volume: 6 (2004)
pages: 85–110
author: Zoltán Kiss
title: Markedness, graduality and closedness in phonotactics — a phonetically grounded approach
abstract: This paper attempts to present a fresh view of consonantal phonotactics by employing a functionalist, non-representational approach. The central claim, which is becoming more and more prevalent in the phonological literature these days is that phonological processes can be explained if various functional arguments are made use of. The most important of these arguments is that phonological phenomena are influenced by the phonetic factors of sound perception and production. The paper wishes to argue that even such static phonological events as the distribution of sound segments can be satisfactorily explained provided that functionalist principles are considered.
After a short historical overview on the role of phonetics in phonology, the paper sums up the most important issues in a functional approach to phonology as well as the meaning of markedness as being used in the paper. The gist of the paper is the introduction of the principle of Phonotactic Closedness (Rebrus & Trón 2002, 2004), which, extending the ideas of Steriade (1997, 1999) on Licensing by Cue, states that if a given phonological contrast occurs in a given context, the same contrast will necessarily occur in contexts which are better cued perception-wise than the context in question. Phonotactic Closedness thus defines a multidimensional phonotactic space in which every existing contrast is predicted to fill it, even those that are predicted to be exceptional by other phonological theories. Phonotactic Closedness not only predicts that rare (“exceptional”) forms do belong to the phonological space, but also they are predicted to occur in the right areas of the space (thus: unmarked/common forms in the origin, while marked/rare ones in the outskirts). This is necessarily a different approach from that of other (representational) models, which are either too restrictive (they are undergenerating and mark those elements as exceptions which they cannot account for but are nevertheless grammatical) or too “liberal” (they are thus overgenerating, and treat the ungrammatical/non-existing forms as accidental gaps). These models thus cannot account for phonotactic graduality. These ideas are introduced through examining the phonotactics of Hungarian and English non-initial two-member consonant clusters in monomorphemic words.
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