From: rwojcik@atc.boeing.com (Richard Wojcik,snake)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Cognitive Phonology (was: Cognitive linguistics...)
Date: 31 Aug 92 21:16:45 GMT
Reply-To: rwojcik@atc.boeing.com
Organization: Research & Technology

In article 2195@midway.uchicago.edu, goer@quads.uchicago.edu (Richard L. Goerwitz) writes:
>In article <81455@bcsaic.boeing.com> rwojcik@atc.boeing.com writes:
>
>>In particular, Natural Phonology takes linguistic 
>>theory to be grounded in linguistic behavior, rather than intuitions of well-
>>formedness.
>
>Come again?  Intuitions of well-formedness plays a big part in syntactic
>theory, but its role in phonology is not nearly as prominent as you make
>it out to be.  I'd be curious to see if you could support this statement
>about Natural Phonology, at any rate.

I've done so before, Richard, and I thought that you were familiar with my 
support for the statement.  Early generative phonology made no bones about
the role of intuition in phonology, and it isn't at all clear what modern
generativists believe.  The waters have muddied considerably over the past
20 years.  To take the early example, consider the oft-cited intuitions about
ill-formed phonological sequences like */bnIk/.  The classical position is
that native speakers know that initial /bn/ clusters are ill-formed.  Why?
The grammar tells them so.  Precisely what the grammatical constraints are that
do this are unimportant, although one could refer to various ways of expressing
phonotactic generalizations.  Generative theory does not explain why initial
/bn/ clusters are difficult to articulate, but various linguists hold various
opinions about what causes difficult articulations. 

Natural Phonology differs in that it does not attempt to explain the intuitive
judgment of ill-formedness directly.  All it says is that consonant clusters
are difficult to articulate.  Among other things, there is a propensity for
breaking them up with epenthetic vowel insertions.  Language learners have to
suppress the insertion for just those clusters that they have to learn to say.
It still applies to non-occurring clusters.  This is a fact that is easy to
verify.  Just have English speakers try to pronounce nonsense words (or foreign
words) with non-occurring clusters.  Where does the intuition come from that
such clusters are "ill-formed"?  It is a side effect of the Process system.  
Epenthesis doesn't afflict the pronunciation of native clusters.  If you under-
stand this account of how Natural Phonology works, then you understand why the
theory eschews static conditions, or filters, on phonological sequences.  Any
sequence of sounds that you try to articulate will be subject to phonological 
processes--they don't directly pertain to well-formedness intuitions.  Such
intuitions, however, are real and based on the way the process system affects
articulation (among other things).  Where, in generative theory, ease of articula-
tion might be explained in terms of how intuitions behave, in natural phonology,
the behavior of intuitions is explained in terms of ease of articulation.  One
concrete way in which NP derivations differ from generative phonological deri-
vations is that there are no constraints on what phonetic sequences can serve
as inputs in a derivation.  You can try to pronounce anything you want!  You're
free!!!  You just may not do it very well.  :-)

You cannot simply attach Natural Phonology to a generative theory of syntax or
morphology.  It does not represent a generative theory of phonology.  To be
consistent with NP, you would need a theory of syntax that takes syntactic rules
to be like instructions that tell speakers how to fit words together.  Intuitions
of well-formedness would have to be taken as side effects of those behavioral
constraints, not the fundamental basis for positing linguistic rules in the first
place.  In other words, you need a linguistic theory that is not based on a
doctrine of linguistic competence.  So-called "Cognitive Linguistics" seems to
fit the bill, but I'm not sure that all "C"ognitive linguists can be said to
reject the doctrine of linguistic competence as the fundamental basis of grammar.

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

    Rick Wojcik   (rwojcik@atc.boeing.com)   Seattle, WA
Newsgroups: sci.lang,alt.usage.english