From: goer@ellis.uchicago.edu (Richard L. Goerwitz)
Subject: Re: phonology question
Reply-To: goer@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago Computing Organizations
Date: Sun, 6 Sep 1992 04:18:55 GMT

connolly@memstvx1.memst.edu writes:
>
>>>[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"?

>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?

>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.

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?
I can concoct a sequence like "fobtiquel" and most folks won't find it
as odd as "ibpag."  Now that we've been talking about it for a while,
we aren't any good for primary evidence probably, so try this on your
friends and family.  (One really sick fact about us linguists, is that
we posture over fine distinctions in our own pervertedly introspective
"competences.")

>The trouble with _ibpag_ is this: since it is short, and the
>two syllables are not recognizable as separate words in any language
>known to me or to most English speakers (by the way, what language
>was that word supposed to be???), there is no reason to analyze it 
>as a compound, and in simple compounds (as in Latinate compounds)
>English has voicing adjustment.  As always, when learning a foreign
>language, we have trouble turning off our English phonological rules.

See above re "compounds" (which aren't compounds at all).

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.

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

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

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

-- 

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