Peter Avery

Segment structure and coronal underspecification

Ponapean, Catalan and English provide strong evidence that the Coronal node must be absent in underlying representation. In none of these languages are coronals distinguished by a secondary content node, and thus the NAC does not force the presence of a Coronal node. As expected, phonological processes separate the coronals from the other places of articulation in these languages.

ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN LATERALITY AND CORONALITY

Publisher Summary This chapter focuses on the relationship between laterality and coronality. It explores a number of properties of laterals. Despite their coronal properties, laterals form a constituent with the other sonorant features. While laterals have coronal properties phonologically, this is not a result of laterals being dependents of coronals but instead follows from a structural constraint—the structural complexity constraint. Given the structural complexity constraint (SCC), laterals can only be coronal. The SCC is supplemented by the head-dependent constraint, which prohibits spreading to spontaneous voice unless the segments involved are identical in place of articulation. The implications of these proposals require further study, but both the SCC and the head-dependent constraint seem to be otherwise motivated and provide a direction for further research.

Contrast in phonology : theory, perception, acquisition

This book takes contrast, an issue that has been central to phonological theory since Saussure, as its central theme, making explicit its importance to phonological theory, perception, and acquisition. The volume brings together a number of different contemporary approaches to the theory of contrast, including chapters set within more abstract representation-based theories, as well as chapters that focus on functional phonetic theories and perceptual constraints.This book will be of interest to phonologists, phoneticians, psycholinguists, researchers in first and second language acquisition, and cognitive scientists interested in current thinking on this exciting topic.

Discourse Structure and the Negotiation of Comprehensible Input

This article examines the role of negotiations of meaning in providing comprehensible input for NNS learners. We report on an experiment conducted with NS–NNS and NS–NS pairs involving a picture-drawing task, where one member of each pair instructed the other in the drawing of simple objects. The results of the experiment suggest that the success or failure of meaning negotiations in providing comprehensible input depends on the point in the discourse at which they occur. We therefore question a prevailing assumption in the second language acquisition literature that the mere quantity of meaning negotiations within a discourse is an accurate predictor of the quantity of comprehensible input that results. We propose that meaning negotiations should be analyzed within a discourse framework to explain their role in creating comprehensible input.

Quasi-phonemic contrast and the fuzzy inventory: Examples from Scottish English

In this article we propose that contrast must be treated as a gradient phenomenon at the phonological level, with membership of a phonemic inventory being a matter of degree. This is because, though minimal pairs provide simple and strong evidence of contrast, things are not always so straightforward. Defining “minimal” is one challenge; as is determining which aspects of a contrast are distinctive and which redundant. Non-phonological information is sometimes a necessary consideration. These complications are usually thought to affect the analysis of a phenomenon in a discrete way, tipping the binary balance held by the phonologist towards either one analysis or another. We, on the other hand, see the necessity of evaluating contrastive evidence and of taking other linguistic information into account as being an indication that contrastiveness is a scalar property. We address some patterns in the sound system of Scottish English; ones which provide less than clear evidence of phonemicity — or, as we think, evidence of less than clear phonemicity.