Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dzt6s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-24T02:35:47.666Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Why underlying representations?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 February 2018

LARRY M. HYMAN
LARRY M. HYMAN*
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
*
Author’s address: Department of Linguistics, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-2650, USA[email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Phonology is a rapidly changing and increasingly varied field, having traveled quite some distance from its original structuralist and generative underpinnings. In this overview I address the status of underlying representations (URs) in phonology, which have been rejected by a number of researchers working in different frameworks. After briefly discussing the current state of phonology, I survey the arguments in favor of vs. against URs, considering recent surface-oriented critiques and alternatives. I contrast three straightforward abstract tonal analyses against the potential arguments which accuse URs of being (i) wrong, (ii) redundant, (iii) indeterminate, (iv) insufficient, or (v) uninteresting. Identifying two distinct goals in linguistics which I refer to as determining ‘what’s in the head?’ vs. ‘what’s in the language?’, I suggest, responding to some rather strong opinions to the contrary, that URs are an indispensable and welcome tool offering important insights into the typology of phonological systems, if not beyond.

Keywords

abstractnessalphabetic writinggoal of linguisticsrepresentationstone
Type
Looking Back, Moving Forward
Information
Journal of Linguistics , Volume 54 , Issue 3 , 01 August 2018 , pp. 591 - 610
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

[1]

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the University of California, Berkeley and as the Henry Sweet Lecture at the Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Association of Great Britain, University College, London, 16 September 2015, as part of a workshop on the Current Status of Underlying Representations in Phonology (http://www.lagb.org.uk/lagb2015/phonology). I would like to thank participants at both events, as well as Jeffrey Heinz, Sharon Inkelas, Keith Johnson, and Mark Liberman for helpful discussions of the issues raised in this paper. I would especially like to thank the editors of JL and three anonymous referees who put in an enormous effort and thought into their helpful comments on the original manuscript. While I have followed as much of their advice as I could, I hope they will not hold against me that I wasn’t able to address all of the important issues they raised.

