Sayeed (2017) – String Phonology

String Phonology
Ollie Sayeed
direct link: http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/003508
June 2017
I give a formal model of phonology, which I call String Phonology, which maps strings to strings. In line with substance-free and evolutionary phonology, the model doesn’t try to limit phonology to ‘natural’ rules; instead, it’s supposed to be maximally general, performing any sort of computation on strings given the pieces of machinery that are needed to account for attested rules. In section 2, I discuss some preliminaries in methodology around how to pick a theory of phonology from the evidence. In section 3, I introduce the model; in section 4, I define the operations that produce allowable strings; and in section 5, I explain the ‘delete-and-unify’ model of how rules act on strings. In section 6, I discuss what sorts of rules are possible and impossible under this model.

Format: [ pdf ]
Reference: lingbuzz/003508
(please use that when you cite this article)
Published in: University of Cambridge
keywords: phonology, string, substance-free, diachrony, formal, mathematical, model, phonology