PHASE
(Syntax) A "phase" is a syntactic domain first hypothesized by Noam Chomsky in 1998. A simple sentence is often decomposed into two phases, CP and vP. Movement of a constituent out of a phase is (in the general case) only permitted if the constituent has first moved to the left edge of the phase. This condition is described in the phase impenetrability condition, which has been variously formulated within the literature. | Wikipedia, 2017

PHASE-IMPENETRABILITY CONDITION (PIC)
(Syntax) If X is dominated by a complement of a phase YP, X cannot move out of YP. | Anagnostopoulou & Fox, 2007
  In phase α with head H, the domain of H is not accessible to operations outside α but only H and its edge. | Chomsky 1999/2000
  In its original conception, only the vP in transitive and unergative verbs constitute phases. The vP in passives and unaccusative verbs (if even present) are not phases. | Wikipedia, 2017

Φ FEATURES
(Semantics) Or, phi-features. A term used to describe the semantic features of person, number and gender encoded in such lexical categories as nouns and pronouns. (Adger 2004) | Samuel Owoahene Acheampong, Samuel Awinkene Atintono, and Samuel Alhassan Issah, 2019

PHONATION
(Phonetics) Has slightly different meanings depending on the subfield of phonetics. Among some phoneticians, phonation is the process by which the vocal folds produce certain sounds through quasi-periodic vibration. This is the definition used among those who study laryngeal anatomy and physiology and speech production in general. Phoneticians in other subfields, such as linguistic phonetics, call this process voicing, and use the term "phonation" to refer to any oscillatory state of any part of the larynx that modifies the airstream, of which voicing is just one example. Voiceless and supra-glottal phonations are included under this definition. | Wikipedia, 2017

PHONESTHEME

1. (Morphology) Or, phonaestheme. A phonestheme is a particular sound or sound sequence that (at least in a general way) suggests a certain meaning. The adjective form is phonesthemic.
    For example, in words like glimmer, glitter, and glisten, the initial gl- phonestheme is associated with vision or light. (Words related in this fashion are called phonestheme groups or phonestheme clusters.)
    Phonesthemes can appear anywhere in a word—in an initial, medial, or final position. | Richard Nordquist, 2020
2. (Morphology) /foʊ'nɛsθiːm/, phonaestheme in British English. A pattern of sounds systematically paired with a certain meaning in a language. The concept was proposed in 1930 by British linguist J. R. Firth, who coined the term from the Greek φωνή phone, 'sound', and αἴσθημα aisthema, 'perception' (from αἰσθάνομαι aisthanomai, 'I perceive'). For example, sequence sl- appears in English words denoting frictionless motion, like slide, slick and sled.
    A phonestheme is different from a phoneme (a basic unit of word-differentiating sound) or a morpheme (a basic unit of meaning) because it does not meet the normal criterion of compositionality.
    Within C.S. Peirce's theory of signs the phonestheme is considered to be an icon rather than a symbol or an index. | Wikipedia, 2022

PHONETICALLY NATURAL

1. (Phonology) Generally means either promoting articulatory ease or, on the other hand, creating some sort of perceptual advantage. A large number of phonological processes are claimed to be phonetically natural. | Juliet Stanton, 2022
2. (Phonology) Crosslinguistically, phonological patterns tend to be phonetically natural, meaning they are motivated by articulatory and perceptual phonetic tendencies (Stampe 1979, Archangeli and Pulleyblank 1994, Beguš 2019).
     There are two main proposals for why this is the case.
   1. The channel bias, or historical, explanation maintains that articulatory difficulty and misperception in the course of language transmission shape language change, leading over time to phonetically motivated phonological patterns and processes (Ohala 1992, Blevins 2004).
   2. The substantive bias explanation claims that learners are influenced by a synchronic cognitive bias against phonetically unnatural phonological patterns which shapes language acquisition in such a way that phonetically natural patterns end up dominating in the phonological typology (Wilson 2006, Moreton and Pater 2012b, White 2017).
    | Eleanor Glewwe, 2022

PHONOLEXICOLOGY
(Lexicology) A part of lexicology which investigates phonetic means with the help of which the words are distinguished in speech. Phonolexicology reveals additional, emotional, attitudinal, connotative meanings of the word which the word requires due to the context. Phonetic means such as intensity of speech, tempo, and timbre of the voice help to reveal connotative meaning of the word. | ?

