Papers in Laboratory Phonology V: Acquisition and the Lexicon (review)

The nineteen papers and four commentaries in this volume make a substantial contribution to the field of laboratory phonology. One way Broe and Pierrehumbert incorporate the cutting edge nature of laboratory phonology into this volume is through the selection of acquisition and lexical representation as two special themes. Over half of the papers in the volume are contained in the section ‘Acquisition and lexical representation’, with the remainder divided between the remaining two sections, ‘Articulation and mental representation’ and ‘Tone and intonation’. The following papers may be of interest to the wider Language readership.

In ‘Coarticulation and physical models of speech production’, Kevin G. Munhall, Mitsuo Kawato, and Eric Vatikiotis-Bateson make an important contribution to the traditional laboratory phonology question of the representation of speech gestures. They argue that the fundamental problem in accounting for coarticulation is not coarticulation itself but rather a ‘realistic representation of the speech motor control system’ (10). They note that existing models of motor control are too general to be testable at the level of detailed phonetic implementation. The authors offer a speech production model which has been developed in detail and which is based on context adjustment and smoothness of articulator trajectories. They claim that such a model must be developed along with a phonological theory and that the elaboration of each must depend on the other.

Carlos Gussenhoven’s contribution, ‘The boundary tones are coming: On the non-peripheral realization of boundary tones’, shows that boundary tones in Roermond Dutch go against two expectations of boundary tones. Specifically, they are not always realized at the periphery of the constituent to which they belong, and boundary tones of lower constituents are sometimes realized outside boundary tones of higher constituents. He shows that there is a consistency to the occurrence of these unexpected patterns and that they are explainable if optimality theory (OT), with its violable constraints, is adopted. This is an important application of OT to an area (intonation) where it has not generally been employed.

James M. Scobbie, Fiona Gibbon, William J. Hardcastle, and Paula Fletcher, in their paper ‘Covert contrast as a stage in the acquisition of phonetics and phonology’, show that children learning a language can have a contrast between two sounds in certain aspects of their production, even if they are not transcribed and perceived as distinct by adult listeners. This has important implications for the understanding and treatment of phonological disorders.

In her paper ‘Lexicalization of sound change and alternating environments’, Joan Bybee argues that entire words are stored in the lexicon and that the frequency of these words affects the sound changes which they undergo. An important contribution is Bybee’s explanation that while some morphemes appear to undergo sound changes sooner than others, this is due to the contexts in which they are found within the word and is not due to the morpheme itself.