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Synchronic grammars’, reconstruction, and the selection problem

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 June 2016

J. A. Creore
J. A. Creore*
Affiliation:
University of Alberta
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Extract

There are in principle infinitely many descriptions to fit the data of language, whether synchronic or diachronic. Although in practice one is seldom confronted with more than a few alternatives within any one descriptive system, the difficulty of choosing between these alternatives in a principled way has been well recognized since Chao. Two sorts of criteria have traditionally been and continue to be invoked more or less explicitly, criteria which may be subsumed under the headings of simplicity and naturalness. Historical linguists have long had to cope with certain sets of data for which neither type of criterion could dictate unique solutions. There is now a growing list of similar dilemmas in generative descriptions. The present paper presents a case where non-unique generative and reconstructional accounts

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique , Volume 17 , Issue 1 , Fall 1971 , pp. 16 - 26
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Linguistic Association 1971

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References

1 This is an extended version of a paper presented in May 1971 at the annual meeting of the Canadian Linguistic Association, St. John’s.

2 Chao, Y.-R., “The Non-uniqueness of Phonemic Solutions of Phonetic Systems,” Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica, 4.363–97 Google Scholar (1934) (repr. in Joos, Readings in Linguistics (Washington: ACLS, 1957)).

3 See in particular Newton, B. E., “Ordering Paradoxes in Phonology,” JL, 7.31–53 (1971).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 Standard generative notation does not favour either alternative. The rule for (2c), [+obs] → [+ voice]/V——V, is no simpler than the rule for (2b), [+obs] → [— voice]/V——V. The assimilatory nature of (2c) can only be captured if the symbol V is replaced by the supposedly more costly features it abreviates i.e., , or perhaps, .

5 For discussion and bibliography, see Chomsky, N. and Halle, M., The Sound Pattern of English (New York: Harper and Row, 1968).Google Scholar

6 The author is familiar with no generative analysis of Latin consonants. Preliminary research indicates that all segments shown are needed except for /kw/.

7 For generative analyses of Old French, see Walker, D., Old French Phonology and Morphology (Ph.D. dissertation, U.C. San Diego, 1971)Google Scholar and Gandotra, N., The French Verb: A Diachronic Analysis (M.A. thesis, University of Alberta, 1971).Google Scholar

8 The present discussion is based mainly on data from Pope, M. K., From Latin to Modern French (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1934, 1956).Google Scholar

9 See particularly the discussion of Slavic palatalization, pp. 421-426 (ref. in fn. 5).