Program
Linguistics : Phonology (Summer 2008)
Instructor: Professor San Duanmu （UM）and PKU faculty partner
Course Descriptions:
Phonology studies the sound system of human languages. The course assumes that students have taken at least one full-semester course in phonetics or phonology. We will focus on four central topics: (a) features and sounds, (b) syllable structure, (c) stress and prosody, and (d) phonological processes. The readings consist of journal articles that represent various theoretical perspectives. At the same time, equal emphasis will be given to problem-solving ability. Students will be given daily exercises, some of which involve analyzing data according to different theories. In addition, students are expected to work on three mini-projects, each dealing with one of the four central topics.
This course will enable students to become familiar with current theories and research topics in phonology. In addition, students will learn how to describe and analyze linguistic data, including quantitative data and large corpora, such as sound inventories in the world’s languages, full lexicons of selected languages, syllable types and frequencies, and rhythmic patterns of poems.
Prerequisite: Linguistics 313 or 512, or permission of the instructor.
Requirements:
There are three kinds of assignments:
Readings
Daily exercises
Three mini-projects
Readings:
There will be one or two readings for each class, usually 10-20 pages each. They will be made available on CTools.
If you feel that you need more background, you might look at the following two books:
Kenstowicz, Michael. 1994. Phonology in generative grammar. Blackwell.
Halle, M. and G. N. Clements. 1983. Problem Book in Phonology, MIT Press.
Ling 513: Phonology
Syllabus
Note: The lectures are based on a 14-week semester, where each lecture is 1.5 hours. Some changes will be made to organize the lectures in a one-month course.
| DATE | LECTURE | CONTENTS | READING/ASSIGNMENTS |
| 1 | Features and sounds: Introduction | Ladefoged-Halle 88 | |
| 2 | Features and sounds: categories and innateness | Ladefoged 72; Halle 73 | |
| 3 | Features and sounds: underspecification | Steriade 87 | |
| 4 | Features and sounds: tone | Halle 1972 | |
| 5 | Features and sounds: the articulator model | Halle 1983; Halle 05 | |
| 6 | Features and sounds: contour features | Duanmu 1994 | |
| 7 | Features and sounds: complex sounds | Duanmu 07a | |
| 8 | Syllable structure: syllable typology | Blevins 1995 | |
| 9 | Syllable structure: syllabification | Kahn 76; Wells 90 | |
| 10 | Feature mini-project discussion | ||
| 11 | Syllable structure: sonority and SCL | Gouskova 04 | |
| 12 | Syllable structure: onset clusters | Duanmu 2002 | |
| 13 | Syllable structure: the CVX theory | Duanmu 07b | |
| 14 | Stress and prosody: phonetics of stress | Fry 58 | |
| 15 | Stress and prosody: stress typology | Kiparsky 79 | |
| 16 | Stress and prosody: stress typology | Hayes 95; Topic selection | |
| 17 | Stress and prosody: English word stress | Halle 98 | |
| 18 | Stress and prosody: Phrasal stress | Z-V 00; Abstract due | |
| 19 | Stress and prosody: ISP | Duanmu 07c | |
| 20 | Stress and prosody: stress, tone, and intonation | P-B 88 | |
| 21 | Phonological processes: rules | Halle 62 | |
| 22 | Phonological processes: rules | Odden 05: Ch 3-5 | |
| 23 | Phonological processes: rules | Odden 05: Ch 3-5 | |
| 24 | Phonological processes: OT | Pater 2000; Draft due | |
| 25 | Phonological processes: OT | Alcantara 1998 | |
| 26 | Phonological processes: OT | Kim and Duanmu 02 | |
| Mon | Final paper due by 6 pm |
Readings:
Alcantara, Jonathan Brett. 1998. The Architecture of the English Lexicon. Doctoral Dissertation, Cornell University.
Blevins, Juliette. 1995. The syllable in phonological theory. In The handbook of phonology, ed. John Goldsmith, 206-244. Oxford, UK: Blackwell.
Borowsky, Toni. 1989. Structure preservation and the syllable coda in English. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 7: 145-166.
Chao, Yuen-Ren. 1934. The non-uniqueness of phonemic solutions of phonetic systems. Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica 4.4:363-397. Reprinted in Readings in Linguistics I, ed. Martin Joos, 1957:38-54. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Chomsky, Noam. 1964. Current issues in linguistic theory. The Hague, The Netherlands: Mouton.
Duanmu, San. 1994. Against contour tone units. Linguistic Inquiry 25.4: 555-608.
Duanmu, San. 1999. Metrical structure and tone: evidence from Mandarin and Shanghai. Journal of East Asian Linguistics 8.1: 1-38.
