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Radical underspecification in language production*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 October 2008

Joseph Paul Stemberger
Joseph Paul Stemberger
Affiliation:
University of Minnesota
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Extract

Phonological underspecification plays an important role in phonological theory. Some features are left blank in underlying representations. If they are relevant to the pronunciation of a segment, they are filled in at some point in the derivation; otherwise, they are left blank permanently. When underspecification was reintroduced to phonological theory in the 1980s, researchers originally assumed that all information that could be considered predictable had to be underspecified in underlying representations (Kiparsky 1982; Archangeli 1984). Information can be considered predictable in one of two ways. First, information is predictable if it is redundant or allophonic; the voicing and nasality of the vowel in the word grin [grin] in English are predictable (because vowels are always voiced, and are always nasalised before a nasal) and omitted from underlying representations. Second, given that a feature is binary, it is possible to leave one value of the feature blank in underlying representations; if the segment is not specified as e.g. [+ F], then it must be [− F], by default. The approach that defines predictability in this fashion is known as RADICAL UNDERSPECIFICATION

Type
Articles
Information
Phonology , Volume 8 , Issue 1 , May 1991 , pp. 73 - 112
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1991

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