This book makes a fundamental contribution to phonology, linguistic typology, and the nature of the human language faculty. Distinctive features in phonology distinguish one meaningful sound from another. Since the mid-twentieth century they have been seen as a set characterizing all possible phonological distinctions and as an integral part of Universal Grammar, the innate language faculty underlying successive versions of Chomskyan generative theory. The usefulness of distinctive features in phonological analysis is uncontroversial, but the supposition that features are innate and universal rather than learned and language-specific has never, until now, been systematically tested. In his pioneering account Jeff Mielke presents the results of a crosslinguistic survey of natural classes of distinctive features covering almost six hundred of the world's languages drawn from a variety of different families. He shows that no theory is able to characterize more than 71 percent of classes, and further that current theories, deployed either singly or collectively, do not predict the range of classes that occur and recur. He reveals the existence of apparently unnatural classes in many languages. Even without these findings, he argues, there are reasons to doubt whether distinctive features are innate: for example, distinctive features used in signed languages are different from those in spoken languages, even though deafness is generally not hereditary. The author explains the grouping of sounds into classes and concludes by offering a unified account of what previously have been considered to be natural and unnatural classes. The data on which the analysis is based are freely available in a program downloadable from the publisher's web site.
Author(s): Jeff Mielke
Year: 2008
Language: English
Pages: 256
Contents......Page 6
Preface......Page 10
List of figures and tables......Page 13
Abbreviations......Page 17
1 Natural classes and distinctive features in phonology......Page 20
1.1 Natural class behavior......Page 21
1.2 Emergent feature theory......Page 26
1.3 Incorporating insights of innate features into emergent feature theory......Page 29
1.4 Definitions......Page 31
1.5.1 Signed language features......Page 34
1.5.2 No evidence that unattested = impossible......Page 39
1.5.3 No null hypothesis and no large-scale survey......Page 40
1.5.4 New theories without new evidence......Page 42
1.5.5 Dogs, fish, chickens, and humans......Page 44
1.5.6 Innate features recapitulate independently observable facts......Page 45
1.5.7 Summary......Page 47
1.6.1 Motivations for features......Page 49
1.6.2 Motivations for binarity......Page 50
1.6.3 Motivations for innateness......Page 51
1.7 Outline of the book......Page 53
2 Phonetic and psycholinguistic evidence......Page 55
2.1.1 Speech errors......Page 56
2.1.2 Quantal relations......Page 57
2.1.3 Perception......Page 58
2.1.4 Crosslinguistic differences......Page 59
2.2.1 Infant perception......Page 61
2.2.2 Developmental evidence......Page 63
2.2.3 MEG studies......Page 64
2.3 Summary......Page 65
3.1 Data collection......Page 66
3.2 Analysis......Page 68
4 Ambivalent segments......Page 75
4.1.1 Prototypically non-prototypical segments: lateral liquids......Page 77
4.1.2 Other continuants and non-continuants......Page 81
4.1.3 The ambivalence of nasals......Page 84
4.1.4 Lateral ambivalence in action......Page 87
4.1.5 Summary of results......Page 91
4.2 Discussion......Page 92
5.1 ''Emergence''......Page 97
5.2 Emergent features......Page 100
5.2.1 Sound change......Page 104
5.2.2 Phonetically based generalization......Page 105
5.2.3 Frequency......Page 114
5.2.4 Social factors......Page 116
5.3 The abstractness of emergent features......Page 117
5.4 Reinterpreting formal phonology......Page 119
5.5.1 Accounting for language data......Page 123
5.5.2 Toward a cognitive representation of phonology......Page 130
5.6 Summary......Page 131
6.1 Predictions of different models......Page 133
6.2 Overview......Page 136
6.3 Unnatural classes......Page 137
6.3.1 Crazy classes......Page 138
6.3.2 Recurrent phonetically natural ''unnatural'' classes......Page 143
6.3.3 Recurrent classes appearing to involve generalization in two directions......Page 148
6.4 Related patterns in related languages......Page 152
6.5 Recurrent phonetically unnatural classes......Page 162
7.1 Preliminaries, SPE, and Unified Feature Theory......Page 166
7.1.1 Place of articulation......Page 177
7.1.2 Phonetic correlates......Page 180
7.1.3 Defining unnatural classes......Page 182
7.2 Other feature theories......Page 184
7.3 Summary......Page 186
7.4 Towards a phonetic similarity model......Page 187
7.5 Conclusions......Page 190
8 The emergence of linguistic structure......Page 192
8.1 Formalization......Page 194
8.2 Explanation......Page 195
8.2.1 The Macro Model......Page 199
8.2.2 The Micro Model......Page 200
8.3 Combining models......Page 201
8.3.1 Production filters......Page 205
8.3.2 Perception filters......Page 207
8.3.3 Generalization......Page 208
8.3.4 Supermodel......Page 210
8.3.5 Submodels......Page 212
8.5 Conclusions......Page 216
Appendix A: Languages in the survey......Page 218
Appendix B: Detailed survey results......Page 233
Appendix C: Detailed phonetic similarity results......Page 246
References......Page 250
B......Page 284
D......Page 285
G......Page 286
J......Page 287
M......Page 288
O......Page 289
S......Page 290
U......Page 291
Z......Page 292
L......Page 293
V......Page 294
D......Page 295
G......Page 296
O......Page 297
S......Page 298
W......Page 299
