapes of their constituent parts (perhaps with some readjustment and with contributions from the syntax). By way of contrast, autonomous phonological theories have phonological representations of utterances which are governed by the actual phonetic shapes of those utterances. A second assumption states how the grammar is to be evaluated; i.e. the value of a grammar is the reciprocal of the number of features used . This second assumption is the basis underlying the practice of combining partially similar rules through the use of abbreviatory conventions, and of seeking to maximize the use of rules, when once motivated, through the judicious choice of underlying representations . We shall focus here on only one quite specific methodological consequence of the second assumption, one which describes how generative phonologists of the standard persuasion decide whether two surface segments have the same or different underlying representations. It would generally be held that the stressed vowels of serene and obscene *The allusion to the title of Anderson's (1977) excellent review of the subsequent development of the Standard Theory of generative phonology is not intended to be disparaging. Rather, it is intended to suggest that a revised theory of phonology actually does follow naturally from recent revisions of the lexicon and lexical insertion within the Standard Theory. I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to Robert Hammarberg for an inordinate number of hours of discussion of the topics covered here and for forcing me to rethink the issues involved many times over the past couple of years. Any errors are, of course, my own. 0095-4470/80/010053+10 $02.00/0
© 1980 Academic Press Inc. (London) Ltd.
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must have the same underlying representation since they have the same phonetic realizations in the same environments([£] in laxing positions, [i] otherwise). Furthermore, it would be generally held that the vowel of keen must have this same underlying representation even though it does not occur in all of the same environments (it does not occur in a laxing environment) and does not have all of the same phonetic realizations (it lacks the [£] of the laxing environment). Its range of environment-realization pairings (ERPs) is a proper subset of the ranges of ERPs of the vowels of serene and obscene. Put the other way around , the range of ERPs of the vowel of serene totally includes the ranges of ERPs of the vowels of obscene and k een. We will use in the remainder of this study the following description of this methodological consequence of the second assumption: two segments have the same underlying representations if the range of ERPs of one of them totally includes the range ofERPs of the other. The lexicon revisited Due to the fact that a generative phonology is not an autonomous component, it is constrained by the internal logic of the grammar as a whole and takes part in many implicational relationships obtaining among the major components of the grammar. For example, in early generative phonology it was assumed that the syntax generated a string of morpheme-sized slots. This in turn required the lexicon to be a morpheme list in order for lexical insertion to work properly. Given the evaluation metric of the Standard Theory, the most economical morpheme list would be one in which each morpheme had a single shape. Thus, the phonological expression of the unity of the morpheme followed necessarily from the internal logic of the grammar, but was not itself a primitive of the theory. 1 In such a theory of phonology the English words serene and serenity, if they contain the same morpheme, must have the same phonological representation for this morpheme in both of these occurrences. The establishment of the correct phonological representations of morphemes in such alternations and the discovery of a set of rules which would convert these base forms into phonetic representations is the main descriptive task of such a generative phonology. In Halle (1973) quite a new picture of the lexicon is presented. While Halle still retains a morpheme list, he now also has a list of all of the words in the language with a word formation component mediating the two lists. This word form ation component is designed to account for our knowledge of what is a possible word as regards its morphology. However, he hypothesizes that this word formation component is only used generatively when a new word is coined. In normal sentence generation words are not coined anew, but are simply taken from the dictionary, which contains all of the words in the language, and inserted into word-sized slots generated by the syntax. There is now fairly general (although not universal) agreement that the lexicon is basically a word list, and that the grammar needs some sort of morphologica l component, whether interpretive, as in Jackendoff (1975), or generative, as in Aronoff ( 1974). The only way such drastic changes upstream can fail to have consequences for phonological representations is for the phonological representations to be autonomous of the rest of the grammar. But in the internal logic of a generative grammar an autonomous morphophonemics makes no more sense than an autonomous phonemics.
1
See the section Abstractness of revised representations for more discussion of this point.
