Description, theory and explanation in phonology

Sharon Hargus

University of Washington

Thanks to

• Kristina Stolte of Thomson Higher Education for the loan of 30 clickers for today’s colloquium

Organization of talk

• Role of language description in linguistics

• Explanation in phonology

• What is a linguistic theory?

• An evaluation of Optimality Theory

A question about Newmeyer Mar 06 colloquium. What was Fritz’s answer to the question he is frequently asked:

Why are there so many theories of syntax?

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r ...

30%

10%

37%

23%

0%

1. The data underdetermine the theory.

2. Linguists are not smart enough to figure out why.

3. He didn’t have an answer.

4. No one syntactician understands all the facts.

5. (I don’t remember or I wasn’t there.)

Description

Traditional goals of Boasian research program

Franz Boas, 1858-1942, anthropologist

• Pioneering work of Boas– descriptions of W.

Greenlandic Eskimo, Kwakiutl

– race culture language

• Linguistics a branch of anthropology at that time

• Boasian goals for description of a language– Texts– Grammar– Dictionary

• Grammar: linguists’ deductions about the rule system used by speakers (and signers)

• Texts: examples of the language as actually used– Audio and/or video recordings, transcribed and

translated

• Dictionary: provides depth for the description; source data for deduced grammar

• Boas extremely influential, had many students

Who was Melville Jacobs?

UW

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23%

7%

47%

20%

3%

1. UW anthropologist

2. Philanthropist who donated much $ to UW for descriptive linguistic research

3. One of Boas’s teachers at Columbia

4. One of the neogrammarians, a contemporary of Boas in Germany

5. I don’t know.

Melville Jacobs

• Faculty member at UW (Anthropology) 1928-71• A Sketch of Northern Sahaptin Grammar (1931)

was his Columbia U. PhD dissertation (directed by Boas)

• Also studied Chinook Jargon, and ‘many now-extinct western Oregon languages’ (Seaburg and Amoss 200:8)

• Jacobs and his wife Bess ‘had originally determined to leave their estate to the Anthropology Department at the University of Washington, but Jacobs’s growing disenchantment with the direction of scholarship in the department led him to look for an alternative venue.’(Seaburg and Amoss: 10)

– clash with dept chair Erna Gunther– received poor evaluations from students (student evals instituted

1929) and chair– nearly got the axe during exigent times during the depression– decreasing interest in Native American studies by colleagues– subpoenaed to appear before Canwell Commission; disciplined

by UW Committee on Tenure and Academic Freedom for Communist Party membership (had joined around 1935)

• Established Jacobs Research Fund (for anthropological and linguistic research on NW Native American groups), administered by Whatcom Museum of History and Art in Bellingham (fund also augmented by bequests from Jacobs’ mother-in-law and the late Dale Kinkade, UBC)

Fang-Kuei Li• 1902-1987• Faculty member at UW, 1949-1969 (Asian L&L); then to

U. Hawaii• Student of Sapir and Bloomfield at Chicago

– Foundational work in Athabaskan linguistics (Krauss 2005, Scollon and Scollon 1989)

– MA thesis: “do what you can with these” (Sapir’s 1926 Sarcee field notes)

– PhD dissertation: Mattole grammar– also fieldwork on Chipewyan, Hupa, Wailaki, Eyak

• Distinguished scholar in 3 language families (Athabaskan-Eyak, Chinese, Tai)– including much harrowing fieldwork in China during WWII

Descriptive linguistics and diversity

• ‘Linguistic diversity is important to the discipline of linguistics because the central focus of the field is to understand the human capacity for language. Thus, linguistic scholarship benefits from inquiry into a range of families and types of human languages, used in a range of settings.’ (Draft: Summary of Diversity Plan for Recruitment and Retention of Underrepresented Minorities. Emily Bender and Alicia Beckford Wassink)

What did Chomsky (1965) mean by ‘descriptively adequate grammar’?

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A g

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17%

77%

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1. A reasonably complete, detailed grammar.

2. A grammar that reflects native speaker competence.

3. A grammar that does not contain faulty transcriptions.

4. I don’t know.

5. I don’t remember.

Descriptive adequacy• Chomsky 1965:24: ‘a grammar can be regarded

as a theory of a language; it is descriptively adequate to the extent that it correctly describes the intrinsic competence of the idealized native speaker. The structural descriptions assigned to sentences by the grammar, the distinctions that it makes between well-formed and deviant, and so on, must, for descriptive adequacy, correspond to the linguistic intuition of the native speaker…’

Description and descriptive adequacy

• Thus the syntactic (or morphological) component of a grammar is insufficient if it simply lists well-formed sentences (or words).– A descriptively adequate phonology would

distinguish between possible but non-occurring vs. impossible sound patterns.