References

Albright, Adam. 2008. Explaining universal tendencies and language particulars in analogical change. In Good, Jeff (ed.), Linguistic universals and language change, 125–143. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Albright, Adam. 2012. Probing underlying representations. In Cohn, Abigail C. & Fougeron, Cécile (eds.), The Oxford handbook of laboratory phonology, 134–146. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Anderson, Stephen R. 2008. The logical structure of linguistic theory. Language 84, 795–814.Google Scholar
Archangeli, Diana & Pulleyblank, Douglas. 2015a. Allomorphs in a connected world. Presented at Colloquium, University of California, Berkeley, 16 March 2015.Google Scholar
Archangeli, Diana & Pulleyblank, Douglas. 2015b. Tonal allomorphy in Kinande. In Hee Wee, Lian & Hsiao, Yuchau (eds.), Capturing phonological shades, 76–100. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.Google Scholar
Bermúdez-Otero, Ricardo. 2014. The role of underlying representations in split-base formations: The case of French adjectival liaison. Presented at Allomorphy: Its Logic and Limitations, Jerusalem, 8 July 2014.Google Scholar
Buckley, Eugene. 2011. Metathesis. In van Oostendorp, Marc, Ewen, Colin J., Hume, Elizabeth & Rice, Keren (eds.), The Blackwell companion to phonology, vol. 3, 1380–1470. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Burzio, Luigi. 1996. Surface constraints versus underlying representations. In Durand, Jacques & Laks, Bernard (eds.), Current trends in phonology: Models, and methods, 118–136. Salford: European Studies Research Institute, University of Salford.Google Scholar
Bybee, Joan. 2001. Phonology and language use. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bybee, Joan L., Perkins, Revere D. & Pagliuca, William. 1994. The evolution of grammar: Tense, aspect, and modality in the languages of the world. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Cassimjee, Farida & Kisseberth, Charles W.. 1992. On the tonology of depressor consonants: Evidence from Mijikenda and Nguni. Berkeley Linguistic Society 18 (BLS 18): Special Session on Tone System Typology, 26–40.Google Scholar
Celata, Chiara, Calamai, Silvia, Ricci, Irene & Bertini, Chiara. 2013. Nasal place assimilation between phonetics and phonology: An EPG study of Italian nasal-to-velar clusters. Journal of Phonetics 41, 88–100.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam & Halle, Morris. 1968. The sound pattern of English. New York: Harper & Row.Google Scholar
Cole, Jennifer & Hualde, José Ignacio. 2011. Underlying representations. In van Oostendorp, Marc, Ewen, Colin J., Hume, Elizabeth & Rice, Keren (eds.), The Blackwell companion to phonology. Blackwell Reference Online. doi:10.1111/b.9781405184236.2011.x (31 July 2012).Google Scholar
Cutler, Anne, Eisner, Frank, McQueen, James M. & Norris, Dennis. 2010. How abstract phonemic categories are necessary for coping with speaker-related variation. In Fougeron, Cécile, Kühnert, Barbara, D’Imperio, Mariapaola & Vallée, Nathalie (eds.), Laboratory Phonology, vol. 10, 91–111. Berlin & New York: de Gruyter Mouton.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eddington, David. 1996. The psychological status of phonological analyses. Linguistica 36, 17–37.Google Scholar
Eliasson, Stig. 2014. Review of Silverman (2012). Linguistics 52.5, 1305–1319.Google Scholar
Ellis, Lucy & Hardcastle, William J.. 2002. Categorical and gradient properties of assimilation in alveolar to velar sequences: Evidence from EPG and EMA data. Journal of Phonetics 30, 373–396.Google Scholar
Evans, Nicholas & Levinson, Stephen C.. 2010. Time for a sea-change in linguistics: Reponses to comments on ‘The myth of language universals’. Lingua 120, 2733–2758.Google Scholar
Gahl, Susanne. 2008. Thyme and time are not homophones: The effect of lemma frequency on word durations in spontaneous speech. Language 84, 474–496.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gouskova, Maria. 2013. Review of Marc van Oostendorp, Colin J. Ewen, Elizabeth Hume & Keren Rice (eds.), The Blackwell companion to phonology (Wiley-Blackwell, 2011). Phonology 30, 173–179.Google Scholar
Green, Anthony. 2007. Phonology limited (Linguistics in Potsdam 27), Potsdam: Universität Potsdam.Google Scholar
Hale, Mark & Reiss, Charles. 2008. The phonological enterprise. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harris, John. 2007. Representation. In de Lacy, Paul (ed.), The Cambridge handbook of phonology, 119–138. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hayes, Bruce. 1995. On what to teach the undergraduates: Some changing orthodoxies in phonological theory. Linguistics in the Morning Calm 3, 59–77. Seoul: Hanshin Publishing Co.Google Scholar
Hornstein, Nobert. 2014. Faculty of language. http://facultyoflanguage.blogspot.com/2014/03/hornsteins-lament.html(1 September 2015).Google Scholar
Hurford, James R. 1977. The significance of linguistic generalizations. Language 53, 574–620.Google Scholar
Hyman, Larry M. 1979. Phonology and noun structure. In Hyman, Larry M. (ed.), Aghem grammatical structure (Southern California Occasional Papers in Linguistics 7), 1–72. Los Angeles, CA: University of Southern California.Google Scholar
Hyman, Larry M. 2003. African languages and phonological theory. GLOT International 7.6, 153–163.Google Scholar