Duanmu, San. 2002. Two theories of onset clusters. Chinese Phonology 11 (Special issue: glides, syllable and tone): 97-120.
Duanmu, San. 2007a. Sound and features. Ms., University of Michigan. (To appear as Chapter 2, Syllable Structure, Oxford)
Duanmu, San. 2007d. CVX theory. Ms., University of Michigan. (To appear as Chapter 3, Syllable Structure, Oxford.)
Duanmu, San. 2007c. The Information-Stress Principle. Ms., University of Michigan. (To appear as Chapter 6, The Phonology of Standard Chinese, Oxford.)
Fry, Dennis B. 1958. Experiments in the perception of stress. Language and Speech 1:126-152.
Goldsmith, John. 1981. English as a tone language. In Phonology in the 1980's, ed. Didier L. Goyvaerts, 287-308. Ghent, Belgium: E. Story-Scientia.
Gouskova, Maria. 2004. Relational hierarchies in Optimality Theory: the case of syllable contact. Phonology 21.2: 201-250. Hall, Tracy Alan. 2002. Against extrasyllabic consonants in German and English. Phonology 19.1: 33-75.
Halle, Morris. 1962. Phonology in generative grammar. Word 18:54-72.
Halle, Morris. 1972. Theoretical issues in phonology in the 1970s. In Proceedings of the Seventh International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, ed. André Rignault and René Charbonneau, 179-205. The Hague: Mouton. [Reprinted in Halle 2002: 62-82] Halle, Morris. 1973. Review of Peter Ladefoged, Preliminaries to Linguistic Phonetics. Language 49.4: 923-933. [Reprinted in Halle 2002: 83-94]
Halle, Morris. 1983. On distinctive features and their articulatory implementation. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 1:91-105. [Reprinted in Halle 2002: 105-121]
Halle, Morris. 1998. The stress of English words: 1968-1998. Linguistic Inquiry 29.4: 539-568.
Halle, Morris. 2005. Palatalization/velar softening: what it is and what it tells us about the nature of language. Linguistic Inquiry 36.1: 23–41.
Hayes, Bruce. 1995. Metrical stress theory: Principles and case studies. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Hyman, Larry. 1977. On the nature of linguistic stress. In Studies in stress and accent, ed. Larry Hyman, 37-82. Southern California Occasional Papers in Linguistics 4. Los Angeles: Department of Linguistics, University of Southern California. Kahn, Daniel. 1976. Syllable-based generalizations in English phonology. Doctoral dissertation, MIT, Cambridge, Mass. Kim, Hyo-Young, and San Duanmu. 2002. “Two approaches to stress variability in English.” Ms., University of Michigan. Kiparsky, Paul. 1979. Metrical structure assignment is cyclic. Linguistic Inquiry 10.3: 421-441.
Ladefoged, Peter. 1972. Phonetic prerequisites for a distinctive feature theory. Papers in linguistics and phonetics to the memory of Pierre Delattre, ed. Albert Valdman, 273-286. The Hague: Mouton.
Ladefoged, Peter, and Morris Halle. 1988. Some major features of the International Phonetic Alphabet. Language 64.3:577-82. McCarthy, John. 2002. A Thematic Guide to Optimality Theory. Blackwell.
Odden, David. 2005. Introducing Phonology. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Pater, Joe. 2000. Non-uniformity in English secondary stress: the role of ranked and lexically-specific constraints.
Phonology 17: 237-274.
Pierrehumbert, Janet, and Mary Beckman. 1988. Japanese tone structure. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Steriade, Donca. 1987. Redundant values. In Papers from the 23rd Annual Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, Part 2: Parasession on Autosegmental and Metrical Phonology, 339-362.
Steriade, Donca. 1999. Alternatives to the syllabic interpretation of consonantal phonotactics. In Osamu Fujimura, Brian Joseph, and Bohumil Palek, eds., Proceedings of the 1998 Linguistics and Phonetics Conference, Vol. 1, 205-246. Prague: Charles University and Karolinum Press.
Wells, John Christopher. 1990. Syllabification and allophony. In Studies in the pronunciation of English, A commemorative volume in honour of A.C. Gimson, ed. Susan Ramsaran, 76-86. London and New York: Routledge.
Zubizarreta, Maria Luisa, and Jean-Roger Vergnaud. 2000. Phrasal Stress and Syntax. In Progress in Grammar, ed. Marc van Oostendorp and Elena Anagnostopoulou (an electronic book http://www.roquade.nl/meertens/progressingrammar/index.html). Publisher: Roquade, Amsterdam/Utrecht/Delft. ISBN 90 70389 65 7.