• What role would lexicography or texts play in the Chomsky 65 vision of descriptive linguistics?

• Texts– a useful starting point for observations about

syntax

• Dictionary– a useful starting point to find phonological

patterns– enables cross-linguistic studies such as

Rozelle 2003

Role of language description in phonology

• Yawelmani (Yokuts) (especially Newman 1944. see Silverstein 1987)

• Klamath (Barker 1963a,b, 1964)

Importance of Yawelmani• Intricate phonological system

– Rounding harmony, vowel length alternations, epenthesis and deletion, underlying vs. derived vowel qualities

– Yawelmani a case study in many introductory generative phonology textbooks (e.g. Kenstowicz and Kisseberth 1979, Kenstowicz 1994, Odden 2005); even a mention in Kager 1999

• Syllable and moraic structure (Archangeli 1991)

• Templatic morphological system imposed by certain affixes– rare type in spoken languages outside of Semitic (Archangeli

1988)

• Ejective vs. glottalized sonorant timing patterns (Plauché 1998)

Importance of Klamath

• Intricate glide/vowel alternations (Clements and Keyser 1983)

• Syllable structure (Levin 1985)

• Reduplication types (McCarthy and Prince 1995)

• Lateral debuccalization, with implications for feature organization (Clements 1985)

Descriptive vs. documentary linguistics• Himmelmann 1998 proposal. Descriptive

linguistics consists of– documentation (collection, transcription, translation)– analysis

• Nonetheless, many use these terms interchangeably (euphemism?)– Descriptive linguistics– Documentary linguistics– Primary linguistics (< Emmon Bach)

Currently great interest in description

• In contrast to my days as a grad student (79-85) when only phoneticians, SSILA type linguists were interested in description– SSILA = Society for the Study of the

Indigenous Languages of the Americas, founded 1982

• Symptoms of a change in the field– Publication of Hale et al. 1992 (Language)– LSA Committee on Endangered Languages

and their Preservation established 1992

Why the interest?

• Descriptive/documentary linguistics is ‘hard work under trying conditions’ Seaburg and Amoss:3

• Methodologically, descriptive linguistics is quite straightforward.

• There is always some result.

Descriptive linguistics as a type of basic research

• Solving empirical problems has been an honorable pursuit for many other fields of inquiry

• Cf. mapping the human genome– ‘The research is the latest fruit of the Human

Genome Initiative, which transcribed and read out the entire genetic message of human chromosomes, completed in 2003… “We were never able to look at things like this before.”’ (‘Chimp-human split fuzzy?’ The Seattle Times. 5-18-06.)

Basic research can lead to unexpected benefits

• Hargus 2005 reported on effects of final glottalization ([], [n’]) on voice quality in Witsuwit’en

• Sample of 8 speakers– Pitch lowerers: HM, LM, MA, MF– Pitch raisers: AJ, KN, (SM)– Mixed: BM

-125

-75

-25

25

75

125P

itch

pert

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tion

(Hz)

AJ BM HM KN LM MA MF SM

oralnasal

Why this result is interesting

• Variable reflexes of final glottalization in Proto-Athabaskan (Leer 87); e.g. *tha ‘beaver’ – Tsek’ene tshà– Slave tshá– Ahtna tsha

• Witsuwit’en confirms phonetic predictions of Kingston 2005 (glottalization can have both raising and lowering effects)

• Phonetic effect phonology (Hayes 1999 shows how)

Explanation

What did Chomsky 65 mean by explanatory adequacy as a measure

of grammars?

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61%1. All things equal, prefer a grammar that makes sense.

2. All things equal, prefer a grammar that explains why its grammatical statements have the form they do.

3. All things equal, prefer a grammar that could be learned as an L1.

4. I don’t know/don’t remember.

‘The problem of…explanatory adequacy…is essentially the problem of constructing a theory of language acquisition, an account of the specific innate abilities that make this achievement possible.’

Now usually known as ‘the learnability problem’.

