English Phonology

262 Pages·1993·10.759 MB·English

by  John T. Jensen

ENGLISH PHONOLOGY
AMSTERDAM STUDIES IN THE THEORY AND
HISTORY OF LINGUISTIC SCIENCE
General Editor
E.F. KONRAD KOERNER
(University of Ottawa)
Series IV - CURRENT ISSUES IN LINGUISTIC THEORY
Advisory Editorial Board
Henning Andersen (Los Angeles); Raimo Anttila (Los Angeles)
Thomas V. Gamkrelidze (Tbilisi); John E. Joseph (Hong Kong)
Hans-Heinrich Lieb (Berlin); Ernst Pulgram (Ann Arbor, Mich.)
E. Wyn Roberts (Vancouver, B.C.); Danny Steinberg (Tokyo)
Volume 99
John T. Jensen
English Phonology
ENGLISH
PHONOLOGY
JOHN T. JENSEN
University of Ottawa
JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY
AMSTERDAM/PHILADELPHIA
1993
Illustration on cover by Judith A. Miller
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American
National Standard for Information Sciences — Permanence of Paper for Printed
Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48–1984.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Jensen, John T. (John Tillotson)
English phonology / John T. Jensen.
p. cm. -- (Amsterdam studies in the theory and history of linguistic science.
Series IV, Current issues in linguistic theory, ISSN 0304–0763; v. 99)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. English language-Phonology. I. Title. II. Series.
PE1133.J46 1993
421-dc20 93–36898
ISBN 90 272 3600 3 (Eur.) / 1–55619–551-6 (US) (Hb. alk. paper) CIP
ISBN 90 272 3601 1 (Eur.) /1–55619–555–9 (US) (Pb. alk. paper)
© Copyright 1993 - John T. Jensen.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or
any other means, without written permission from the publisher.
John Benjamins Publishing Co. P.O. Box 75577 1070 AN Amsterdam Netherlands
John Benjamins North America 821 Bethlehem Pike Philadelphia, PA 19118 USA
Contents
Preface ix
1 Introduction 1
1.1 Phonology before SPE 1
1.2 SPE phonology 7
1.3 Phonological theory since SPE 11
1.3.1 Autosegmental phonology 11
1.3.2 Metrical phonology 15
1.3.3 Prosodic phonology 17
1.3.4 Underspecification theory 18
1.3.5 Lexical phonology 20
1.4 What is English? 21
1.5 Overview 22
2 Segmental phonology 25
2.1 Levels of representation 25
2.2 English consonants 28
2.2.1 Glottal stop 28
2.2.2 Voiceless [w] 29
2.2.3 Affricates...0. 29
2.2.4 Distinctive features of English consonants 30
2.2.5 Segments with restricted distribution 32
2.3 English vowels 34
2.3.1 Short, lax vowels 34
2.3.2 Tense vowels and diphthongs 35
vi CONTENTS
2.3.3 Diphthongs as single units 37
2.4 Towards systematic phonemics 38
2.5 Phonology and orthography 42
2.6 Exercises 44
3 The syllable and the mora 47
3.1 CV syllables 47
3.2 More complex syllables 52
3.3 The syllable in SPE 55
3.4 The internal structure of the syllable 58
3.4.1 The syllable boundary approach 58
3.4.2 The autosegmental approach 59
3.4.3 The constituent structure approach 62
3.4.4 The moraic approach 62
3.5 The syllable in English 65
3.5.1 The onset 65
3.5.2 The coda 68
3.5.3 The Coda Condition 70
3.6 Exercises 76
4 English stress 77
4.1 Preliminaries 77
4.2 A parametric approach to stress 78
4.2.1 Quantity insensitive systems 79
4.2.2 Quantity sensitive systems 86
4.3 Stress assignment in English 91
4.3.1 The English Stress Rule 91
4.3.2 Stress retraction 96
4.4 Word Tree Construction 98
4.5 Destressing rules 102
4.5.1 Prestress Destressing 102
4.5.2 Poststress Destressing 104
4.5.3 Medial Destressing 107
4.5.4 Sonorant Destressing 108
4.6 Summary of the stress rules 111
4.7 The cyclicity of stress rules 111
4.8 On the treatment of exceptions 115
CONTENTS vii
4.9 Further reading 119
4.10 Exercises 119
5 Prosodic phonology 121
5.1 Prosodic constituents in phonology 121
5.1.1 Why prosodie constituents? 121
5.1.2 The prosodie hierarchy 123