PHONOLOGICAL EROSION

1. (Diachronic) Or, phonetic erosion. A word loses its phonological properties as a free morpheme to become a bound morpheme, such as I'm going to > I'm gonna > I'mma. Bernd and Kuteva (2002, 2007) propose four kinds of phonetic erosion:
   1. The loss of phonetic segments (being a full syllable).
   2. The loss of suprasegmentals (stress, tones, or intonation).
   3. The loss of phonetic autonomy (being an independent syllable).
   4. Phonetic simplification.
    | Prachya Boonkwan, 2018
2. (Diachronic) As a concomitant of grammaticalization, it has been a prevailing assumption for four decades. Phonological erosion is, in fact, a general diachronic process with reduction occurring at the rate of about 15‑20% per millennium. Reduction related to grammaticalization is often faster than the nominal rate, and this has supported the standard theory. In a language, which is an adaptive and isostatic system, phonological loss, at nominal or accelerated rates, whether associated with grammaticalization or otherwise, interacts with mechanisms of compensation. Such interaction, a complex process, supports lexical right-sizing, an expression of the Quantity Principle. Phonological loss that accompanies grammaticalization, often significant and often uncompensated, is one aspect of this general diachronic process. | Charles Elerick, 2023

PHONOLOGICAL PHRASE

1. (Prosodic Phonology) A level in the prosodic hierarchy, between the intonational phrase and the prosodic word.
    Intonational and segmental evidence:
   • Domain of phrasal stress, phrasal boundary tones.
   • Important in syntax/phonology interface.
    Sometimes two levels are recognized:
   • Major (MaP) vs. minor phrase (MiP).
   • Intermediate vs. accentual phrase (iP, AP).
    | ?
2. (Prosodic Phonology) The Phonological Phrase (Verluyten 1982; Delais 1994), which has received a formal definition in the theory of Prosodic Phonology (Selkirk 1984; Nespor and Vogel 1986): the Phonological Phrase is a constituent of the Prosodic Hierarchy which is positioned between the Intonational Phrase and the Prosodic Word. | Brechtje Post, 2000

PHONOLOGICAL PHRASE FORMATION RULE
(Prosody) The Phonological Phrase is derived from the syntactic constituent structure:

Phonological Phrase formation rule
A Phonological Phrase groups together a lexical head (X) with all the items on its non-recursive side (i.e. the left) within the maximal projection and with any other non-lexical item on the same side.

1.  
   (de petits
        (*)

    
   enfants)PP
      *

        ]X^head
   (intelligents)PP
        *

     ]X^head
   
   

PHONOLOGICAL RULE
(Phonology) Phonological processes and (static) phonological generalizations can be expressed using rules:

1. Rule notations
   a. /X/ → [Y] / A_B
    'X becomes Y in the context of a preceding A and a following B.'
   b. /AXB/ → [AYB]
    'The string AXB becomes the string AYB.'

PHONOLOGICAL SUBCATEGORIZATION FRAMES
(Phonology) Alan C. L. Yu's A Natural History of Infixation examines a broad range of infixation patterns from over a hundred languages in light of their diachronic origin and the processes by which they are acquired in child language acquisition. Based on those findings, the author proposes an alternative view of infix placement. Contrary to classic OT, he suggests that infixation is the result of phonological subcategorization frames, which are formulated as inviolable alignment constraints that define the location of an affix by positioning it with respect to a phonological pivot point. Once the inviolable alignment constraints have determined the location of the affix, other constraints come into play and determine the size and the phonological composition of the affix, if it is not already specified in the input. Unlike alignment, the remaining constraints are violable and thus interact in a language-particular constraint ranking. In this model, phonology does not determine or alter the location of an infix.
 Phonological subcategorization is stated here in terms of alignment constraints. The alignment constraints used in this analysis are different from Generalized Alignment (McCarthy and Prince 1993): not only are they inviolable but they also take both prosodic and segmental units as their arguments, which Yu refers to as pivot points. Phonological subcategorization determines when a designated edge of a morphological constituent (an affix) will coincide with a designated edge of a phonological pivot or vice versa. Yu's analysis is couched in the framework of Sign-Based Morphology (Orgun 1999, Orgun and Inkelas 2002). In this theory, a sign is a linguistic unit that is a pairing between the PHON (phonological) component and morphosyntactic and semantic features. The PHON component consists of a language-particular constraint ranking. Yu's innovation is the addition of the feature SUBCAT (subcategorization requirement) to the sign. SUBCAT specifies the position of the affix in relation to a phonological pivot. This requirement is inviolable. Thus, unlike previous approaches to infixation in OT, affix positioning is not determined by rankable and violable constraints but by an inviolable SUBCAT requirement. The SUBCAT requirement regulates the set of candidates that is fed to the phonological component PHON. Only candidates that satisfy the prescribed SUBCAT requirement are fed to PHON. | Anna Lubowicz, 2007

PHONOLOGICAL WORD
See PROSODIC WORD.