Phonological concern with explanation• A sample explanation in phonology (search any

article for ‘explain, explanat-, account, why’ etc.)• e.g. Piggott 2003. Malay nasal harmony

[mãyãn] ‘stalk’

[mewãh] ‘be luxurious’

[mããp] ‘pardon’

[mlaran] ‘forbid’

[mãkan] ‘eat’

Piggott’s observation: in languages with nasal harmony, ‘voiceless obstruent stops are always among the neutral [non-nasalizable] segments’ (p. 376)

– ‘To explain why obstruent stops are invariably neutral to nasal harmony, phonological theory must impose two requirements on grammars: (a) MaxStopDist must be present in every nasal harmony system; (b) this constraint must always outrank NasHarm.’ (pp. 400-401)

– MaxStopDist constraint against deleting or changing stops

Other views on explanation in phonology• Ohala (1990, 1997): the only true

explanations for sound patterns lie in phonetics. Purely phonological explanations for sound patterns are fraught with various problems, among which are– circularity: e.g. phonological features are binary

because they are binary, language X has no diphthongs because *Diph is high ranking

– projection: ‘the knowledge the linguist has about …is projected onto the mental grammar of linguistically-naïve native speakers’

– myopia: ‘neglecting data from multiple sources’

Steriade 1999

• Licensing by cue: ‘the main factor involved in neutralization and licensing is the distribution of cues to the relevant contrasts’

• Licensing by prosody (the status quo): ‘the distribution of features in general – and of laryngeal features in particular – is controlled by their prosodic position’– ‘...syllable structure does not begin to describe,

let alone explain, the patterns of laryngeal neutralization.’ (p. 16)

• Licensing by Cue as an explanation– ‘This line of analysis promises to explain the

grammar of neutralization, by showing how independently known facts about the perception and production of speech interact with grammatical conditions to yield sound pattern.’ (p. 2)

• Blevins 2004 also embraces an Ohala-style approach to explanation in phonology, particularly historical phonology

• See also Hume and Johnson (eds.) 2001; Hayes, Kirchner and Steriade (eds.) 2004

But can everything phonological be explained?

• ‘Of course, phonological grammars may turn out to be structured in ways that are arbitrary or unexpected from the standpoint of speech perception.’ (Steriade 1999:22)

• Anderson 1981

• See also Howe and Pulleyblank 2002

Theory

What is a linguistic theory?

• Is a theory an explanation? no

• Is a theory a framework for description? yes

• Is a theory a model of some phenomenon? yes

• What makes one theory better than another?

Comparing theories

• Simplicity criterion– Kenstowicz 1994:94: analyses are judged by

‘the overall simplicity of the rules and representations of the grammar’

– Hayes 1999: simplicity is a driving force in phonology

• Explanatory adequacy/learnability

Chomsky 1965• ‘a linguistic theory is descriptively adequate if it makes a

descriptively adequate grammar available for each natural language’ (p. 24)

• ‘To the extent that a linguistic theory succeeds in selecting a descriptively adequate grammar on the basis of primary linguistic data [data that a child is exposed to], we can say that it meets the condition of explanatory adequacy. That is, to this extent, it offers an explanation for the intuition of the native speaker on the basis of an empirical hypothesis concerning the innate predisposition of the child to develop a certain kind of theory to deal with the evidence presented to him.’ (pp. 25-26)

Optimality Theory

Optimality Theory

• In what respects is OT an advance over previous theories?

• OT officially released in 1993– Prince and Smolensky 1993 (now published,

Prince and Smolensky 2004)– McCarthy and Prince 1993

Previous standard theory of phonology

• Epitomized by Kenstowicz 1994, Archangeli and Pulleyblank 1994Classical generative phonology: rules apply serially:/underlying representation/

[derived representation] rule 1 (applies to UR)

[derived representation] rule 2 (applies to the output of rule 1)

[phonetic form]

• Generative phonology had evolved to a mixture of rules and constraints– e.g. ATR/HI Condition (AP 94:176): If [+ATR]

then [+hi].

OT in a nutshell• /Input or underlying representation/

• (GEN)

• {[rep1] [rep2] … } (Set of possible phonetic representations.)

• The set of candidate forms is infinite.

• The alterations to the input representation performed by GEN are phonological operations such as epenthesis, deletion, assimilation, etc.

• EVAL: Eval(uate) is a function which evaluates and ranks the members of the candidate set generated by GEN for phonological well-formedness. EVAL draws on primarily three types of phonological constraints: markedness, faithfulness, and alignment.

