Colin J. Ewen

Principles of dependency phonology

Part I. Phonological Structure: 1. The structure of phonological segments 2. The structure of phonological sequences 3. Dependency structures in phonology Part II. Phonological Gestures and their Structure: 4. The categorical gesture: phonation 5. The categorical gesture: initiation 6. The articulatory gesture Part III. Overview: 8. Conclusions and consequences.

Aitken's law and the phonatory gesture in dependency phonology☆

Abstract ‘Aitkens Law’ was a sound-change which occured in various Scots dialects in the 16th adn 17th centuries, and which leaves a system in the modern dialects in which the length of all (non-high) vowels is predictable according to the phonological context in which they occur. In this paper, an attempt is made to characterise the process in terms of the model of dependency phonology proposed by Anderson and Jones (1972, 1974a, forthcoming). This involves a consideration of low the various segment-types (e.g. fricatives, sonorant consonants and in particular the ‘fricative-trill’ which occurs in the dialects in question) are to be characterised in the model. A proposed characterisation is established, and evidence supporting the proposals is provided from various sources. The proposed characterisation is used to establish a lenition hierarchy of the various segment-types. It is hoped that the suggestions made in this paper, which deals only with the phonatory gesture for each segment-type, will go some way towards the establishment of dependency phonology as a viable alternative to phonologies based on the Distinctive Feature.

Phonological structure: segmental, suprasegmental and extrasegmental

In the past few years a great deal of attention has been paid to the representation of suprasegmental phenomena in phonology, with the resulting development of a number of partly competing theories and models of suprasegmental representation – in particular, various versions of AUTOSEGMENTAL PHONOLOGY (see, for example, Goldsmith 1976; Halle & Vergnaud 1981; Clements & Keyser 1983) and METRICAL PHONOLOGY (Liberman & Prince 1977; Hayes 1980, 1982; Prince 1983; Giegerich 1985). Other frameworks have also been developed which allow for the representation of phenomena in this area, notably that of DEPENDENCY PHONOLOGY (Anderson & Jones 1974, 1977; Ewen 1980; Anderson 1984; Anderson & Ewen 1980, forthcoming).It has, moreover, become obvious that although these theories at first seemed very different, many of the differences are more apparent than real, so that in some respects the proposals are complementary rather than alternative - and in many areas it is clear that we are moving towards a situation where a single model can perhaps be developed from the various frameworks (cf. Leben 1982; Goldsmith this volume).

The phonology of the diminutive in Dutch: A dependency account☆

Abstract The diminutive suffix in Modern Dutch can have various surface forms, which appear to be predictable according to the phonological structure of the word. In Haverkamp-Lubbers and Kooij (1971), an attempt is made within a generative framework using a Distinctive Feature system based on that of Chomsky and Halle (1968) to account for these regularities. In this paper, I show that an approach based on Distinctive Features is inadequate to account for the forms of the diminutive suffix after words ending in a sonorant consonant. It is argued that the problems of this framework can be overcome by adopting the model of dependency phonology, and, in particular, it is shown that the selection of a particular form of the diminutive depends on the presence of a particular dependency structure in the word. The apparently anomalous behaviour of words containing the vowels can be explained by appealing to the notion of phonological strength. Further, it is shown that the choice of the diminutive suffix is partly motivated by the notion of a ‘canonical configuration’ — i.e. a ‘preferred’ structure which is also relevant to other aspects of Dutch phonology.