PHONOLOGICALLY CONDITIONED ALLOMORPHY

1. (Morphology) Since Jakobson’s (1948) analysis of Russian verbs as having one stem rather than two, it has been an attempt of generative phonology to minimize distinctly listed allomorphs in favor of phonological rules, some of which may be morphologically specific. Nonetheless there are certain allomorphs that cannot be derived one from the other, leading to "multiple underlying representations" for the same morphemic category, such as the Moroccan 3rd person object clitic, which varies between the allomorphs -h (chosen after vowel-final stems) and -u (chosen after consonant-final stems). Such cases require distinct suppletive allomorphs, whose distribution is determined according to their phonological environments. The division of labor in dealing with allomorphy, then, is taken up both by purely phonological rules (such as those responsible for the voicing alternations of the English plural morpheme) and by morphological selection among separately listed allomorphs competing for insertion.
    While a number of instances of allomorph choice depend on morphosyntactic and lexical factors (including conjugation or declension class), many cases of allomorph selection can be predicted based on phonological configuration. Carstairs (1988) pointed out the relevance of phonological conditions on allomorph selection for morphological theory, but did not provide an implementation of how such allomorph selection should work. The tradition of analyzing allomorphy as multiple allomorphic input candidates that compete for the same morphemic realization and chosen among for the output based on phonological selection begins with Mester's (1994) treatment of Latin stem augments in the perfect. One of the first goals in discussing the role of phonological well-formedness in allomorph distribution is an explicit connection of these phenomena to well-established categories of phonological well-formedness based on crosslinguistic research. | Andrew Nevins and Marc van Oostendorp, 2010
2. (Morphology) Used as an argument by what Embick (2010) calls global approaches in order to show that morphology and phonology are not distinct, i.e. constitute a single computational system which takes into account both morphological (person, number etc.) and phonological (labiality, occlusion etc.) information. This system thus performs both concatenation and phonological interpretation. Representatives of this line of thought include (certain versions of) OT such as represented by McCarthy (2002), Burzio (2007), Wolf (2008) and Mascaró (2007). PCA, goes the argument, is a prime diagnostic for the scrambling nature of morphological and phonological computation because it combines both in a single process: there is no way allomorph selection could be computed just by itself, i.e. without appeal to phonological information. | Tobias Scheer, 2016

PHONOLOGICALLY CONDITIONED (SUPPLETIVE) ALLOMORPHY
(Morphology) In which two (or more) allomorphs are not transparently phonologically related, but their distribution is clearly phonologically governed (Carstairs 1988, Paster 2009, 2015).
 Classic example:

1. English indefinite article a/an:
   a. a ([eɪ ʌ ə ...])  / _#C...  
      e.g., a tiger (* an tiger)
   b. an ([æn, ʌn, ən, n...])  / _#V...  
      e.g., an elephant (* a elephant)

PHONOLOGICALLY CONDITIONED SUPPLETIVE ALLOMORPHY

1. (Morphology) PCSA (Paster 2006, Nevins 2011) occurs when a listed allomorph is inserted in a certain phonological environment, for example French bel 'beautiful' is inserted before a V-initial noun (cf. Mascaró 1996):
   1.  
      M
       

      C-initial
      beau mari
      'beautiful husband'

      V-initial
      bel ami
      'beautiful friend'
    This example is inward sensitive in the sense of Carstairs (1987), since the conditioning environment (the phonology of the noun) is "inside" the sensitive site, the exponence of the adjective. This is true whether insertion is early or late.
    Outward sensitivity is when the exponence of an inner element is determined on the basis of structurally outer material. In Icelandic, strong verbs form participles in -(i)n and weak verbs form participles in -ð. Participles take agreement endings controlled by the gender, number, and case of a subject or modifiee. A sample of agreement suffixes is given here, from Svenonius (2012):

   Infinitive	Passive Participle
   	F.SG.NOM	F.SG.DAT	M.SG.GEN	F.SG.ACC	M.SG.DAT
   	-ø	-ri	-s	-a	-um
   bera 'carry'	bor-in	bor-in-ni	bor-in-s	bor-n-a	bor-n-um
   grafa 'dig'	graf-in	graf-in-ni	graf-in-s	graf-n-a	graf-n-um
   bora 'drill'	bora-ð	bora-ð-ri	bora-ð-s	bora-ð-a	bora-ð-um
   smyrja 'smear'	smyr-ð	smyr-ð-ri	smyr-ð-s	smyr-ð-a	smyr-ð-um