Successes of Optimality Theory

• Success as measured by simplicity criterion – Top-down parsing– Over-application and under-application– Incorporation of perceptually based

constraints

Top-down parsing• Tongan # CV.CV

CV.CV.CV

CV.CV.CV.CV

CVV.CV.CV

# húu 'go in'

CVV.CVVCV.CVV

# hu.ú.fi 'open officially'

CV.CV.V.CV

CVV.CV.V.CV

Previous derivational account• Analysis of Poser 1985: (1) initial

syllabification: syllabify VV as V.V everywhere, (2) construct feet, (3) final syllabification: coalesce V.V into VV. unless members of different feet

• Prince and Smolensky criticism: this analysis requires an intermediate stage with massive unusual syllabification (V.V everywhere).

Top-down parsing• In Tongan, feet are built from the top of the grid

down) (position line 2 asterisk as close to the right edge as possible), rather than having feet built up from syllable boundaries (from the bottom of the grid up)

/huufi/ 'open officially'

Edgemost Foot-Bin Parse-Syll Onset

(húu).fi *! *

hu.(ú.fi) * *

(húu.fi) *!

huu.fi *!*

Over-application

• Javanese. Intervocalic /h/ deletion over-applies in reduplicated structures

Stem stem+C stem+V expected gloss

anh anh-ku an-e ‘strange’

bah bah-bah ba-ba-e

*bah-ba-e

‘broken’

Ident-BR(h): [h] in the reduplicant should correspond to [h] in the base. (McCarthy and Prince 1995)

Input /bah, RED-, -e/

Ident-BR(h)

*VhV Ident-IO(h)

bah-bah-e *!

bah-ba-e *! *

ba-ba-e *

Under-application

• ‘Do something only when’: “Economy of Derivation” (Prince and Smolensky)

/alqalamu/ Onset Dep-IO

[alqalamu] *!

[alqalamu] *

*[alqalamu] **

*[alqalamu] ***

*[alqalamu] ****

Akan underapplication of velar palatalization

t, *k ‘divide’

de, *ge ‘receive’

, *h ‘border’

reduplicated expected gloss

k-ka *t-ka ‘bite’

h-haw *-haw ‘trouble’

• MP95 analysis– *Dorsal-V [Coronal]: No dorsal consonants before

non-low front vowels.– Ident-BR (C): Corresponding initial segments of

base and reduplicant have identical feature specifications.

/ka, RED-/

Ident-BR(C)

*Dorsal-V[Cor]

k-ka

t-ka *!

TETU phenomena

• Nootka obviously allows codas, but they do not appear in reduplication.

u-u-i: ‘hunting it’

ci-cims-i: ‘hunting bear’

wa:-wa:s-ci ‘naming where...’

ta:-ta:kwa-i: ‘hunting only that’

• Why not?

Max-IO NoCoda Max-BR

--> u-ui: * i:

u-ui: ** i:

u-ui: * i:

General schema for TETU:IO-Faith >> C >> BR-Faith, for C = some

constraint

Is “IO-Faith >> NoCoda >> BR-Faith” an explanation for why codas do not

reduplicate in Nootka?

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28%

14%

59%1. Yes, it’s an explanation.

2. No, it’s not an explanation.

3. Not sure.

Incorporation of perceptually based constraints

• Inspiration: Ohala 1981

• Steriade 1999; Côté 2000; contributions to Hume and Johnson 2001, Hayes, Steriade and Kirchner 2004

• Classical generative phonology a production oriented model

OT at its finest

• Kaun 2004 on rounding harmony.– Proposed constraints reflect phonological

asymmetries noted in• typological studies• perception/production literature• an experiment with nonce forms in Turkish

– Predictions (via OTSoft (Hayes, Tesar and Zuraw

2003) re possible languages with rounding harmony

Problems for Optimality Theory

• A strength that is also a weakness: the ability to incorporate constraints of all kinds (even the ridiculous)– *o

• Modeling opacity (counter-feeding rule orders)

– e.g. McCarthy 1999, McCarthy 2003a,b– Odden 2000: Opaque phenomena in Kikerewe

tone require “2-level constraints” (definitely not simple!)

Conclusions (opinions)• Describing languages benefits linguistics

– Methodologically straightforward– Challenging in other ways

• Explanation of phonological phenomenon– Explanation should come from outside phonology– Not everything phonological can be so explained

• Theory of language– Framework for the description of some phenomenon– There has been confusion between theory and

explanation– Theories can be compared with respect to how simply

describe some phenomenon