Internalizing perception in phonology
Geoff Schwartz
Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań
One area in which Natural Phonology (NP) has differed from other phonological frameworks is in the treatment of phenomena generally thought of as “external” to a theory of phonological structure. Such phenomena have included diachronic changes, sociolinguistic aspects, and even phonetics and speech perception. NP is willing to make use of such phenomena to analyze and explain linguistic riddles.
With advances in speech analysis technology, the study of the role of speech perception in shaping and maintaining phonological inventories has gained more and more attention (see e.g. Hume and Johnson, 2001). Although there have been some recent attempts to model perceptual phenomena in phonological analyses (Donegan 1999), most phonological analysis generally deal with production-based constraints and processes.
It is my view that perception cannot be considered separate from phonology. Phonology organizes speech sounds into utterances that listeners perceive, so the role of perceptual considerations in sound organization is inevitable.
This paper will analyze some common phonological and morphonological phenomena, including unreleased stops and aspiration in English, and final devoicing and palatalization in Slavic. The goal is to combine perception and production in a single grammar, to show that perception is indeed "Internal" in phonology. In true “Interfacing” tradition, formalism will be borrowed from several different phonogical frameworks.