Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-x4r87 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-25T20:33:56.784Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Amodal phonology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 November 2020

IRIS BERENT Open the ORCID record for IRIS BERENT [Opens in a new window] ,
OUTI BAT-EL Open the ORCID record for OUTI BAT-EL [Opens in a new window] ,
DIANE BRENTARI Open the ORCID record for DIANE BRENTARI [Opens in a new window] ,
QATHERINE ANDAN Open the ORCID record for QATHERINE ANDAN [Opens in a new window]  and
VERED VAKNIN-NUSBAUM Open the ORCID record for VERED VAKNIN-NUSBAUM [Opens in a new window]
IRIS BERENT*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Northeastern University, 125 Nightingale Hall, 360 Huntington Ave., Boston, MA02115, USAi.berent@neu.edu
OUTI BAT-EL
Affiliation:
Department of Lingustics, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel, 69978, Israelobatel@tauex.tau.ac.il
DIANE BRENTARI
Affiliation:
Department of Linguistics, University of Chicago, 115 East 58th St., Chicago, IL60637, USAdbrentari@uchicago.edu
QATHERINE ANDAN
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Northeastern University, 125 Nightingale Hall, 360 Huntington Ave., Boston, MA02115, USAkattywa@gmail.com
VERED VAKNIN-NUSBAUM
Affiliation:
School of Education, Western-Galilee College, Akko, Israelvered.vaknin@gmail.com
*
Correspondence regarding this paper should be directed to Iris Berent (i.berent@neu.edu).
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Does knowledge of language transfer spontaneously across language modalities? For example, do English speakers, who have had no command of a sign language, spontaneously project grammatical constraints from English to linguistic signs? Here, we address this question by examining the constraints on doubling. We first demonstrate that doubling (e.g. panana; generally: ABB) is amenable to two conflicting parses (identity vs. reduplication), depending on the level of analysis (phonology vs. morphology). We next show that speakers with no command of a sign language spontaneously project these two parses to novel ABB signs in American Sign Language. Moreover, the chosen parse (for signs) is constrained by the morphology of spoken language. Hebrew speakers can project the morphological parse when doubling indicates diminution, but English speakers only do so when doubling indicates plurality, in line with the distinct morphological properties of their spoken languages. These observations suggest that doubling in speech and signs is constrained by a common set of linguistic principles that are algebraic, amodal and abstract.

Keywords

anchoringOCPphonologyreduplicationsign language
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Linguistics , Volume 57 , Issue 3 , August 2021 , pp. 499 - 529
Check for updates
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

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

The authors wish to thank the Editor, Prof. Marc van Oostendorp, and the Journal of Linguistics referees for their expert opinion and helpful comments. We also thank Melanie Platt for her technical assistance. This research was supported by NSF grants 1528411 and 1733984 to IB.

