Questions and sub-questions in phonology

What are phonological universals?
How can we account for common patterns in diverse languages, such as segment inventories and phonotactics?
What is the traditional phonology?
How phonology involve into its current state?
How did language and speech arise or evolve in our species?
Why is the vocal apparatus different as a function of the age and sex of the speaker?
What is the relation, if any, between human speech and non-human communication?
What new methods can we use in phonology?
How language changes occur?
What’s the way phonology going to be changed?
What factors contribute to those phonological changes?
Why and how does pronunciation change over time, thus giving rise to different dialects and language and different forms of the same word or morpheme in different contexts?
Where do phonologists acquire information?
What other fields can phonology apply?
How phonology functions in other fields?

8 most important phonological questions

8 most important phonological questions of mine

1. What are phonological universals?
2. What is the traditional phonology?
3. How phonology involve into its current state?

Text book:
8. How did language and speech arise or evolve in our species? Why is the vocal apparatus different as a function of the age and sex of the speaker? What is the relation, if any, between human speech and non-human communication.

4. What new methods can we use in phonology?
5. What factors contribute to those phonological changes?

Text book:
3. Why and how does pronunciation change over time, thus giving rise to different dialects and language and different forms of the same word or morpheme in different contexts? How can we account for common patterns in diverse languages, such as segment inventories and phonotactics?
6. Where do phonologists acquire information?
7. What other field can phonology apply?
8. What’s the way phonology going to be changed? (language change)
Text book:
3. Why and how does pronunciation change over time, thus giving rise to different dialects and language and different forms of the same word or morpheme in different contexts? How can we account for common patterns in diverse languages, such as segment inventories and phonotactics?

There are three questions of mine is similar in the questions in text book.

Syllabic Phonology

http://www.ling.fju.edu.tw/phono/Syllabic%20Phonology1.htm

Phonological Universals

What is a phonological universal?
http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/WhatIsAPhonologicalUniversal.htm
Definition
A phonological universal is a common tendency found in the phonological systems of many languages.

Examples: Vowel systems

Here are some phonological universals concerning vowel systems:

Symmetry
Vowel systems tend to be symmetrical.
The minimal vowel system includes /i a u/. All known languages are said to have these three vowels, or slight variations of them.

Rounding
Back vowels tend to be rounded.
Front vowels tend to be unrounded.

A functional explanation for these vowel universals is that, in its vowel system, a language is likely to use those vowels that are the most perceptually different from one another. This makes it easier for the listener to distinguish between the vowels in the system.

Examples: Consonant systems

Here are some phonological universals concerning consonant systems:

Symmetry
Consonant systems tend to be symmetrical.

 A correlation between point of articulation and voicing of obstruents shows up when there are asymmetries in a consonant inventory.
A language is less likely to have voiceless labial obstruents than any other voiceless obstruents.
A language is less likely to have voiced velar obstruents than any other voiced obstruents.

 All languages are expected to have at least the following consonant phonemes:
Voiceless plosives (stops)
Nasals
A grooved fricative (for example, /s/)
A laryngeal glide (usually /h/)

Voicing
Most obstruents are voiceless
Most sonorants are voiced.

Example: Nasality

Here are some phonological universals concerning nasality, a process that commonly interacts with both consonants and vowels:

Consonants
Nearly all languages have nasal consonants.

Vowels
Nasal vowels are usually the exact counterparts of the oral vowels.
If a language has fewer nasal vowels than oral, it is usually the mid nasal vowels that are missing.

In the “Experimental Approaches to Phonology”
Phonological universals are understood here as resulting from production and perceptual constraints shaping spoken language. Besides being universal, these forces influence language in a probabilistic way. Broadly speaking, production constraints stem from neurological, anatomical, physiological, and aerodynamic conditions, as well from the mapping between vocal tract shape and the resulting acoustic signal, while perceptual constraints derive from the peripheral and central auditory transforms of speech, lateral inhibition, masking, critical bands, short-term memory, and the way in which sounds are stored and retrieved.

Intonational Phonology

資料來源:

http://books.google.com.tw/books?id=ys_jtGM5WjYC&dq=intonational+phonology&psp=1&source=gbs_summary_s&cad=0

作者：D. Robert Ladd
出版日期 1996

Cambridge UniversityPress

Intonational Phonology
Until the late 1970s there was not really any such notion, and even now it is not obvious to many intonation researchers what intonational phonology might mean. It is therefore necessary to demystify this term quite explicitly.

The ‘impressionistic’ or ‘proto-phonological’ approach was that of linguists and language teacher who were interested in describing intonation either for practical ends or as part of the general development of phonemic theory. This approach is represented by the work of the American structuralist school and those of the British school. Descriptions in this tradition treat intonation in terms of a small number of categorically distinct elements pitch phonemes, nuclear tones, etc.-and in this sense may be said to be investigating ‘intoantional phonology’. However, in most cases the authors of these descriptions had no ambitions to go beyond data that could be gathered by traditional auditory methods and written down as impressionistic pitch curves. Moreover, for reasons that I will discuss further below, within the impressionistic tradition there were always significant disagreements about the inventory of categorically distinct elements, and there was no obvious standard of evidence for settling such disagreement.

In any case, before writing an entire book on the subject of intonational phonology, it seems appropriate to address the views of those who question whwther intonational phonology even exists.

輔仁語言所音韻網頁連結

http://www.ling.fju.edu.tw/phono/schools/intonational.htm

Chapter 2 2.4

2.4 Conclusion
A structure-first approach is a means of identifying issues
The phonological patterning can provide clues concerning phonetic mechanisms.
Two other conclusions
Regular phonology exists
Elicitation is experimental phonology
informant work as experimental elicitation.
Findings
Tone rules have what phonologists used to call “psychological reality”
The experimental nature of elicitation should not be underestimated.