Explanation for Language Universals

1
Explanation for Language Universals

• Marta i Aleksandra

2
The Origin of Features and Segments

• Mentalistic approach involvement of the elements
  of conscious intent on the part of the
  originators of the phonemic principle
• Mechanistic approach segmental and featural
  structure of speech is much more likely to arise
  accidentally
• argument a stage during children...

3
Holistic vs. Phonemic Coding

• Holistic coding every derived syllable remains a
  gestalt pattern that cannot be fractioned into
  smaller parts occuring also in other syllables
• Phonemic coding every selected signal can be
  reduced to subparts shared with other syllables
  of the subset

4
Simulations of emerging phonetic structure

• Results
• in the presence of certain constraints a
  continuous space can become quantally structured
• minimal pairs - argument for existence of
  phonemes
• complementary distribution of /g/ phoneme -
  argument for allophones

5
Points of articulation in the CV space
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Phonetic Constraints

• Talker-based conditions
• 1. Sensory discriminability
• 2. Preference for less extreme articulation
• Listener-based condition
• 3. Perceptual distance
• 4. Perceptual salience

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Conclusion

• Transitions are generally more articulatorily
  expensive than they are perceptually
  valuable. Thus there is a built in bias toward
  selecting and gu rather than and
  gi

i
f
u
f
8
How the phonemic structuring of lexical items
differs from holistic coding?

• Consider a minilexicon containing 12 words, all
  in the form of CV syllables. The total number of
  possible CV trajectories is very large. Suppose
  we systematically search for sets of 12 CV
  sequences we can envision 2 extreme outcomes of
  such a hypothetical search

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All words phonetically different
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All possible combinations of points are used
END POINTS
1 2 3 4 1 2 3

STARTING POINTS
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Occurence of derived CV combinations

• Observation
• Although the phonetic diversity of the worlds
  languages is impressive, it is nevertheless true
  that they fastidiously underexploit the full
  range of possibilities.

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Occurence of derived CV combinations
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Conclusions

• Figure 4 differs from holistic coding in that
  individual CV transitions can indeed be
  fractioned into smaller parts also occuring in
  other CV sequences ( minimal pairs).
• Minimal pairs reflect the existence of phonemes
• the simulated phonetic constraints are not
  artefacts

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Tendency toward complementary distribution of
stops

• A sequential search for 48 syllables was
  undertaken to examine in particular the
  distribution of vowels for lt?gt and g. Figure 5
  shows the results...

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Tendency toward complementary distribution of
stops
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Conclusions

• The vowels are paired with the consonants in a
  complementary manner lt?gt combining with front
  vowels, g with back vowels. Only one exception
  occurs u, for which there is a phonemic
  contrast.

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Final Conclusions

• It is possible to simulate the emergence of
  phonetic structure
• Simulations display the existence of phonetic
  segments such as phonemes and allophones.