Against formal phonology (Port and Leary)

 Generative phonology assumes:  Units (phones) are discrete (not continuous, not variable)  Phonetic space contains static symbolic objects  Objects are manipulated by rules  Phonetic space is closed  There is a fixed inventory of possible human sounds  (You can always minutely tweak one)

Against formal phonology (Port and Leary)  Generative phonology assumes:  Language is a kind of knowledge  The knowledge is formal (like numbers, variables and math formulas)

Against formal phonology (Port and Leary)  Generative phonology assumes:  Language is a kind of knowledge  The knowledge is formal (like numbers, variables and math formulas)  Goal of phonology is to discover the algebra/grammar used by speakers

Against formal phonology (Port and Leary)  What is formal linguistics?  Uses discrete (invariable, unchanging, not continuous) units  In math whole numbers are discrete (2.34 isn't whole and isn't discrete)  Assumes linguistics knowledge is knowledge of symbols and manipulation of symbols

Against formal phonology (Port and Leary)  Problem:  Speech isn't discrete, but continuous  Generative solution:  Strip away details and match continuous acoustic signal to abstract discrete symbolic units

Against formal phonology (Port and Leary)  Speech involves converting digital storage into analog waves  (Vocal apparatus isn't digital)  Comprehension involves converting analog speech signal into digital units

Against formal phonology (Port and Leary)  Paradox  Speech involves converting digital storage into analog waves  (Vocal apparatus isn't digital)  Comprehension involves converting analog speech signal into digital units  This means people process things in continuous (real) time and discrete (not real) time

Against formal phonology (Port and Leary)  Example:  In allow the tongue moves from the schwa position to the [l] position in real time. It passes through a gradual vowel to [l] transition  Discrete time disregards this temporal aspect: the [l] unit simply follows the schwa unit

Against formal phonology (Port and Leary)  You can believe in categories like phoneme without assuming language processing involves manipulation of discrete units

Against formal phonology (Port and Leary)  Paradox  If all languages use same static (universal) units and processing then no language will be totally unique in any way

Against formal phonology (Port and Leary)  Paradox  If all languages use same static (universal) units and processing then no language will be totally unique in any way  Generativists say the uniqueness comes when language is given to analog speech apparatus

Against formal phonology (Port and Leary)  Competence versus Performance  Competence involves discrete units and processing in discrete (not real) time  Just like math or formal logic formulas don't happen in real time

Against formal phonology (Port and Leary)  Competence versus Performance  Competence involves discrete units and processing in discrete (not real) time  Just like math or formal logic formulas don't happen in real time  Performance involves physical bodies that work in continuous real time

Against formal phonology (Port and Leary) “If one believes that [formal discrete] cognitive and linguistic events could not, in fact, exhibit symptoms of existence either in space or time, then, since real physical and physiological events do, there is no way to make them fit together.”

Against formal phonology (Port and Leary)  Discrete, static units are unchangeable, can't evolve.  If that's true they can't be gradually learned or evolving concepts  So, they must exist beforehand  So, they must be innate

Against formal phonology (Port and Leary)  Discrete, static units must be distinct from each other  How could math work if 2 were sometimes not distinct from 3 or ¾ wasn't always.75?  A computer program wouldn't work if the operators (if then, and) sometimes were not distinct

Against formal phonology (Port and Leary)  Linguistic units vary  The formants of a vowel vary from token to token  Sometimes what should be distinct sounds aren't  /b/ and /p/ both are often voiceless in Bob and bop.  Although /æ/ and / Ɛ / contrast, they often overlap  Bet and bat are often indistiguisable

Against formal phonology (Port and Leary)  Evidence for discreteness  We interpret different sounds and the same thing (phonemes)  But isn't that learned or influenced by literacy?  If babies aren't born doing it it's not discrete/innate

Against formal phonology (Port and Leary)  Evidence against discreteness  Aspirated versus unaspirated consonants  VOT isn't universal, but language dependent  The formants for a given vowel (e.g. [u]) vary across languages, so [u] unit isn't universal  If phonetic inventory is innate why do people disagree about what units are in fire?

Against formal phonology (Port and Leary)  Evidence against discreteness  Difference between bad and bat is vowel length  The long [æ:] in bad in fast speech is just as long as the short [æ] in bat in slow speech  So the contrast is the difference between two at the same speech rate  How does discreteness handle variation?

Against formal phonology (Port and Leary)  Evidence against discreteness  Difference between rapid and rabid is VOT  VOT varies at different speech rates  A fast rapid can have same VOT as rabid  A unit that varies isn't static and can't be symbolic

Against formal phonology (Port and Leary)  Evidence against discreteness  In German word final /t/ and /d/ are [t]  In German word final /p/ and /b/ are [p]

Against formal phonology (Port and Leary)  Evidence against discreteness  But they are actually slightly different  German speakers can hear difference 60-75% of the time  So they aren't identical/discrete/static

Against formal phonology (Port and Leary)  Evidence against discreteness  /t/ and /d/ both flap in English  Budding/butting and latter/ladder are homophones  But English speakers can guess which is which 65-70% of the time  So flap isn't a discrete/static unit

Against formal phonology (Port and Leary)  Static/discrete units are either or  Yes/no  0/1  Phonetic units are not static or discrete

Against formal phonology (Port and Leary) “The great hypothesis of 20th century structural linguistics, starting with de Saussure and the Prague School, was that the speaker’s solution to the problem of remembering words would have an unmistakable resemblance to the written language with hierarchical data structures resembling those of various orthographic units: segments, words and sentences. But for that to be true, there must be a basic-level alphabet of crisp letter-like tokens, suitable for discrete combination in building larger structures. Since there apparently is no basic symbolic alphabet for cognition (at least not a phonetic one), despite the obvious existence of higher (i.e., temporally longer, more abstract) structures of the phonology and lexicon, we must keep our minds open and employ whatever models work best to explain relevant phenomena.”