Phonology Seminar, Trinity Term
2006
"Problems
of Phonemics"
Convenor: Dr J. S. Coleman
Fridays, 2-3 p.m
Centre for Linguistics and Philology, Walton St
From the early years of phonological theory, various problems
were identified, and at the time were well-known and widely discussed.
In consequence, many structuralist phonologists came to regard phonemes
as a "convenient fiction", useful for e.g. alphabetic notation or
orthographic purposes, but without a clearly demonstrable, principled
basis. In the UK, the London School of phonologists associated with J.
R. Firth rejected phonemic theory completely, and developed an
alternative conception of phonological structure that came to dominate
phonological thought in Britain for decades (and still attracts
considerable interest from many phonologists today).
The displacement of the nominalist ("convenient fiction") view of
phonology by generative phonologists in the 1950's and 60's led
initially to the rejection of the phonemic level of representation
(Halle 1959), although the phoneme was later rehabilitated, following
Schane (1971).
Throughout this period, elementary textbooks and courses in linguistics
have presented the phoneme construct as an established truth, and the
various well-studied problems and objections of earlier years are
little-studied. In this series of seminars, we shall revisit a
selection of the classic studies (and some more recent work) that
discuss the problems of phonemics. Each week, 2 or 3 participants will
be asked to present a short (15-20 minute) presentation on one or two
of these works, drawing out the key arguments and preparing the ground
for an informed discussion of the issues. (All who are interested in
attending are invited to contact the convenor in advance so that the
readings can be shared out between the participants.)
Week 1. Problems that exercised
structural linguists
Yuen-Ren Chao (1934) The non-uniqueness of phonemic solutions of
phonetic systems. Bulletin of the
Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica Vol. IV,
Part 4, 363-397. Reprinted in E. P. Hamp, M. Joos, F. W. Householder
and R. Austerlitz, eds. Readings in
Linguistics I & II.
Zellig S. Harris (1944) Simultaneous components in phonology. Language 20, 181-205. Reprinted
in E. P. Hamp, M. Joos, F. W. Householder and R. Austerlitz, eds. Readings in Linguistics I & II.
Charles C. Fries and Kenneth L. Pike (1949) Coexistent phonemic
systems. Language 25, 29-50.
Week 2.
Neutralization, archiphonemes
etc.
N. S. Trubetzkoy (1969) Principles
of Phonology (English translation by C. A. M. Baltaxe), pages
78-83, 167-8 and Chapter V.
N. S. Trubetzkoy (2001) Studies in General Linguistics and
Language Structure (Translated by Marvin Taylor and Anatoly
Liberman), pages 13, 246-8.
J. R. Firth (1935) Phonological features of some Indian
languages. Proceedings of the Second
International Congress of Phonetic Sciences. Reprinted in J. R.
Firth, Papers in Linguistics
1934-1951.
Week 3. The
phoneme in generative phonology
Morris Halle (1959) The Sound
Pattern of Russian pp 20-24 (i.e. section 1.3)
Noam Chomsky (1964) Current Issues in Linguistic Theory. In J. A. Fodor
and J. J. Katz, eds. The Structure
of Language, pp 85-112 (sections 4.2-4.5).
Sanford A. Schane (1971) The phoneme revisited. Language 47, 503-521.
Week 4. Phonemes and alphabetic writing
Julian K. Wheatley (1996) Burmese writing.
Ross King (1996) Korean writing. Both in Peter T. Daniels and William
Bright, eds. The World's Writing
Systems.
José Morais (1985) Literacy and awareness of the units of
speech: implications for research on the units of perception. Linguistics 23, 707-721.