Title: ARE PHONOLOGICAL ENTITIES FICTITIOUS OR REAL?
1 ARE PHONOLOGICAL ENTITIES FICTITIOUS OR REAL?
- Prepared by Agnieszka Sowinska and Beata
Szymczak - Based on Self-organizing processes and the
explanation of phonological universals by
B.Lindblom
2- Where do phonological universals such as segments
and features come from?
3...we will be using
- a self-organizing model of phonological
structure - implemented in a series of computational
experiments organized to simulate the emergence
of segments and features - which was to select a subset of k phonetic
signals from a larger inventory of n universally
possible gestures.
4holistic coding
phonemic coding
- every derived syllable remains a gestalt pattern
that cannot be fractioned into smaller parts
occurring also in other syllables - one holistic phonetic signal per morpheme
- every selected signal can be reduced to subparts
shared with other syllables of the subset - mapping meaning onto sound by forming combinatory
patterns of segments and features
5THREE RESULTS LOOM LARGE
- 1) the occurrence of MINIMAL PAIRS, (instances of
phonemic and segmental coding) - 2) the possibility of analyzing the derived
contrasts in terms of DISTINCTIVE FEATURES (eg.
grave-acute) - 3) the RULE governing the distribution of palatal
and velar allophone of the /g/ phoneme
SEGMENT, FEATURE, RULE - are not explicit
constructs of the present theory - BUT are
IMPLICIT properties of the phonetic signals
6The conditions under which structuration into
segments and features arise
- the mechanism favouring phonemic coding ( the
repeated contrastive use of a syllable onset and
offset) requires that k - the lexicon - be much
greater than the number of available onsets and
offsets - IF
- 1 the performance constraints severely limit the
phonetic variation of onsets and offsets - 2 k becomes sufficiently large relative to the
phonetic repertoire - THEN
- speakers can find a way of making their
inventory of phonetic signals grow ONLY by
invoking gesture onsets and offsets repeatedly
and in new combinations
7It leads us further to...
- THE SEGMENTAL AND FEATURAL STRUCTURATION BUILT
INTO THE PHYLOGENY AND ONTOGENY OF SPEECH AS A
STATISTICAL BIAS, AND ARISING IMPLICITLY IN A
SELF-ORGANIZING MANNER
8And now its high time we got down to the
nitty-gritty
WHERE DO SEGMENTS AND FEATURES COME FROM?
9Two general approaches
- MENTALISTIC
- based on information theory that treats speech as
an error-correcting code ( eg. our early
ancestors...)
- MECHANISTIC
- eg. children-appear to use words as unanalyzed
wholes never aware of having acquired phonemic
coding, which seems to emerge in an automatic
and implicit manner
10THE THEORY OF SELF-ORGANIZING SYSTEMS (a
mechanistic explanation)
- a scientific paradigm which has recently arisen
at the intersection of physics, chemistry,
biology, and sociology
- aims at formulating the general laws governing
the spontaneous occurrence of order in nature and
the evolutionary dynamics
11PHONOLOGICAL STRUCTURE
- INTERACTION AMONG SUBSYSTEMS
STRUCTURATION
12TERMITE NEST BUILDING (M. Turvey)
- The form of these nests appears to arise as a
result of a simple local behavioral pattern
followed by each individual insect in the
presence of certain local stimulus conditions
13SIMULATIONS OF EMERGING PHONETIC STRUCTURE
- Size of lexicon or signal inventory - k
- Universal phonetic signal space (specific at
three levels articulation, acoustics,
perception)
14UNIVERSAL PHONETIC SIGNAL SPACE
- We specify the lg-independent universal class of
possible articulations confined to vowels and
voiced stops - these articulations involve transitions from a
closed (stoplike) to and open (vowellike) state - possible CV event (a straight line coursing
between a possible locus - assigned to each
closure location - and a possible vowel ) - possible CV syllable - any trajectory running
between an arbitrarty but possible locus and an
arbitrary but possible vowel in the space defined
by the first four formants - the CV space- a continous one made up of
infinitely many holistic signals (quantally
structured)
15Figure 1. The main result of the study
demonstrating that in the presence of certain
constraints a continuous space can become
quantally structured.
16Phonetic constraints
- Talker-based conditions
- sensory discriminability
- preference for less extreme articulation
- Listener-based conditions
- perceptual distance
- perceptual salience
17Where the open-close feature comes from in vowels?
- THE AIM the assigment of phonetic shape to a
minilexicon consisting of k lexical elements
with distinct meanings - THE RESULT systems of CV syllables tend to be
selected in such a way that they achieve
sufficient perceptual differences at acceptable
articulatory costs - every syllable was used once as the initial item
18 Figure 2. Occurence of derived CV
combinations
19OUR CONCLUSIONS ARE...
- The computations were insensitive to how the
recursive search was initiated - the most favored vowel turned out to be ?
- Figure 2 differs from a holistic coding in that
individual CV transitions can indeed be
fractioned into smaller parts also occurring in
other CV sequences
20Figure 3. Tendency towards complementary
distribution of /g/ allophones
21It will take us to two extreme outcomes...
- We need a minilexicon containing 12 words, in
the form of CV syllables
- We search for sets of 12 CV sequences
22 The holistic coding -no minimal pairs Every
CV transition is a gestalt that cannot be
fractioned into smaller parts also occurring in
other CV sequences
23END POINTS 1 2 3 4
STARTING 1 2 POINTS
3
ALL POSSIBLE COMBINATIONS OF POINTS USED
24running out of onsets/offsets as a numerical
artefact
- The first item ba - the gradual emergence of a
near-optimal sequence of syllables in a schematic
way
- We ask the computer to generate no more than 7
syllables
25(No Transcript)
26THE RESULTS ARE
- minimal pairs the simulated phonemic
constraints are not artefacts, and they could by
a result of running out of onsets/offsets - the size of that inventory is determined by the
severity of the performance constraints - the rank order is determined by the perceptual
distance and salience criterion
27The origin of segments and features an
explanation based on the concept of
self-organization
- - Random sampling of the possibilities offered by
the universal phonetic space should make all such
possibilities equally possible. However, in the
presence of certain constraints, nonuniform
preferences for certain syllables over others
arise (quantal structuration). - - The notion of system implies certain
paradigmatic relations among the elements of the
system must hold. When those relations are
present, structuration occurs gtimplicit form
emerges and the causes of such pattern formation
are indirect. - Let us describe our ancestors joint effort to
define the phonetic shapes of a growing set of
concepts as A RANDOM SAMPLING OF THE UNIVERSAL
PHONETIC SPACE IN THE PRESENCE OF PERFORMANCE
CONSTRAINTS. ?
28- ? Our preceding reasoning that quantal
structuration is built into the phylogeny of
speech as a statistical bizs should apply. When
several individuals find that their random
samplings sometimes converge and similar signals
are favoured, a situation that might be conducive
to socially conventionalised naming appesrs to
be at hand. - Results
- 1) evidence of phonemelike or segmental
coding - 2) the predicted syllables bear some, if not
strong, resemblance to natural sets of syllables - 3) the rather realistic allophonic variation
of the /g/ phoneme - FEATURE, PHONEME, and ALLOPHONIC RULE are present
only IMPLICIT properties of the behaviour. They
are derived rather than axiomatically postulated
as substantive universals.
29It was worth wading through...because now, its
time for...
THE END