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The Minimality Condition in phonology1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Monik Charette
Monik Charette
Affiliation:
McGill University and School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
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Extract

With a few honourable exceptions, phonologists have, until recently, generally assumed the phonological component to be organized along completely different lines from the other components of the grammar. Phonological phenomena were mainly viewed as accidental, language specific, and unprincipled. Whereas some theoretical parallels between syntax and phonology have been drawn (cf. the role of the cycle in both domains and the extensive literature on ordering), there have been few attempts to see if principles of Universal Grammar could be found in phonology as well as in syntax and semantics. Increasingly, however, phonology is now being regarded as a system of principles along with parameters defining the class of human phonological Systems. In such a framework there are no rules of the sort: A → B/C→D. Phonological phenomena result from principles and parameters governing phonological representations and structures present in a particular language. Along these lines, recent work in phonology has suggested that Phonological Form (PF), like the other components of the grammar, is subject to certain fundamental principles. For example, it was proposed by Andersen and Jones in the early 1970s (and pursued by Ewen, Durand and others) that the relations of dependency that determine how syntactic constituents are organized, also determine how segments are grouped together in a given structure. For their part Lowenstamm & Kaye (1982) proposed that a theory of government could account for certain phonological processes such as vowel shortening in closed syllables. Stephen Anderson (1982) and Levin (1985) have proposed that X-bar principles govern the representation of syllables. Specifically, they have proposed that the Rhyme and the syllable as a whole are projections of the syllabic head, the Nucleus.

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Articles
Information
Journal of Linguistics , Volume 25 , Issue 1 , March 1989 , pp. 159 - 187
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1989

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