1-2 of 2 Results

  • Keywords: modularity x
Clear all

Article

Phonetic Detail and Phonetic Gradience in Morphological Processes  

Patrycja Strycharczuk

It is uncontroversial that morphological processes can change phonological surface representations. However, some empirical evidence also suggests that morphological processes may trigger phonetically gradient processes, that is, processes that involve fine phonetic differences, but involve no change in phonological categories. Such findings challenge modular or discrete feedforward theories of grammatical architecture, which counterpredict direct interactions between morphology and phonetics. This article reviews some of the findings in this area, pointing to two types of difficulty in interpreting evidence of morphologically-conditioned phonetic gradience. The first one involves significance and replicability in experimental sciences, which become especially problematic when fine phonetic detail is examined and the magnitude of differences involved is very small. The second one concerns identifying what is causing the phonetic effects among a wealth of possibilities, including paradigmatic relationships, morphological structure, prosody, and informativity.

Article

Syntactic Features  

Peter Svenonius

Syntactic features are formal properties of syntactic objects which determine how they behave with respect to syntactic constraints and operations (such as selection, licensing, agreement, and movement). Syntactic features can be contrasted with properties which are purely phonological, morphological, or semantic, but many features are relevant both to syntax and morphology, or to syntax and semantics, or to all three components. The formal theory of syntactic features builds on the theory of phonological features, and normally takes morphosyntactic features (those expressed in morphology) to be the central case, with other, possibly more abstract features being modeled on the morphosyntactic ones. Many aspects of the formal nature of syntactic features are currently unresolved. Some traditions (such as HPSG) make use of rich feature structures as an analytic tool, while others (such as Minimalism) pursue simplicity in feature structures in the interest of descriptive restrictiveness. Nevertheless, features are essential to all explicit analyses.