While there are quite a number of phonological operations that can be expressed adequately in terms of linear order or adjacency, there are also many common processes which either cannot be captured purely by reference to strings of adjacent elements, or for which any such linear rule is not very insightful, i.e. the linear formulation tells us little about the nature of the process it is describing.
Consider for instance the data in (10.3), which we discussed in Section 9.2:
(10.3) i[n ε]dinburgh i[n d]erby i[m p]reston i[ŋ k]ardiff
Here, an underlying /n/ surfaces as [n] when preceding a vowel or a coronal consonant, as [m] when preceding a labial consonant, and as [ŋ] when preceding a velar consonant. Using ‘Greek-letter variables’ (see Section 9.3.1.4), this can be given a straightforward linear characterisation, as in (10.4). (10.4) [+ nasal] Æ
a coronal b anterior / ___ + consonantal a coronal b anterior
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While this rule does indeed characterise the process, it doesn’t actually tell us very much about what is going on. All it says is that two apparently random features in a consonant must have the same specification in a preceding nasal (i.e. the nasal must agree with the following consonant in its values both for [coronal] and for [anterior]). In purely formal terms, the rule might equally well have been:
(10.5) [+ nasal] Æ
a voice b back / ___ + consonantal a voice b backThe difference is of course that (10.5) is not a particularly likely rule; we would not expect both voicing and backness to be related in any way. On the other hand, the kind of process shown in (10.4) is very common in many languages. What the formulation in (10.4) lacks is any indication that the features specified with variables are in some way related, and not just a random pair like those in (10.5). That is, we want to be able to express formally that it is place of articulation assimilation that is occurring here. The rule in (10.4) cannot do this insightfully, since there are no relations expressible between features if all features are simply part of an unordered, unstructured matrix. The involvement of two features in some process might well be accidental. Nothing about the organisation of the matrix suggests that [anterior] and [coronal] should be in any way related, any more than any other two features, like [voice] and [back]. If, however, features were formally grouped together in some way, such that [anterior] and [coronal] belonged to the same set, whereas [voice] and [back] belong to separate subgroupings, then the difference between (10.4) and (10.5) would become clearer. The features [anterior] and [coronal] would no longer be a random combination, since both would belong to the same subset of features (which might be labelled something like ‘place’). The rule could then be reformulated to refer to the subset as a whole:
(10.6) [+ nasal] Æ a [place] / ___
+ consonantala [place]No such reformulation would be possible for (10.5), since [voice] and [back] would not be in the same subset; while [back] would presumably be in the ‘place’ subset, [voice] wouldn’t. Section 10.2 looks at some proposals for exactly how the features should be divided up into subgroupings.
Another way in which it has been suggested that the characterisation of phonological structure should be enriched has to do with data like the following, from Desano (a South American Indian language).
(10.7) a. [wai] fish b. [w˜a˜i˜] name [jD.’D.] I [mD˜’D˜] you
[baja] to dance [o˜a˜] to be healthy
In Desano, in any one word all voiced segments are either non-nasal as in (10.7a) or nasal as in (10.7b). Combinations of oral and nasal voiced
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segments within the same word are not allowed, so *[m6] or *[bD˜] are not possible Desano words. Further, this restriction also applies across morpheme boundaries, as (10.8) shows.
(10.8) a. [baja+ri] do you dance? b. [o˜a˜+n9˜] are you healthy?
Here the interrogative particle is [ri] after an oral stem and [n9˜] after a nasal stem. To capture this in terms of a linear rule would be both complex and somewhat arbitrary; we might randomly choose the first segment of the stem for words like those in (10.7b) and (10.8b) as being underlyingly [+ nasal], and then have a rule like (10.9) to ‘spread’ nasality to the segments following.
(10.9) [+ voice] Æ [+ nasal] / [+ nasal] __
Note that this rule would have to apply over and over again – so-called ‘iterative rule application’ – until it reached the end of the word. Or we might stipulate that sequences like (10.10) are ungrammatical.
(10.10) *
+ voice + nasal + voice – nasal * + voice – nasal + voice + nasalWe would then need a rule like (10.9) to deal with the morphologically complex forms in (10.8). Whatever way we choose, however, it will not encapsulate the basic insight into what occurs in Desano, which is that the feature [nasal] is not associated with individual segments (as it is in English), but rather is associated with the whole word. It is the word as a whole that is [+ nasal] or [– nasal], as distinct from any individual segment. This indicates that sometimes (as in the case here) features seem to operate independently of specific segments, associating instead with a whole string of segments at the same time. Section 10.3 examines this idea in more detail.
A third area in which we might want to recognise richer phonological structures has to do with elements which are larger than individual segments. Recall from the discussion of laterals in Section 3.5.1 that most varieties of English have two l-sounds, the ‘clear’ l in ‘leaf’ [lif] and the ‘dark’ or velarised l in ‘bull’ [bυ)]. From these examples it could be assumed that at the beginning of a word /l/ surfaces as [l], while at the end of a word it appears as [)]. However, it is not as simple as that, since we find instances of clear l in non-word-initial position, as in ‘yellow’ and ‘silly’. We also find instances of dark l in non-word-final position, as in ‘fullness’ and ‘film’. Indeed a single stem may alternate between clear l and dark l, compare ‘real’ [ɹiə)] and ‘reality’ [ɹialiti],‘feel’ [fiə)] and ‘feeling’ [filiŋ]. Thus, a more precise statement of the distribution of clear and dark l might be that dark l is found preceding a consonant and word-finally, and clear l is found elsewhere.
We said in Section 9.3.1.1 that l-velarisation is more complex than was illustrated there. We can capture a bit more of its complexity using a rule along the lines of (10.11).
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(10.11) /l/ Æ [)] / __
{
C#}However, this linear rule is still not very insightful. A better way of approaching the problem might be in terms of syllables (see Section 2.3 and Chapter 6). Note that the occurrence of velarised and non-velarised
l depends on where that /l/ appears in a syllable. At the beginning of the
syllable, that is in the onset, /l/ surfaces as non-velarised [l]. At the end of the syllable, or when the /l/ is itself syllabic, /l/ surfaces as [)] or [)], compare [.lif.], [.bυ).], [.b3n.d).] (where a dot indicates a syllable boundary).
Similarly in the alternations involving ‘real’ and ‘feel’ where the /l/ appears word-and syllable-finally it surfaces as [)] – [.ɹi.ə).] and [.fi. ə).] – while in ‘reality’ and ‘feeling’ the /l/ appears at the beginning of a syllable and is non-velarised [l] – [.ɹi.a.li.ti.] and [.fi.liŋ.].
With this in mind, the velarisation rule we formulated above could be rewritten as in (10.12).
(10.12) /l/ Æ [)] / __ (C) .
This rule allows us to express the generalisation that phoneme /l/ surfaces as velarised [)] at the end of a syllable, i.e. in the coda. Section 10.4 looks at proposals for how suprasegmental structure, specifically syllables and feet, might be incorporated into the phonology.
We can thus see that a solely linear approach to phonological structure is insufficient. Much of recent phonological theory therefore adopts what is commonly known as a ‘non-linear’ view of phonology, involving concepts of the sort briefly surveyed above. These are introduced in more detail in the following sections.