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The internal logic which originally required that phonological representations express the unity of the morpheme was based on the supposition that the lexicon is a morpheme list. If one now supposes that the lexicon is a word list, then the same logic should require that phonological representation s express the unity of the word. These two requirements are not necessarily incompatible. Since morphemes are constituents of words, it necessari ly follows that if the constituent parts of words are invariant in their representation , then the words themselves will be invariant in their representation s. In thi s sense the Standard Theory of generative phonology has always met the requirement that phonological representati o ns express the unity of the word . The problem is that the requirement to express phonologically the unity of the word does not entail a requirement to express phonologically the unity of the morpheme. If the word serene is always given a single phonological representation, such as /s"Jrin /, and if the word serenity is a lso always given a single phonologica l representation, such as js"Jr8nltl/ , then the requirement to express phonologically the unity of the word is met, even though the allomorphs of the stem have quite different ph o nological shapes. A consistent internal organization of generative grammar now requires that phonological representations express the unity of the word, but thi s does not in turn require that they express the unity of the morpheme . If that additional requirement is to be imposed on phonological representations independent justification must be provided. Simply stating that we have always done it this way cannot be construed as adequate justification. In the remainder of this paper we will be examining the nature of a phonology in which phonological representations are required to express the unity of the word, but not of the morpheme.
Abstractness of revised representations It should be immediately obvious that the phonological representations in the revised theory will be more concrete, but let us note at the outset that not a ll "morphophonemic" representations (in the sense of autonomous phonemic theories which impose a hiuniqueness condition on phonological representations) will be eliminated by the revision. Indeed some will be required by it, especially in the area of external sa ndhi . A celebrated case where the revision of the Standard Theory will still impose a "morphophonemic" representation is that of the examples used in Halle's ( 1959) argument against the biuniqueness condition. For example, the Ru ssia n word mog "could" has the two phonetic shapes [mog] and [mok] , an alternation which must be considered morphophonemic in autonomous theories of phonology since Russian has both /g/ and / k/. But the requirement to express phonologically the unity of the word imposes a single shape on this word in all of its occurrences, so that it will have the same phonological representation (most likely / mog/) whether its phonetic realization is [mog] or [mok]. Consequently, the phonological representations which follow from the revisions of the syntax and lexicon in the Standard Theory are sti ll sufficiently abstract so as to be incompatible with a hiuniqueness condition in phonology. Halle's argument against the biuniqueness condition is often thought to be the basis for the phonological expression of the unity of the morpheme in the Standard Theory of generative phonology. It should now be quite clear that this is not the case. Rejection of the hi uniqueness condition does not provide a means of choosing between requirements to express the unity of the morpheme or the unity of the word, since both kinds of phonological representation are incompatible with this condition. The only solid basis for this
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requirement in the Standard Theory is the internal logic of a generative grammar with a lexicon as morpheme list.
Concreteness of revised representations Contrast the "morphophonemic" solution required for the Russian obstruent voicing alternation with a more concrete solution required for the English alternation seen in serene and serenity (and more generally for all of the Laxing versus Vowel Shift alternations ofSPE). The requirement to express the unity of the morpheme forced one to infer a single underlying representation for the two allomorphs. But the requirement to express the unity of the word frees one from this obligation. These are quite different words and the shape of one has no necessary implications for the shape of the other. Rather, in the revised version of the Standard Theory they must have quite different phonological representations of their stressed vowels since the second basic assumption only permits the same representation when the range of ERPs of one segment (of a word now, not of a morpheme) totally includes the range of ERPs of another. The range of ERPs of the /i/ of serene does not totally include the range of ERPs of the (£( of serenity and vice versa. Rather, the vowel of serene has precisely the same range of ERPs as the vowel of keen, while the vowel of serenity has the same range of ERPs as the vowel of Ken. The second basic assumption requires that serenity have the same vowel as Ken, and serene have the same vowel as keen . These two vowels must have different phonological representations .
