From: connolly@memstvx1.memst.edu
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: phonology question
Date: 7 Sep 92 16:18:13 -0600
Organization: Memphis State University

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.
>
>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"?

I meant to say that it was a synchronic process, which I have no
difficulty calling a "rule", though it is of course true that many
words have lexical entries where the effects of the rule are already
represented, so tha the rule need not apply synchronically (again).  It
is then not just a matter of what we are used to hearing, though of
course it is also that. 

>
>>>>[ibpag] violates a constraint in English that adjacent stops within
>>>>a word must agree in voicing. 
>>> 
>>> Really?  Five minutes' dinking around with /usr/dict/words turns up
>>> the following:
>>> 
>>>                 obtain
>>>                 obtrude
>>>                 obtrusive
>>>                 Adkins        
>>>                 godkin       
>>>                 tadpole
>>>                 broadcast    
>>>                 "subpolar"
>>
>>Sure I could say "subpolar", though I doubt it would contain [bp]
>with
>>voiced [b] (try a voiceless lenis for size).
>
>What do you mean in this case by "voiceless lenis"?

(I've already decided I say [bp] in subpolar, but not in subterranean.)
The "voiceless lenis" has its fairly standard meaning: a stop less
strongly articulated than some other stop in the system (here /p/),
possibly lacking one or another of its features (here voicing), but
lacking voicing either entirely, or, in systems with more completely
voiced stops, perhaps partially.

>
>>Most of
>>your examples are totally irrelevant because they are compounds
>formed
>>within English, and the voicing adjustment rule simply does not apply
>>to such compounds, most of which, by the way, are written with a word
>>space between the elements.
>
>C'mon.  Are you seriously arguing that the words I've listed above are
>compounds.  Do I productively add "tad" and "pole" together to arrive
>at "tadpole"?  Try the "ob-" in "obtain."  Do you even know what the
>element "ob-" means on its own?

I am maintaining that _tadpole_ is a compound, even though neither
_tad_ nor _pole_ exists as a free morpheme (I assume they are not
identical with our normal _tad_ and _pole_).  Its phonology gives it
away: a full vowel with some degree of stress in the second syllable,
contiguous voiced and voiceless stops.
 Compare the pronunciation of the second syllable of _carbol_:
_tadpole_ doesn't rhyme with _carbol_ but with _knothole_.  And just as
I assume an internal word boundary in /nat#ho:l/, so too in
/taed#po:l/.  A word needn't be synchronically formed, or even
synchronically formable, to be a compound in this sense.

>>The -bt- group is a different situation: your examples are all of
>>Latin derivation.  Without exception I do apply the voicing adjust-
>>ment rule to these, pronouncing the /b/ (if such it be) as a
>voiceless
>>lenis.
>
>If you assume that English speakers can't say -bt-, then sure, I guess
>you'd have to claim there was a voicing adjustment.  What we are ques-
>tioning is whether it is correct in the first place to claim that -bt-
>is impossible. 
Of course [bt] is possible.  The adjustment rule isn't necessary.  All
I'm saying is that necessary or not, English has one.  Why it does is
another matter entirely.

>And this all avoids the question that I've been trying to keep at the
>forefront.  Why is "ibpag" awkward to say, and frequently
>mis-perceived?

See my post #8945 on this.  I think that you presented your subjects
with the written forms <ib-pag> or <ib pag>, they'd say it with no
difficulty, since these spellings would insinuate the sort of word
boundary I assumed within _tadpole_.  But <ibpag> is short, the parts
aren't recognizable, so no one takes it as a compound.

>The bottom line is this:  Are you saying that obtain is easy to say
>because it's a compound?  Obviously, then, the hardness has nothing
>to do with the physical mechanisms involved, since the physical mech-
>anisms don't know about the supposed higher-level structures.  If the
>hardness, then, has nothing to do with the physical mechanisms, we
>must be talking about a pure "rule."  Something just memorized or
>abstracted from patterns observed in English speech.  What are these
>patterns?  That voiced and voiceless obstruents aren't juxtaposed
>except in certain classes of forms.

Forms with a particular intonation, as it turns out -- an intonation
connected with obvious compounds.  And hence they are analyzed as
compounds.

>So in your view, the difficulty with "ibpag" is "traditional."  I.e.
>it's not "natural" - right?

Wrong.  I'm saying that it is, because of length and opaqueness,
grouped with a class of words where such sequences do not, *cannot*
occur.  "Ibpag" is neither natural nor unnatural.

>If this is correct, then we have an interesting theorem implied,
>namely
>that known nonsense words are hard to pronounce if they violate con-
>straints that have little to do with the physical mechanisms of
>speech.

But of course!  What's new?  Try getting American subjects to pronounce
nonsense words containing long tense [e:] or [o:], especially in final
position.  The result is usually [ey ow], sometimes [iy uw].  This has
nothing to do with the physical mechanisms of speech, but only with the
phonology of American English.

>Perceived "hardness," misperceptions, mispronunciations, etc. are (in
>other words) as much the product of "natural" hardness as of
>"traditional"
>hardness.

I'm not entirely sure what you mean, but I suspect I'd agree.

>This hypothesis cuts at the root of natural phonology, where processes
>and rules are distinct.

I call myself a syntactician these days, and I used to do Germanic and
Indo-European philology.  Please enlighten me on the difference between
a rule and a process, and why it should matter.

But since I'm not committed to a theory I know nothing about, it
doesn't bother me to have inadvertently destroyed it.  :-)


miner@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu writes:
>There has been quite a lot of discussion about the /bt/ cluster in
>English.  Consider this: every speaker of Coastal Southern I know
>pronounces "Baptist" as "Babtist."  If this is an innovation--or
>especially if it's an innovation--it certainly militates against the
>idea that the cluster is unnatural.  (Strangely, these speakers don't
>seem to voice the /p/ in "baptize," "baptism," etc. -- I could be
>wrong on this.)

An interesting development, to say the least.  Someone else has noted
that _Babdist_ also occurs.  Perhaps the constraint is weakening.

--Leo Connolly