From: goer@ellis.uchicago.edu (Richard L. Goerwitz)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Cognitive Phonology (was: Cognitive linguistics...)
Date: 1 Sep 92 15:17:08 GMT
Reply-To: goer@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago Computing Organizations

In article <81637@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.

The traffic here varies tremendously in quality, and you'll have to pardon
those of us that don't read everything.  Even the good stuff.  I might add
that in this case I'm very sorry to say that I misread you.  Dunno why, but
I understood you when I first scanned your posting as meaning *exactly the
opposite of what you said.*  I took it to mind, in other words, that you
claimed NP was built on well-formedness judgments.

My apologies.  Eric Schiller questioned my response privately by e-mail, but
I didn't notice why until now.

>Generative theory does not explain why initial
>/bn/ clusters are difficult to articulate, but various linguists hold various
>opinions about what causes difficult articulations. 

Understood.

Can we reword this statement slightly:  Generative theory expressly avoids
hard-coding into the notation the idea of "difficulty"?  All phonological rules
are equally natural.

Incidentally, you say something intriguing here that I confess I don't fully
understand:

>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'd 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.

It has always seemed to me that NP could be tacked onto just about any theory
of syntax and morphology, as long as certain adjustments are made.  Of course,
the dividing line between these "levels" is not a firm as we might like it to
be when breaking down a language or theoretical point of view.  Natural phon-
ology, to me at least, seems to divide phonological behavior into a set of
innate tendencies, and a set of actual behaviors that come to the fore via
interaction with a living speech community.  Syntax these days, in many camps,
adopts a very similar attitude, namely that well-formedness intuitions are
formed by the interaction of one's innate linguistic capacities with actual
language.  It's analogous to NP, except that the organs in question are men-
tal (or do I have to say "cognitive" :-)).

Perhaps I (a philologist) am simply misunderstanding linguistic literature
that I read.

-- 

   -Richard L. Goerwitz              goer%midway@uchicago.bitnet
   goer@midway.uchicago.edu          rutgers!oddjob!ellis!goer
Newsgroups: sci.lang