References

REFERENCES

Andan, Qatherine, Bat-El, Outi, Brentari, Diane & Berent, Iris. 2018. ANCHORING is amodal: Evidence from a signed language. Cognition 180, 279–283.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Asher, R. E. & Kumari, T. C.. 1997. Malayalam (Descriptive grammars). London & New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Baker, Stephanie A., Idsardi, William J., Golinkoff, Roberta Michnick & Petitto, Iaura-Ann. 2005. The perception of handshapes in American Sign Language. Memory & Cognition 33.5, 887–904.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Baker, Stephanie A., Golinkoff, Roberta Michnick & Petitto, Laura-Ann. 2006. New insights into old puzzles from infants’ categorical discrimination of soundless phonetic units. Language Learning and Development 2.3, 147–162.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Berent, Iris. 2013. The phonological mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google ScholarPubMed
Berent, Iris. 2018. Algebraic phonology. In Hannah, S. J. & Bosch, Anna (eds.), The Routledge handbook of phonological theory (Routledge Handbooks in Linguistics), 569–588. Abingdon: Routledge.Google Scholar
Berent, Iris, Bat-El, Outi, Brentari, Diane, Dupuis, Amanda & Vaknin-Nusbaum, Vered. 2016. The double identity of linguistic doubling. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 113.48, 13702–13707.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Berent, Iris, Bat-El, Outi, Brentari, Diane & Platt, Melanie. 2020. Knowledge of language transfers from speech to sign: Evidence from doubling. Cognitive Science 44.1, e12809. doi:10.1111/cogs.12809.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Berent, Iris, Dupuis, Amanda & Brentari, Diane. 2013. Amodal aspects of linguistic design. Plos One 8(4). doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0060617.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Berent, Iris, Dupuis, Amanda & Brentari, Diane. 2014. Phonological reduplication in sign language: Rules rule. Frontiers in Language Sciences 5, 560. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00560.Google ScholarPubMed
Berent, Iris, Everett, Daniel L. & Shimron, Joseph. 2001. Do phonological representations specify variables? Evidence from the Obligatory Contour Principle. Cognitive Psychology 42, 1–60.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Berent, Iris & Marcus, Gary. 2019. No integration without structured representations: Reply to Pater. Language 95(1), e75–e86. doi:10.1353/lan.2019.0011.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berent, Iris, Marcus, Gary F., Shimron, Joseph & Gafos, Adamantios I.. 2002. The scope of linguistic generalizations: evidence from Hebrew word formation. Cognition 83.2, 113–139.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Berent, Iris & Shimron, Joseph. 1997. The representation of Hebrew words: Evidence from the Obligatory Contour Principle. Cognition 64, 39–72.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Berkley, Deborah M. 1994. The OCP and gradient data. Studies in the Linguistic Sciences 24.1–2, 59–72.Google Scholar
Brentari, Diane. 1993. Establishing a sonority hierarchy in American Sign Language: The use of simultaneous structure in phonology. Phonology 10, 281–306.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brentari, Diane. 1998. A prosodic model of sign language phonology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Buckley, Eugene. 1997. Tigrinya root consonants and the OCP. Penn Working Papers in Linguistics 4, 19–50.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 1968. Language and mind. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam & Halle, Morris. 1968. The sound pattern of English. New York: Harper & Row.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam & Schützenberger, M. P.. 1963. The algebraic theory of context-free languages. In Braffort, P. & Hirschberg, D. (eds.), Studies in logic and the foundations of mathematics, vol. 35, 118–161. Amsterdam: Elsevier.Google Scholar
Clements, George N. 1990. The role of the sonority cycle in core syllabification. In Kingston, John & Beckman, Mary E. (eds.), Papers in Laboratory Phonology I: Between the grammar and physics of speech, 282–333. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
de Lacy, Paul. 1999. Morphological haplology and correspondence. University of Massachusetts Occasional Papers in Linguistics 24, 51–88.Google Scholar
de Lacy, Paul. 2008. Phonological evidence. In Parker, Steve (ed.), Phonological argumentation: Essays on evidence and motivation, 43–77. Sheffield: Equinox.Google Scholar
Dingemanse, Mark. 2015. Ideophones and reduplication. Studies in Language 39.4, 946–970.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dryer, Matthew S. & Haspelmath, Martin (eds.). 2013. WALS Online. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.Google Scholar
Frisch, Stefan A., Pierrehumbert, Janet B. & Broe, Michael B.. 2004. Similarity avoidance and the OCP. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 22, 197–228.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frisch, Stefan A. & Zawaydeh, Bushra A.. 2001. The psychological reality of OCP-place in Arabic. Language 77, 91–106.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gervain, Judit, Berent, Iris & Werker, Janet. 2012. Binding at birth: Newborns detect identity relations and sequential position in speech. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 24.3, 564–574.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ghomeshi, Jila, Jackendoff, Ray, Rosen, Nicole & Russell, Kevin. 2004. Contrastive focus reduplication in English (the salad–salad paper). Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 22.2, 307–357.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Greenberg, Joseph H. 1950. The patterning of morphemes in Semitic. Word 6, 162–181.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hale, Mark & Reiss, Charles. 2008. The phonological enterprise. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hyman, Larry M. 1970. How concrete is phonology? Language 46.1, 58–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Idsardi, William & Raimy, Eric. 2008. Reduplicative economy. In Vaux, Bert & Nevins, Andrew (eds.), Rules, constraints, and phonological phenomena, 149–184. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Inkelas, Sharon. 2014. Non-concatenative derivation: Reduplication. In Lieber, Rochelle & Stekauer, Pavel (eds.), Oxford handbook of derivational morphology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Inkelas, Sharon & Zoll, Cheryl. 2005. Reduplication: Doubling in morphology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kajitani, Motomi. 2005. Semantic properties of reduplication among the world’s languages. In Shields, Rebecca (ed.), LSO Working Papers in Linguistics 5, 93–106.Google Scholar
