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From: alderson@netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Subject: Re: Power spectrum of phonemes?
In-Reply-To: rte@elmo.lz.att.com's message of Wed, 27 Sep 1995 16:24:53 GMT
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In article <rte-2709951124530001@mac-118.lz.att.com> rte@elmo.lz.att.com
(Ralph T. Edwards) writes:

>In article <DFJtKr.AEI@eskimo.com>, rickw@eskimo.com (Richard Wojcik) wrote:

>> In article <rte-2209951437010001@mac-118.lz.att.com>,
>> Ralph T. Edwards <rte@elmo.lz.att.com> wrote:

>>>In article <aldersonDF7sEy.3Ly@netcom.com>, alderson@netcom.com wrote:

>>>>*phonemes* are either (1) a mental construct or (2) an artefact of
>>>>analytical grouping, depending on one's theoretical background and
>>>>bias(es).

>>>Wait, are you saying that some people question that phonemes are real?  Some
>>>people dispute that reduction to a finite number of meaningfully different
>>>atomic subunits of speech is part of the way humans generate and decode
>>>speech?

>>>Who makes such a bizarre claim? 

>>To call a phoneme a "mental construct" is not to dispute that it is real.  If
>>you are talking about generating and decoding speech, then you are talking
>>about a psychological phoneme.  As Rich said, all of this depends on your
>>theoretical viewpoint.

>I wasn't quite sure what the original poster was saying, which is why I tried
>to pin him down with a specific question.  To the extent I suspected either of
>the statements suggested that phonemes weren't part of the encoding/decoding
>chain, it would have been the one containing the word artefact, which tends to
>mean something accidental or imaginary when used by a scientist other than a
>paleontologist.

Sorry, I've been extremely busy at work, and haven't had time for sci.lang for
the last several weeks.  I see that Rick Wojcik has done a very good job with
respect to the comparability of digital generation of sounds to human speech
production.  (Yes, there *is* a theoretical claim in my wording of that last,
one which I do not care to debate _ad nauseam_.)

However, to answer Ralph Edwards' question, the issue is that of "The Psycholo-
gical Reality of the Phoneme," as Sapir entitled a paper on the topic contra
the view put forth, even if not exactly held, by the American Structuralist
school, with their attempt at a grounding in Logical Positivitism.  (Thus, in
my definition of the phoneme as "a mental construct," I was indeed claiming,
with Sapir and Stampe (and the SPE generativists, come to that), that phonemes
are psychologically real.)

As to who would claim otherwise, the entirety of a generation of American
Structuralist phonologists--Bloomfield, Bloch, Pike, the Summer Institute of
Linguistics, inter aliis--at least publicly held such a view.  Whether this
view was more honoured in the breach is a topic for another day; for now, I
only wish to make it clear that I did indeed have a particular definition of
the phoneme in mind, one which I do not, cannot, share.

>>Psychological phonemes might not have any physical manifestation in the
>>speech stream.

>Huh?

Take a look at David Stampe's work, especially his _A Dissertation on Natural
Phonology_ (University of Chicago).  The processual model of phonology which
leads from citation-form lento speech to rapid speech makes this claim.  See
especially the derivation of more and more rapid pronunciations of "divinity
fudge" in his dissertation.

>>Whether or not you insist on phonemes having a unique phonetic identity is,
>>again, a matter of theoretical viewpoint.

>Huh again.  Let's try again.  A large number of distinct utterences, varying
>from individual to individual, dialect to dialect, and by context map to a
>finite muber of perceived phonemes (for each individual).  These phonemes
>become so real to their users that many cannot conceive of other phonemic
>distinctions. 

When I did a field methods course in graduate school, we worked on the Ibanag
language of the Philippines.  One of the things *I* found interesting, and
which drove the old-line structuralist teaching the class nuts, was that two
phonemes, /t/ and /k/, both neutralized to a glottal stop [?]--in *different*
positions.  What was clearly a glottal stop was interpreted by our informant (I
know, not now a PC term) correctly at all times--that is, a pronunciation with
[k] or [t] was only accepted when the correct underlying phoneme was used.

The American Structuralists insisted on unique phonetic identity, or unique
*sets* of identity among allophones.  This kind of overlap was not available to
them within their theoretical picture of the universe.

*That* is what Mr. Wojcik was talking about.
-- 
Rich Alderson   You know the sort of thing that you can find in any dictionary
                of a strange language, and which so excites the amateur philo-
                logists, itching to derive one tongue from another that they
                know better: a word that is nearly the same in form and meaning
                as the corresponding word in English, or Latin, or Hebrew, or
                what not.
                                                --J. R. R. Tolkien,
alderson@netcom.com                               _The Notion Club Papers_