Phonology and phonological perception Introduction Just what is the relation between the phonological representations of a language and the perception of the sounds of that language by its speakers is a question which has been variously answered in the history of linguistics. Swadesh (1934 : 32) held that "The phonemes of a language are, in a sense, percepts to the native speakers of the given language who ordinarily hear speech entirely in terms of these percepts." The opposing position in the heyday of phonemics was that speech perception is at best a " mentalistic" business and thus is outside the bounds of legitimate scientific inquiry. In generative phonology it is quite clear that speech perception, in particular the phenomenon of discrimination among speech sounds , is a matter to be taken seriously. In SPE there are numerous passages claiming that the phonetic representations are percepts to the native speaker. A person who knows the language should " hear" the predicted phonetic shapes . In particular, the careful and sophisticated impressionistic phonetician who knows the language should be able to bring this perceptual reality to the level of awareness, and there is ample evidence that phoneticians are capable of doing this . We take for granted, then, that phonetic representations describe a perceptual rea lity (p. 25).
However, there is a certain unease in SPE as to the perceptual status of phonological representations and how such representations relate to the phenomenon of identification of speech sounds. On the one hand, they suggest tha t maybe the morphophonemic representations they use have some perceptual reality : Correspondingly it would not be surprising to discover that an adequate theory of the production and perception of speech will find a place for a system of representation not unlike orthography, though there is, for the moment, little evidence that phonemic transcription is a "psychologically real" system in this sense (p. 49).
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On the other hand they are at some pains to explain why their systematic phonemic representations are also not psychologically real (not predictive of identifications?). They suggest that the reason for this is that language acquisition is not an instantaneous phenomenon. We have been describing acquisition of language as if it were an instantaneous process. Obviously, this is not true. A more realistic model of language acquisition would consider the order in which primary linguistic data are used by the child and the effects of preliminary " hypotheses" developed in the earlier stages of learning on the interpretation of new, often more complex, data . . . . this idealization must be kept in mind when we think about the problem of the "psychological reality" of the postulated mental structures (p. 331).
We feel, with Chomsky & Halle, that the phoneme-percept is not correctly predicted by autonomous phonemic representations. See Robinson, Daniloff & Green (1977) for an experimental verification of this position. We also believe, again with Chomsky & Halle, that the systematic phonemic representations of the Standard Theory are not percepts per se. See Robinson, 1978, for an extensive demonstration of this point. However, we are very hopeful that the revision of the Standard Theory to express phonologically the unity of the word, rather than of the morpheme, will result in phonological representations which are classificatory percepts that are predictive of identifications.
Phonological identification The fact that speakers of human languages identify quite different phonetic stimuli as being the same is a totally noncontroversial fact. The fact that speakers are able to perform these identifications at all is also of central importance in the study of speech perception. For example, the entire literature on categorical perception in phonology is based on the correlation between the results of two kinds of tests : discrimination tests and identification tests. The Standard Theory of generative phonology has never been successful as a predictor of identifications. It contains two systematic levels of representation : phonetic and morphophonemic. As a predictor of identifications the phonetic level fails, since it wrongly predicts that allophones will regularly be identified differently. But the morphophonemic level likewise fails since it wrongly predicts that allomorphs will regularly be identified as being phonologically the same. All substantive theories of phonology must have some language-independent form of phonetic representation, and this level of representation will never be a successful predictor of identifications in any theory of phonology, since the same stimuli will be identified quite differently in numerous instances from one language to another. 2 Therefore one must seek the reason for the Standard Theory's inability to predict identifications in its morphophonemic representations. The revision of the lexicon and of lexical insertion in the Standard Theory has the effect of permitting phonological representations which are much more concrete than morphophonemic representations, but which are still more abstract than phonetic or autonomous (biunique) phonemic representations. Thus they show strong promise of being able to correctly predict phonological identifications. 2
See Scholes (1968) for a demonstration of this point.
