Lexical Phonology and the History of English

by April McMahon

• ISBN13: 9780521472807
• ISBN10: 0521472806
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-04-13
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

This book has two main goals: the re-establishment of a rule-based phonology as a viable alternative to current non-derivational models and the rehabilitation of historical evidence as a focus of phonological theory. Although Lexical Phonology includes several constraints such as the Derived Environment Condition and Structure Preservation, intended to reduce abstractness, previous versions have not typically exploited these fully. The model of Lexical Phonology presented here imposes the Derived Environment Condition strictly; introduces a new constraint on the shape of underlying representations; excludes underspecification; and suggests an integration of Lexical Phonology with Articulatory Phonology.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	xi
The role of history	1	(34)
Internal and external evidence	1	(4)
Lexical Phonology and its predecessor	5	(8)
Alternative models	13	(20)
The structure of the book	33	(2)
Constraining the model: current controversies in Lexical Phonology	35	(51)
Lexical Phonology and Morphology: an overview	35	(15)
Why constraints? Halle and Mohanan (1985)	50	(3)
Current controversies	53	(33)
Applying the constraints: the Modern English Vowel Shift Rule	86	(54)
Introduction	86	(2)
The Vowel Shift Rule and the Derived Environment Condition	88	(6)
Problems for lax-vowel Vowel Shift Rule	94	(33)
Problems for Level 1 Vowel Shift Rule	127	(13)
Synchrony, diachrony and Lexical Phonology: the Scottish Vowel Length Rule	140	(65)
Introduction	140	(1)
A brief external history of Scots and Scottish Standard English	141	(4)
The Scots dialects and Scottish Standard English: synchronic linguistic characteristics	145	(6)
Internal history	151	(19)
The Scottish Vowel Length Rule in Present-Day Scots and Scottish Standard English	170	(25)
From sound change to phonological rule	195	(10)
Dialect differentiation in Lexical Phonology: the unwelcome effects of underspecification	205	(25)
Introduction	205	(1)
Length, tenseness and English vowel systems	206	(3)
For and against the identity hypothesis	209	(6)
Underspecification	215	(15)
English /r/	230	(56)
Introduction	230	(1)
English /r/: a brief outline	231	(3)
Non-rhotic /r/: an insertion analysis	234	(13)
Alternative analyses	247	(17)
Synchronic arbitrariness and diachronic transparency	264	(13)
Lexical Phonology and English /r/	277	(6)
Retrospect and p[r]ospect	283	(3)
Bibliography	286	(16)
Index	302