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This article presents detailed complexity analysis of the encoding and decoding problems for the segmental phonology. The segmental model is a generative theory of phonological dependencies. As such, it poses two computational problems. The first computational problem is the problem of actually encoding the dependencies of a given phonology into a given representation of phonological knowledge (the encoding problem). The second computational problem is the problem of deciding whether a given phonological representation encodes the dependencies of a given phonology (the decoding problem). We begin by proving that the encoding and decoding problems are both undecidable in the segmental model. Next, we motivate a simplified segmental model, that more accurately models the phonological dependencies actually proposed in the phonological literature. The simplified segmental model is a more restricted and more natural reformalization of the segmental model. To conclude, we prove that the enco...

this paper address the two questions of rule ordering and exceptions. In the first example, we show that the inter-vocalic obstruent clusters [ks] and [gj] as in the English verbs accede and suggest are lawful consequences of the fact, on the one hand, that English is subject to Velar Softening (electric - electricity) and, on the other hand, that in words such as recede and recite the intervocalic /s/ is not voiced, whereas it is voiced in resume and resort. Our second example provides an account of the superficially highly irregular allomorphs of the PlGen of modern Czech, by showing that these result from the fact that one of the central processes of Slavic phonology -- Jakobson's rule of vowel deletion -- does not apply in the PlG of some nouns

Under the standard approach to UR discovery (Chomsky and Halle 1968; Kenstowicz and Kisseberth 1977), it is assumed that whenever possible, surface contrasts should be derived in a lawful way from underlying distinctions. In other words, if a surface contrast ([A] vs.

In this essay, I highlight the important role of endangered language documentation and description in the study of sound patterns. Three different perspectives are presented: a long view of phonology, from ancient to modern traditions; an areal and genetic view of sound patterns, and their relation to theory and description; and a practical perspective on the importance of research on endangered sound patterns. All perspectives converge on a common theme: the most lasting and influential contributions to the field are those with seamless boundaries between description and analysis. 1. Introduction. The

Prosody, in terms of theories of phonological representation, refers to syllabicity, length, syllable organisation, stress and related concepts, and certain sequencing relations between segment sequences, usually between adjacent syllables. Skeletal positions: The problem. One of the basic questions of prosody is how segmental length should be represented. Length could be treated as a binary feature and is so treated in the SPE theory, analogous to nasality or voicing. However, it has long been recognised that to a considerable extent, long vowels behave the same as two short vowels and long consonants often behave like two short consonants. This fact is so widely recognised that it has become standard for long segments to be written aa, uu, tt, nn and so on. An example of this patterning is found in the fact that in Yawelmani, long vowels are shortened before clusters of two consonants as well as before geminate (long) consonants (see Chapter 7). This rule interacts with an epenthesis rule which inserts i or u (depending on the preceding vowel) between the first two of three consonants. This shortening rule explains why the underlying long vowel of /Üa:ml-al / and /Üa:ml-it / is short on the surface ˜ [Üamlal] ‘help (dubitative)’, [Üaml-it] ‘help (passive aorist)’. Examples like /Üa:ml-hin/, /Üa:ml-k’a / which surface as [Üa:mil-hin] ‘help (nonfuture)’, [Üa:mil-k’a] ‘help

2. Putting the verb in context....................................................... 1 2.1 Absence of [kutb] surface forms........................................... 4 2.2 Absence of /kutb / stems.................................................. 7

Researchers across various disciplines from propositional logic to theoretical linguistics agree that rules and constraints are always logically intertranslatable, with Mohanan (2000: 145ff.) being the most recent to emphasize the relevance of this insight for phonological theory: (1) ppq is equivalent to:(p &:q) [+nasal]p[+voice] *[+nasal, xvoice] Unfortunately, most linguists take this equivalence to mean that one should adopt a model which is either rules-only or constraints-only, for the sake of theoretical sanitation. Thus, proponents of Optimality Theory (OT) employ only constraints, while proponents of classical generative phonology (see, for example, Kenstowicz & Kisseberth 1979) employ only rules. At last, someone recognizes that intertranslatability does not mean that a given phonological model must choose between rules and constraints and should have only one or the other. As Andrea Calabrese argues in this book,

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Phonology is usually thought of as the study of the ‘sound systems ’ of languages. In this article I will make an attempt to explain what that means for me and why I refer to the approach that I favor as ‘cognitive’. Frankly, I have no idea how phonology could ever be anything but cognitive. However, there is a certain view that explanation in this domain