Abstract not found

A fundamental problem in spoken language is the duality between the continuous aspects of phonetic performance and the discrete aspects of phonological competence. We study two instances of this problem from the phenomenon of voicing neutralization and vowel harmony. In each case, we present a model where the experimentally observed continuous distinctions are linked to the discreteness of phonological form using the mathematics of nonlinear dynamics. Dynamics of phonological cognition 3 Dynamics of phonological cognition 1.

Using a combination of magnetometry and ultrasound, we examined the articulatory characteristics of the so-called ‘transparent ’ vowels [i�], [i], and [e�] in Hungarian vowel harmony. Phonologically, transparent vowels are front, but they can be followed by either front or back suffixes. However, a finer look reveals an underlying phonetic coherence in two respects. First, transparent vowels in back harmony contexts show a less advanced (more retracted) tongue body posture than phonemically identical vowels in front harmony contexts: e.g. [i] in buli-val is less advanced than [i] in bili-vel. Second, transparent vowels in monosyllabic stems selecting back suffixes are also less advanced than phonemically identical vowels in stems selecting front suffixes: e.g. [i�] in ír, taking back suffixes, compared to [i�] of hír, taking front suffixes, is less advanced when these stems are produced in bare form (no suffixes). We thus argue that the phonetic degree of tongue body horizontal position correlates with the phonological alternation in suffixes. A hypothesis that emerges from this work is that a plausible phonetic basis for transparency can be found in quantal characteristics of the relation between articulation and acoustics of transparent vowels. More broadly, the proposal is that the phonology of transparent vowels is better understood when their phonological patterning is studied together with their articulatory and acoustic characteristics.

Vowel harmony is generally considered to be more common than consonantal harmony, though the closest comprehensive typology that exists as far as I know can be found in (Nevins, 2010). Instead there are many well-studied cases. Like other phonological patterns, vowel harmony can express itself as either a static fact about words in the language, or through phonological alternations and allomorphy. The first example illustrates how in Degema, there are no words with both advanced ([i u e o @]) and retracted ([I U E O a]) vowels. Every vowel in every word agrees in the feature