Hyman, Larry M. 2004. Why describe African languages? In Akinlabi, Akinbiyi & Adesola, Oluseye (eds.), Proceedings of the 4th World Congress of African Linguistics, New Brunswick 2003, 21–42. Cologne: Ruediger Köppe.Google Scholar
Hyman, Larry M. 2011. Tone: Is it different? In Goldsmith, John, Riggle, Jason & Yu, Alan C. L. (eds.), The handbook of phonological theory, 2nd edn., 197–239. Malden, MA: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Hyman, Larry M. & VanBik, Kenneth. 2004. Directional rule application and output problems in Hakha Lai tone. In Yen-Hwei Lin (ed.), Phonetics and phonology: Special issue of Language and Linguistics 5.4, 821–861. Taipei: Academia Sinica.Google Scholar
Jones, Patrick. 2016. On the failure of non-abstract phonology: Evidence from Kinande. Ms., Harvard University.Google Scholar
Kenstowicz, Michael & Kisseberth, Charles W.. 1979. Generative phonology: Description and theory. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Kochetov, Alexei & Poulier, Marianne. 2008. Phonetic variability and grammatical knowledge: An articulatory study of Korean place assimilation. Phonology 25, 399–431.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Krämer, Martin. 2012. Underlying representations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Ladd, D. Robert. 2014. Simultaneous structure in phonology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Ladd, D. Robert & Scobbie, James M.. 2003. External sandhi as gestural overlap? Counter-evidence from Sardinian. In Local, John, Ogden, Richard & Temple, Rosalind (eds.), Phonetic interpretation: Papers in Laboratory Phonology VI, 164–182. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Lightner, Theodore M. 1971. Generative phonology. In Dingwall, William Orr (ed.), A survey of linguistic science, 498–574. College Park, MD: Linguistics Program, University of Maryland.Google Scholar
Lodge, Ken. 2009. Fundamental concepts in phonology: Sameness and difference. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Nevins, Andrew & Vaux, Bert. 2007. Underlying representations that do not minimize grammatical ‘violations’. In Blaho, Sylvia, Bye, Patrick & Krämer, Martin (eds.), Freedom of analysis?, 36–62. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Newmeyer, Frederick J. 1983. Grammatical theory: Its limits and possibilities. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Ohala, John J.1987. Experimental phonology. Berkeley Linguistic Society 13 (BLS 13), 207–202.Google Scholar
Ohala, John J. & Ohala, Manjari. 1986. Testing hypotheses regarding the psychological manifestation of morpheme structure constraints. In Ohala, John J. & Jaeger, Jeri J. (eds.), Experimental phonology, 239–252. Orlando, FL: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Port, Robert F. & Leary, Adam P.. 2005. Against formal phonology. Language 4, 927–964.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rubach, Jerzy. 2016. Polish yers: Representation and analysis. Journal of Linguistics 52, 421–466.Google Scholar
Sapir, Edward. 1933. La réalité psychologique des phonèmes. Journal de Pyschologie Normale et Pathologique 30, 247–265. [Reprinted in David Mandelbaum (ed.), Edward Sapir Selected writings in language, culture and personality, 46–60 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1949) and in Valerie Becker Makkai (ed.), Phonological theory: Evolution and current practice, 22–31 (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1972).]Google Scholar
Scheer, Tobias. 2004. A lateral theory of phonology, vol. 1: What is CVCV and why should it be?Boston, MA & Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Scheer, Tobias. 2012. A lateral theory of phonology, vol. 2: Direct interface and one-channel translation. Boston, MA & Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Scheer, Tobias. 2014. «The Corpus: A Tool among Others», Corela [En ligne], HS-13 | 2013, mis en ligne le 19 février. 2014, consulté le 09 juillet 2015. http://corela.revues.org/3006(1 September 2015).Google Scholar
Scheer, Tobias. 2015. How diachronic is synchronic grammar? Crazy rules, regularity, and naturalness. In Honeybone, Patrick & Salmons, Joseph (eds.), The Oxford handbook of historical phonology, 313–336. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Scobbie, James M., Coleman, John S. & Bird, Steven. 1996. Key aspects of declarative phonology. In Durand, Jacques & Laks, Bernard (eds.), Current trends in phonology: Models & methods, vol. 2, 685–709. Salford: European Studies Research Institute, University of Salford.Google Scholar
Silverman, Daniel. 2006. A critical introduction to phonology. London: Continuum.Google Scholar
Silverman, Daniel. 2012. Neutralization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Sweet, Henry. 1877. A handbook of phonetics. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Twaddell, William Freeman. 1935. On defining the phoneme (Language Monograph No. 16).Google Scholar
Vennemann, Theo. 1974. Words and syllables in natural generative phonology. In Anthony Bruck, Robert A. Fox & Michael W. La Galy (eds.), Chicago Linguistics Society (CLS) 1974: Parasession on Natural Phonology, 346–374. Chicago, IL: Chicago Linguistic Society.Google Scholar
Volk, Erez. 2007. High, low and in between: Giryama tonology. Masters thesis, Tel-Aviv University.Google Scholar
Volk, Erez. 2011. Mijikenda tonology. Ph.D. dissertation, Tel Aviv University.Google Scholar
Zwicky, Arnold M. 1986. In and out of phonology. Working Papers in Linguistics 32, 34–45. Columbus, OH: The Ohio State University.Google Scholar