    | Peter Svenonius, 2023
2. (Morphology) Three major generalizations emerge from the cross-linguistic survey.
   1. PCSA occurs at the same edge of the stem as the trigger: PCSA in prefixes is triggered at the left edge of the stem, while PCSA in suffixes is triggered at the right edge.
   2. PCSA is sensitive to underlying rather than surface forms. This is demonstrated in several examples where phonological processes render opaque the conditions determining allomorph distribution.
   3. Finally, despite its characterization in recent literature, PCSA is not always optimizing. In numerous examples, words are no more phonologically well-formed than they would be if there were no allomorphy, or if the distribution of allomorphs were reversed.
    The generalizations distinguish between competing frameworks for modeling phonological conditions on affixation. The first is the P ≫ M approach, where PCSA is modeled by ranking Phonological constraints over Morphological constraints in Optimality Theory. This model predicts that PCSA should be phonologically optimizing and that allomorphy may be sensitive to phonological conditions anywhere in the word.
    In the alternative approach, advocated here, PCSA is modeled by incorporating phonological elements of stems into the subcategorization frames of affixes. Subcategorization frames specify the type of stem to which affixes will attach, including syntactic, morphological, and (crucially) phonological features of stems. The distribution of suppletive allomorphs results from different requirements imposed by each allomorph on stems. This approach predicts that allomorphy should be sensitive to input rather than surface phonological elements and that PCSA should be sensitive only to elements at the edge of the stem where the affix attaches. These predictions are upheld in the survey. | Mary Elizabeth Paster, 2007

PHONOLOGICALLY DRIVEN ALLOMORPHY
(Morphology) Different allomorphs can arise because of the application of general phonological processes.
 For example, regular allomorphs of /-z/ and /-d/ suffixes in English.

1. Plural s in English
   1. (epenthesis) /-z/ → [-ɪz] / C_[+strident] + __  
      /pæ's+z/ → [pæsɪz]
   2. (voicing assimilation) /-z/ → [-s] / C_[-voice]+ __  
      /kæt+z/ → [kæts]
   3. (elsewhere) /-z/ → [-z]
      /dɔg+z/ → [dɔgz]

PHONOLOGY-FREE SYNTAX

1. (Syntax) 

   Principle of Phonology-Free Syntax (PPFS, Zwicky 1969)
   No syntactic rule can be subject to language-particular phonological conditions or constraints.

    | Arnold M. Zwicky and Geoffrey K. Pullum, 1986
2. (Syntax) The PPFS is a proposed universal principle of grammar that prohibits reference to phonological information in syntactic rules or constraints. Although many linguists have noted phenomena that appear to them to be in conflict with it, the appearances are misleading in all cases we have examined. | Philip H. Miller, Geoffrey K. Pullum, and Arnold M. Zwicky, 1996
3. (Syntax) In the framework of the Minimalist Program (Chomsky 1993, 1995), inflected words are inserted early in the derivation, and hence their phonological description is present during derivation. Thus it would be possible, in principle, for this framework to accommodate syntactic access to phonological material. Considerations of modularity, however, still militate against allowing such access, and the inaccessibility of phonological information is stipulated:

   "We will make the [...] assumption that overt [syntactic] operations cannot detect phonological features at all. [...] For the N → λ [numeration to LF] computation, nothing would change if the phonological properties of book were coded in the lexicon as 23, with a rule of the phonological component interpreting 23 as the phonological matrix for book." (Chomsky 1995)

    Such constraints are part of any modular theory of the organization of language. Anderson (1992) offers the following explicit claim:

   "The morphosyntactic representation of a word is the only aspect of it that is visible to/in the syntax." (Anderson 1992)

    Dobrin (1995) bases her argumentation on the following formulation of the same principle, due to Zwicky and Pullum (1986), who dubbed it the principle of phonology-free syntax, and made it the focus of an eponymous paper and several other works.

   The Principle of Phonology-Free Syntax (PPFS)
   No syntactic rule can be subject to language-particular phonological conditions or constraints. (Zwicky and Pullum 1986)

    | Alexis Dimitriadis, 1997
4. (Syntax) Most current theories of grammar accept Zwicky's (1969) Principle of Phonology-Free Syntax and strictly separate the information contained in the module of phonology from the module of syntax.
    As an example of the way syntax is supposed to be phonology-free, consider head movement of the kind that raises verbs to T(ense) in French or to C(omplementizer) in verb-second languages like German. This head movement process is never sensitive to phonology. For example, no language has a head movement rule that raises only verbs that start with [b] to T. Similarly, no verb-second language raises only verbs with two syllables to C but not verbs with only one syllable. As another example, this time from phrasal movement, no language fronts wh-phrases that end with a sonorant but leaves in situ wh-phrases that end in an obstruent.
    Because of this apparent insensitivity of the syntax to phonology, many current approaches propose that phonological properties of lexical items are simply not visible to the syntax. | Benjamin Bruening, 2019

Page Last Modified February 27, 2024

 

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