5.2 The syllable (σ) and the foot (F) 125
5.3 The phonological word (ω) and the clitic group (C) 132
5.3.1 The phonological word and Diphthong Shortening 132
5.3.2 The clitic group (C) 134
5.4 The phonological phrase (φ) 137
5.5 The intonation phrase (I) 142
5.6 The phonological utterance (U) 147
5.7 The ordering of the rules 151
5.8 Conclusion 153
5.9 Exercises 153
6 Lexical phonology: the cyclic rules 155
6.1 Principles of lexical phonology 155
6.2 The interaction of morphology and phonology 158
6.2.1 An affix sensitive to stress 158
6.2.2 Zero derivation 160
6.3 The order of affixes 161
6.4 Rule cyclicity 164
6.5 The Strict Cycle Condition 165
6.6 CiV Tensing and s-Voicing 170
6.7 Interaction of stress rules with cyclic segmental rules 172
6.8 Other laxing processes 174
6.9 The morphology and phonology of English strong verbs 181
6.9.1 Verbs suffixed at stratum 1 181
6.9.2 Ablaut 183
6.10 Exercises 187
7 Lexical phonology: the postcyclic rules 189
7.1 Vowel Shift 189
viii CONTENTS
7.1.1 Basic cases of Vowel Shift 189
7.1.2 [oy] 196
7.1.3 Another tensing rule 197
7.1.4 Summary 199
7.2 Velar Softening 199
7.3 Palatalization 200
7.3.1 Spirantization 204
7.3.2 SPE on right and righteous 206
7.4 Types of rule ordering 207
7.5 Other word-level processes 209
7.6 Vowel Reduction 211
7.7 Stem-final Tensing 214
7.8 Exercises 216
8 Postlexical phonology and conclusion 219
8.1 Postlexical phonology 219
8.1.1 Stop allophones 220
8.1.2 J-Velarization 221
8.1.3 Sonorant Devoicing 223
8.1.4 Diphthong Shortening 223
8.1.5 Other rules 224
8.1.6 Summary 227
8.2 Some other approaches 228
8.3 General conclusion 235
References 239
Index 247
Preface
This book is intended as an introduction to the major issues in English phonology.
While I have tried to be comprehensive, the treatment is by no means exhaustive.
The framework is that of generative phonology, in particular metrical, prosodic,
and lexical phonology. Some background in phonology is presupposed, includ­
ing an understanding of the theory of distinctive features and familiarity with rule
writing conventions and other notational conventions.
One of my major goals has been to present an internally consistent synthesis
of material derived from many sources. One result is that I see syllabic, metrical
and lexical phonology as forming a single integrated system unified by a
hierarchy of prosodic categories extending from the mora to the utterance. This
necessarily leads to considering the metrical system in terms of trees rather than
grids, since grids are on a plane separate from the rest of the metrical structure and
cannot be integrated into the prosodie hierarchy. Related to this is my rejection
of stress-dependent resyllabification and ambisyllabicity in favour of rules that
appeal to higher prosodie structure, such as the foot and the phonological word.
All accounts that I am aware of that appeal to ambisyllabicity can be reanalyzed
in terms of such units. Since prosodie units are required for independent reasons,
I conclude that ambisyllabicity is superfluous. I have also strictly applied the
lexical model of morphology in that I assume that inflection as well as derivation
is performed in the lexicon. This implies that syntactic rules do not manipulate
inflectional morphemes in any way: fully inflected forms, regular and irregular,
emerge from the lexicon, where they are manipulated by the syntax as wholes. I
have also confirmed the role of rule ordering in phonology. While some
investigators would eliminate rules and ordering from phonology in an attempt
to predict observed phenomena on the basis of representations and constraints,
this does not seem to be a feasible approach when dealing with a substantial body
of linguistic data from a single language.