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K. L. Robinson The nonautonomy of phonological perception
While phonemic representations have traditionally done better than morphophonemic representations as predictors of identifications, autonomous phonemic representations fail to account for important facets of phonological perception. Consider, for example, the phenomenon of"phonemic restoration" (see Warren 1978 for a review of the literature on this and related phenomena). It has been shown that if a phoneme is excised from a sentence and is replaced with some noise (a cough, click , tone, buzz, etc.) subjects listening to the sentence are unable to determine which phoneme is missing (Warren, 1970). The missing phoneme is as real to them as if it were actually physically present. It cannot possibly be claimed that the phonemes perceived under phonemic restoration are justified by the actual phonetic shape of the utterance, as is required for autonomous phonemes. The perception of a phoneme which is not physically present in a sentence must be explained on some basis other than a simple template theory in which phonemes can be correctly identified only after being correctly pronounced . The perception of phonemes which are not physically present is more consistent with an analysis-by-synthesis theory (Halle & Stevens, 1964) in which the phoneme may be restored by the hearer from his own lexicon. The phonemes which follow from the revision of the Standard Theory are much like autonomous phonemes in that they do well as predictors of identifications, but they are "nonautonomous phonemes" and as such are also able to account for such phenomena as phonemic restoration. The nonautonomous nature of phonological perception has also been reported by linguists, even by some to whom the phenomenon may not have seemed attractive. For example, Contreras and Sa porta ( 1960) explored the possibility of validating phonological grammars experimentally. They restricted their study to the use of nonsense words (where, of course, the user's lexicon cannot supply the phonemes) presented to informants for repetition and judgments of grammaticality. The study was restricted to nonsense words because For example. an informant confronted with the pair wines-winds can ass ure us that they are different, even if he does not make any difference in his rendition of the items (p. 4).
In addition, they note that It became apparent during a pilot study that one potential variable in determining informants' response was whether or not one of the members was in fact a Spanish word . .. [This is] so strong a factor. that repetiti ons of the grammatical nonsense syllable [klu] 11·ere consistently repeated as the meaningful [kl ub ] 'club' of questionab le gramma ticalness (p . 8n) .
It would seem that these perceptions are only explainable on the basis of a nonautonomous phonology, but someone might object that these a re perceptions caused by the speaker's knowledge o f spelling. Consider next a case "hich cannot be attributed to spelling. Such a case is reported by Gudschinsky (1958) 11here the in1estiga tors 11ere attempting to develop an easily learned orthography for 1\lazatec. Gudschinsky discusses the behaviour of an informant (pp . 342- 343) in dealing 11 ith the identity of 11·ords a nd of phrases in a case where the phrases have phonetically identical tone patterns. but 11here their constituent word s have contrasting tone pa tterns 11 hen given in isolation . The informant judges the phrases to be different despite their phonetic identity. She sums up her results as follows:
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We concluded from our observations that for the Mazatecs the word was a basic unit-a psychologically real unit. This conclusion led to an immediate practical application; we adopted a semi-phonemic notation for our practical orthography; we wrote each word as it occurs in isolation . Morphemes within each word were written in the particular sandhi variant that resulted from internal sandhi: but nowhere did we let external sandhi be represented in writing. This notation proved highly satisfactory in teaching pupils to read and write tone, and the conclusions we had drawn from observing the informant's reaction were reinforced by comparable incidents in the classroom (p. 344).
