From: rwojcik@atc.boeing.com (Richard Wojcik,snake)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: phonology question
Date: 8 Sep 92 18:03:05 GMT
Reply-To: rwojcik@atc.boeing.com
Organization: Research & Technology

In article 6328@midway.uchicago.edu, goer@ellis.uchicago.edu (Richard L. Goerwitz) writes:
>connolly@memstvx1.memst.edu writes:
>...
>>[ibpag] violates a constraint in English that adjacent stops within
>>a word must agree in voicing.
>
>Interesting.  What constraint?  If it's synchronically productive (if we
>can call a "constraint" productive), then why can we say "bedtime" and
>"hardtack"?  "Midterm"?  Even if such words are relatively uncommon, they
>are not hard to say.  "Ibpag," by all objective evidence, is quite awk-
>ward to say.  Furthermore, most people I say it in front of ask me to
>repeat it at least once (even if I warn them it's nonsense).  I had to
>repeat it twice, for instance, for my wife.  My son didn't ask for any
>repeats, but promptly repeated it back to me "mispronounced" each of the
>times he tried.

The words "bedtime," "hardtack," and "midterm" are all compound nouns.  The 
nonsense word "ibpag" is monomorphemic.  You are comparing apples and oranges.
I think that you might find "idtag" to be more difficult than "hardtack", and
"lobe paint" (paint for earlobes) easier than "ibpag."  Don't forget that
so-called "morpheme structure conditions" apply to morphemes, not words.  That
is why the phonemic sequence /gads/ for the plural "gods" could only be legal
in an analysis whereby the plural morpheme is represented by /s/ (an incorrect
analysis, BTW).  Normally, such a form would be illegal by a phonotactic
constraint on obstruent clusters of mixed voicing.  (In Natural Phonology,
the widely-recognized Process of progressive voice assimilation would destroy
clusters of mixed voice.  There would not be an extra phonotactic condition
to declare the illegality of such clusters.  Traditional analyses, from
structuralist to generativist, tend to distinguish between alternation-governing
rules and conditions on phonological sequences.  So you have two phonological
mechanisms to explain the lack of mixed-voice clusters in English.)

>I just want to know if the difficulty is the result of some natural con-
>nection with the organs of speech and the physical constraints they operate
>under.  Or is it just a question of what we are accustomed to hearing, and
>thus (by implication) of what sequences we view as possible English words.
>In recently revived terminology, is the change "anthropomorphic" or "nat-
>ural"; is it a "process"?  Or is it a matter of "tradition," i.e. "rule"?
>Or is it possible that tradition, once internalized, cannot always be dis-
>tinguished from natural "processes"?

You have been reading Stephen Anderson's writings on Baudouin de Courtenay. 
Baudouin later abandonned that terminology in favor of "physiophonetic"
(=anthropomorphic) and "psychophonetic" (=traditional).  This dichotomy
later came to be renamed "phonology" and "morpho(pho)nology" by Trubetzkoy,
whence came the more traditional dichotomy referenced in structuralist
works.  Baudouin's early distinction, and Trubetzkoy's later distinction,
exactly correspond to the process/rule dichotomy.  Most later schools (except
for the Moscow School of phonology), changed the dividing line between 
phonology and morphonology such that it no longer reflected the original 
dichotomy.

To answer your questions.  The difficulty in "ibpag" is process-based.  The
process in question is progressive voice assimilation across obstruent clusters
in English.  So-called "traditional alternations" can always be distinguished
from natural processes.  Such alternations never constrain articulation, and
they always refer to morphemic identities.

-----
Disclaimer:  Opinions expressed above are not those of my employer.

    Rick Wojcik   (rwojcik@atc.boeing.com)   Seattle, WA