Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Preface and acknowledgements
- Key to symbols
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Segmental representations and their phonetic interpretation
- 3 Segmental and transformational phonology
- 4 Non-linear phonological representations in contemporary generative phonology
- 5 Phonological representations in Declarative Phonology
- 6 A declarative analysis of Japanese words
- 7 A declarative analysis of English words
- References
- Index
5 - Phonological representations in Declarative Phonology
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 August 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Preface and acknowledgements
- Key to symbols
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Segmental representations and their phonetic interpretation
- 3 Segmental and transformational phonology
- 4 Non-linear phonological representations in contemporary generative phonology
- 5 Phonological representations in Declarative Phonology
- 6 A declarative analysis of Japanese words
- 7 A declarative analysis of English words
- References
- Index
Summary
Introduction
In the previous two chapters I examined the development and content of various theories of phonological representation, segmental and non-segmental, procedural and declarative. I argued that segmental theories of representation require the introduction of excessively powerful, procedural, rewriting rules, whereas a non-segmental approach to representation can avoid the need for rules of such a powerful kind, by expressing phonological relations in the representations, rather than in the rules. I also made some more specific proposals regarding a non-segmental, non-procedural approach to the definition of phonological representations. In chapter 3 I presented a general method for representing ‘rewrite rules’ in phrase-markers, with special cases for (strictly) context-sensitive rules and the well-known case of phrase-markers for context-free rules. Each derivation (or rather, each class of equivalent derivations) can then be represented as the join (unification) of a set of local graphs, each of which represents a rule. Because unification is associative, the notion of ‘order of rule application’ becomes rather meaningless. In this way, I showed that any grammar can be interpreted declaratively, rather than procedurally.
In chapter 4 I demonstrated the great value of Unification-based Phrase-Structure Grammars as a common formalism for integrating the key concepts of Autosegmental and Metrical Phonology. I showed that the focus and spreading of autosegments and the prosodic hierarchies of Metrical Phonology can both be formalised using only context-free immediate dominance and linear precedence constraints.
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- Information
- Phonological RepresentationsTheir Names, Forms and Powers, pp. 165 - 232Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1998