Ulfsbjorninn (2017) – Markedness and Formalising Phonological Representations

Markedness and Formalising Phonological Representations
Shanti Ulfsbjorninn
direct link: http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/003347
February 2017
Haspelmath (2006) argues that the concept of markedness is confused and problematic. He urges linguists to dispense with the term. One principle criticism is that markedness solutions seem always to require further explanation rather than actually providing answers (Samuels 2011). Concordantly, Hale & Reiss (2000, 2008), pioneers of Substance Free Phonology (SFP) argue that markedness has no place in what should be a formal theory of linguistic competence, thereby excluding phonetics and diachrony. Accepting the significant merit of these strains of thought (and many of their conclusions), this paper shows that there is nonetheless space for a theory of markedness in formal phonology. By examining markedness from a highly representational viewpoint, I will show that ‘markedness as complexity’ does have an explanatory role, at least for syllable structure. I will demonstrate that markedness is explicable in terms of ‘structural complexity’ and ‘length of description’. The core demonstration will be Charette’s (1990, 1991, 1992) typology and analysis of consonant clusters (CCs). Her papers discovered important implicational universals she related these directly to representations. As well as enriching the typology, my contribution will be to arrange the principles and parameters into a decision tree that derives the implicational universals. I will demonstrate that the number of parameter settings (the depth in the decision tree) increases the markedness of the resultant grammar (cf. Ulfsbjorninn 2014). Each parametric ‘yes’ setting corresponds to an extra empty phonological category or extra ability to license in the representation. For this reason, markedness is not merely a ‘metaphor’ ‘for a cognitive state’ (Haspelmath 2006), it is directly convertible into linguistic categories. This markedness is still ‘extra-grammatical’; it is not part of the computation of forms (contra Optimality Theory) and markedness statements cannot be re-ranked to obtain different grammars. However, markedness is one step in the chain of explanation for: (a) the apparent step-wise variation of complexity and implicational universals of consonant clusters. (b) the Trubetzkoy hypothesis. I will defend markedness in the same terms as Gurevich (2001) criticises it: ‘[as a] an encoding of a universal ‘naturalness’ in the phonology’. Crucially, this naturalness is a product internal to the phonology (adjacency, licensing, parameter settings) and not grounded in phonetics.

Format: [ pdf ]
Reference: lingbuzz/003347
(please use that when you cite this article)
Published in: to appear: Samuels, B. D. (Ed.). Beyond Markedness in Formal Phonology. Amsterdam: John Benjamins
keywords: markedness, phonology, empty categories, empty nuclei, consonant clusters, strict cv, substance free phonology, phonology