Archisegmental representations and phonological perception In early generative phonology archisegmental representations were quite normal as phonological representations, but after Stanley (I 967) such representations were highly restricted in the Standard Theory. Recently Hooper (I 976) has again defended the use of archisegmental phonological representations, on the grounds that Stanley's arguments against them only become relevant in a phonology containing ordered rules, and that her phonology does not have ordered rules. Her solution is to use a quite Praguian kind of phonological representation with extensive use of archisegmental representations. Let us consider the effect that such extensive use of archisegmehtal representations will have on the adequacy of phonological representations as predictors of phonological identifications. All of the features of the first segment of spill are predictable once it is known that it is word-initial, that it is a consonant, and that it is followed by a consonant. If it is represented phonologically as simply [+consonantal], there are two possible identifications which might be predicted. One might predict that it is identified as the same as segments which have identical specifications, and different from all other segments. This correctly predicts that it is identified as the same as the first consonant of still, but it incorrectly predicts that it is identified as being different from the first consonant of silly. The j sj of silly has a different specification in that it is fully specified. The second prediction is that the first consonant of spill will be identified as being the same as all segments from which it is nondistinct. This correctly predicts that this segment will be identified as being the same as the first consonant of spill and the first consonant of silly, but it fails in the case of any member of the natural class of consonants except /s/ . A consonant specified solely as [+consonantal] is nondistinct from all members of the class defined by this feature, and so one should predict that the first consonant of spill will be identified as the same as the first consonant ofjoolish. The only possible way in which the identifications of the first consonant of spill can be correctly predicted is for this consonant to have fully the same specification as the first consonant of silly, which must be fully specified . Thus, it may not have an archisegmental representation if it is to be predictive of identifications. Note, however, that a more restricted use of archisegmental representations does seem to follow from the basic assumptions of the Standard Theory in its revised form . Consider the implications of the second basic assumption. Thus addition and edition, while they may often be homophonous, will have different underlying representations since the ranges of ERPs of the initial vowels of each is from schwa to a different full vowel. Neither range of ERPs totally includes the other. What, however, of the vowel of the suffix -ion? This vowel has no other realization than schwa, and this schwa is totally included in the range of ERPs of many English vowels. Obviously, it cannot simultaneously have all of those
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phonological representations, so the natural solution (which is actually used in SPE) is to leave it unspecified for those features which distinguish them. How does thi s fit in with predictions of identifi cation in phonology? One finds that the theory cannot make a uniqu e deci sion as to which of the vowels of English thi s schwa should be identified with, and on thi s basi s perha ps one should predict that English speakers also will have difficulty in maki ng the same deci sion. In other words, the Standard Theory as revised now seems to predict that there wi ll be in some cases confident j udgments of identification, probably made quickly by subjects and with a high degree of agreement. It also seems to predict that in other cases there will be insecure judgments of identification probably with slower decisions on the part of the subject, and with more disagreement. This difference in the degree of confidence in the informant' s identifications is well known to linguists. For example, Martinet (1961, p. 7) asserts, " .. . no one can question the fact that there is between big and beg a difference, lying somewhere in the middle of the two utterances . . . [but] it is far more risky to state that the two vowels of k itchen are the same." Our Revised Standard Theory makes precisely the prediction that the last vowel of kitchen, since it is al ways schwa, will have an archisegmental representation because its range of ERPs is totally included in the ranges of ERPs of many English vowels, and that the identification of this vowel with any of them will therefore be an insecure decision. Phonetic representations and phonological perception Venneman (1974) has suggested that detailed phonetic representations be entered into the lexicon in the case of nonalternating forms, even to the degree of indicating in the lexicon of English that the vowel of mint is to be specified as [+nasal] while the vowel of bit is to be specified as [-nasal]. Consider the effect of such a requirement on the ability of the phonology to predict phonological identifications. These two vowels would have different phonological representations and different phonetic representations, so that there is no possibility of predicting that English speakers will identify them as being the same. Yet English speakers do identify them as being the same. No such requirement follows from the Standard Theory as revised. Rather, the vowels will have precisely the same range of alternation as they are moved into the