Kanwisher, Nancy G. 1987. Repetition blindness: Type recognition without token individuation. Cognition 27.2, 117–143.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kisseberth, W. Charles. 1969. On the abstractness of phonology: The evidence from Yawelmani. Papers in Linguistics 1.2, 242–282.Google Scholar
Leben, William. 1973. Suprasegmental phonology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Lichtenberk, Frantisek. 1983. A grammar of Manam (Oceanic Linguistics Special Publications 18). Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press.Google Scholar
Marantz, Alec. 1982. Re Reduplication. Linguistic Inquiry 13.3, 435–482.Google Scholar
Marcus, Gary F. 2001. The algebraic mind: Integrating connectionism and cognitive science. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marcus, G[ary] F., Vijayan, S., Rao, S. Bandi & Vishton, P. M.. 1999. Rule learning by seven-month-old infants. Science 283(5398), 77–80.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mattes, Veronika. 2017. Iconicity in the lexicon. Studies in Language 41.4, 813–842.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCarthy, John J. 1979. Formal problems in Semitic phonology and morphology. Ph.D. dissertation, MIT. [Published 1985, New York: Garland Press.]Google Scholar
McCarthy, John J. 1981. A prosodic theory of nonconcatenative morphology. Linguistic Inquiry 12, 373–418.Google Scholar
McCarthy, John. 1986. OCP effects: Gemination and antigemination. Linguistic Inquiry 17, 207–263.Google Scholar
McCarthy, John J. 1994. The phonetics and phonology of Semitic pharyngeals. In Keating, Patricia A. (ed.), Phonological structure and phonetic Form: Papers in Laboratory Phonology III, 191–283. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCarthy, John J. & Prince, Alan S.. 1993. Prosodic morphology: Constraint interaction and satisfaction (Linguistics Department Faculty Publication Series 14). Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Amherst, Linguistics Department. Available at https://scholarworks.umass.edu/linguist_faculty_pubs/14/.Google Scholar
McCarthy, John J. & Prince, Alan S. “The emergence of the unmarked: Optimality in prosodic morphology” (1994). Proceedings of the North East Linguistics Society 24. 18. Retrieved from https://scholarworks.umass.edu/linguist_faculty_pubs/18Google Scholar
McCarthy, John J. & Prince, Alan S.. 1995a. Faithfulness and reduplicative identity. In Beckman, Jill, Urbanczyk, Suzanne & Walsh, Laura Dickey (eds.), University of Massachusetts Occasional Papers in Linguistics 18: Papers in Optimality Theory, 249–384. Amherst, MA: GLSA, University of Massachusetts Amherst.Google Scholar
McCarthy, Jonn & Prince, Alan S.. 1995b. Prosodic morphology. In Goldsmith, John A (ed.), Phonological theory, 318–366. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Nelson, Winston L., Perkell, Joseph S. & Westbury, John R.. 1984. Mandible movements during increasingly rapid articulations of single syllables: Preliminary observations. The Journal Of The Acoustical Society Of America 75.3, 945–951.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Nevins, Andrew & Vaux, Bert. 2003. Metalinguistic, shmetalinguistic: The phonology and morphology of shm- reduplication. Proceedings from the Annual Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society 39 (CLS 39), vol. 1, 702–721. Chicago, IL: Chicago Linguistic Society.Google Scholar
Palmer, Stephanie Baker, Fais, Laurel, Golinkoff, Roberta Michnick & Werker, Janet F.. 2012. Perceptual narrowing of linguistic sign occurs in the 1st year of life. Child Development 83.2, 543–553.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pierrehumbert, Janet B. 1993. Dissimilarity in Arabic verbal roots. Proceedings of the North Eastern Linguistics Society Meeting 23 (NELS 23), 1–15. Amherst, MA: GLSA, University of Massachusetts Amherst.Google Scholar
Pinker, Steven & Birdsong, David. 1979. Speakers’ sensitivity to rules of frozen word order. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 18, 497–508.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Plag, Ingo. 1998. Morphological haplology in a constraint-based morpho-phonology. In Kehrein, Wolfgang & Wiese, Richard (eds.), Phonology and morphology of the Germanic languages, 199–215. Tübingen: Niemeyer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Raimy, Eric. 2012. The phonology and morphology of reduplication (Studies in Generative Grammar 52). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.Google Scholar
Rozhanskiy, Fedor Ivanovich. 2015. Two semantic patterns of reduplication. Studies in Language 39.4, 992–1018.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rubino, Carl. 2013. WALS Online. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology,.Google Scholar
Sandler, Wendy. 1993. A sonority cycle in American Sign Language. Phonology 10, 242–279.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sandler, Wendy & Lillo-Martin, Diane C.. 2006. Sign language and linguistic universals. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smolensky, Paul. 2006. Optimality in phonology II: Harmonic completeness, local constraint conjunction, and feature domain markedness. In Smolensky, Paul & Legendre, Geraldine (eds.), The harmonic mind: From neural computation to Optimality-theoretic grammar, 27–160. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Soto-Faraco, Salvador & Spence, Charles. 2002. Modality-specific auditory and visual temporal processing deficits. The Quarterly Journal Of Experimental Psychology Section A: Human Experimental Psychology 55.1, 23–40.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Supalla, Ted & Newport, Elissa L.. 1978. How many seats in a chair? The derivation of nouns and verbs in American Sign Language. In Siple, Patricia A. (ed.), Understanding language through sign language research, 91–132. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Suzuki, Keiichiro. 1998. A typological investigation of dissimilation. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona.Google Scholar
Uspensky, Boris A. 1972. Subsystems in language, their interrelations and their correlated universals. Linguistics: An International Review 88, 53–71.Google Scholar
Walter, Mary Ann. 2007. Repetition avoidance in human language. Ph.D. dissertation, MIT.Google Scholar
Wilbur, Ronnie Bring. 1973. The phonology of reduplication. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign.Google Scholar
Wilbur, Ronnie B[ring]. 2009. Productive reduplication in a fundamentally monosyllabic language. Language Sciences 31.2–3, 325–342.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yip, Moira. 1998. Identity avoidance in phonology and morphology. In Lapointe, Steven G., Brentari, Diane K. & Farrell, Patrick M. (eds.), Morphology and its relation to phonology and syntax, 216–263. Stanford, CA: Center for the Study Language & Information.Google Scholar
Zuraw, Kie. 2002. Aggressive reduplication. Phonology 19.3, 395–439.CrossRefGoogle Scholar