<OT> New Posting: ROA-851

[roa at ruccs.rutgers.edu]

ROA 851-0706

Incomplete Devoicing in Formal Phonology

Marc van Oostendorp <Marc at vanOostendorp.nl>

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=851


Abstract:
There is a rather vast phonetic literature showing that
final devoicing in languages such as German, Catalan or
Dutch is not complete: there are subtle acoustic differences
between devoiced and underlyingly voiceless consonants,
and these differences can also be perceived. Some authors
have claimed that this constitutes an argument against 'formal
phonology' based on a discrete alphabet of symbols. This
article argues that this is not the case, and in particular
that a theory based on ideas of Containment (Prince and
Smolensky 1993) and Turbidity (Goldrick 2000, Revithiadou
2006) predicts incomplete devoicing, exactly because it
is a formal theory of phonology, albeit one using representations
which are a little more sophisticated than those used in SPE.

Comments: 
Keywords: phonology-phonetics interface, turbidity, containment
Areas: Phonology
Type: Journal Article

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=851