same range of environments (in spoonerisms etc.) and so must have the same phonological representations in the Standard Theory. The revised theory and other concrete theories In Kiparsky (1968) one finds the beginning of a movement to restrict the abstractness of phonological representations by adding various constraints to an otherwise standard generative phonology. His phonological representations are sufficiently concrete so that nonalternating forms will always have phonological representations which are transparent. The low level phonetic rules which follow them never cause neutralizations. This same theme is picked up again in Schane (1971) where rules are defined as being morphophonemic if they cause mergers of underlying representations, and phonemes are defined as being the output of morphophonemic rules. The most recent version of this theme seems to be put forth in Houlihan and Iverson (1977) where rules are yet again considered morphophonemic if they cause mergers of underlying representations. Note that in any case where a rule of external sandhi is a rule causing neutralization, the phonological representations of the revised Standard Theory can be more abstract
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than those permitted by the "no-neutralization" theories. For example, Schane (1971 ) explicitly cites the Russian obstruent voicing rule as being morphophonemic in the case of Russian mag and mok , and the phonemes are the output of this rule. Our nonautonomous phonemes, however, must be sufficiently abstract so as to be the input to this rule, making our phonological representations incompatible with " phonemes" in a no-neutralization scheme. In several versions of Natural Phonology the abstractness of phonological representations seems to be identical to the abstractness of those of the Revised Standard Theory. For example, in Stampe (1 973) the phonological representations are largely phonemic, but morphophonem ic in cases of external sandhi such as for German final obstruents. It is argued by Natural Phonologi sts that the phonological representations follow necessarily from the interplay of natural processes, and it seems to us that this is quite probably true. However, there does not yet exist an inventory of the full set of natural processes, and one must still do phonological analysi s. Conclusions It has not been our purpose here to strongly defend the Standard Theory of generative
phonology against attacks from various other current phonological theories. Rather, we hope to have made clear that a relatively simple modification elsewhere in the grammar results in the abstractness and power of the Standard Theory being sharply weakened without the need to add ever more constraints and conditions to the unrevised model. If this goal is so naturally achieved-a goal which is held by a clear majority of practicing phonologists-then the revised Standard Theory should be carefully examined to see whether the revision which allowed this goal to be achieved holds up when subjected to more careful scrutiny in the areas covered here and in many others as well. We invite discussion of this topic. References Anderson, S. (1977). On the subsequent development of the standard theory in phonology. Paper read at the Conference on the Differentiation of Phonological Theories, Indiana University, September, 1977. Aronoff, M. (1974). Word Formation. MIT Ph.D. Dissertation. Chomsky, N. & Halle, M. (1968). Sound Pahern of English . New York: Harper and Row. Contreras, H. & Saporta, S. (1960). The validation of phonological grammars. Lingua 9, 1-15. Gudschinsky, S. (1958). Native reactions to tones and words in Mazatec. Word 14, 338-345. Halle, M. (1959) . Th e Sound Pattern of Russian. The Hague : Mouton. Halle, M. (1973). Prolegomena to a theory of word formation. Linguistic Inquiry 4, 3-16. Halle, M. & Stevens , K. N . (1964). Speech recognition : a model and a program for research. In The Structure of Language Fodor, J. & Katz, J. eds), pp. 604-612. Englewood Cliffs : Prentice Hall. Hooper, J. (1976). An Introduction to Natural Generative Phonology. New York: Academic Press. Houlihan, K. & Iverson, G . (1977). Functionally-constrained Phonology. Paper read at the Conference on the Differentiation of Phonological Theories, Indiana University, September, 1977. Jackendoff, R. (1975). Morphological and Semantic Regularities in the Lexicon. Language 51, 639-671. Kiparsky, P. (1968). How AbSlract is Phonology ? Bloomington: Indiana University Linguistics Club. Makkai, V. B. (1972). Phonological Theory: Evolution and Current Practice. New York : Holt, Rinehart, & Winston. Martinet, A. (1961). A Functional View of Language. Oxford: The Clarendon Press. Robinson, K. (1978). Generative Phonology and Phonological Identification. To appear in Journal of Phonetics. Schane, S. (1971). The Phoneme Revisited . Language, 47, 503-521. Scholes, R. J. (1968). Phonemic Interference as a Perceptual Phenomenon. Language and Speech 11, 86-103.
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Stampe, D . (1973). A Dissertation in Natural Phonology. University of Chicago Ph.D. Dissertation . Swadesh, M. (1934). The Phonemic Principle. Phonological Theory: Evolution and Current Practice . (Makkai, V. B. ed.). New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1972, 32-39. Venneman, T. (1974). Word and Syllables in Natural Generative Phonology. Parasession on Natural Phonology. pp. 346- 374. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society. Warren, R. (1970). Perceptual Restoration of Missing Speech Sounds . Science 167, 392-393. Warren, R. (1976). Auditory Illusions and Perceptual Processes. In Contemporary Issues in Experimental Phonetics (Lass, N . J. ed.) New York : Academic Press.