li8structureofenglish (bertvaux)

Li8 Structure of English

Michaelmas Term - Bert Vaux - LB5

In the Michaelmas term we will look at a wide range of the most interesting and most central morphological and phonological phenomena of English, considering in the process how they bear on larger linguistic and cognitive issues (productivity and (ir)regularity, lexical storage and abstract representations, extraction of generalizations from static vs. alternating patterns, cycles and levels, etc.).

Lecture schedule

Part 1: morphology

12/10. evidence for morphological structure (pdf) (ppt) (supplemental readings)

19.10. hierarchical morphological structure (pdf) (ppt) (supplemental readings)

Part 2: morphology-phonology interactions

26.10. word formation (pdf) (ppt)

2.11. lexical phonology and morphology (pdf) (ppt)

Part 3: phonology

9.11. segmental rules I (pdf)

16.11. segmental rules II (handout on aspiration and related processes)

23.11. syllable structure (pdf)

30.11. language games and microvariation (pdf) (ppt)

Supervision topics

Choose a morphological topic (M) for the first supervision, a phonological topic (P) for the second, and either type for the third.

(M) "as of 22 September 2007, there were approximately 995,112 words in the English Language, plus or minus a handful." (from http://www.languagemonitor.com/wst_page7.html) Discuss.
(M) The longest word in English is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis, a lung disease contracted from the inhalation of very fine silica particles specifically from a volcano. Discuss.
(M) "The distinction between latinate and germanic morphemes in English is a convenient descriptive tool, but has no psychological reality--speakers are unaware of the history of their language." Discuss.
(P) Discuss, with relevant exemplification, the distinction between the following types of consonant cluster in English: (i) attested vs attestable, (ii) written vs spoken, (iii) fast-speech vs. slow-speech.

Here I mainly want you to reflect on the workings of the language yourself, e.g. in coming up with clusters that are written but not pronounced and vice versa (there are many of each). For attested vs. attestable clusters, you should start with what I said in lecture about (i) creation of infinitely long clusters via inflection and (ii) rendering of foreign words and names, but there is also the classic discussion of blick vs. bnick (etc.) to be found in most introductions to linguistics or phonology, and also discussion of the general notion of attested vs attestable in Hale and Reiss's The Phonological Enterprise (Oxford, 2008) and Fritz Newmeyer's Possible and Probable Languages (Oxford, 2005). Finally, there is a fair amount written about clusters in fast vs careful speech (involving both creation and loss of clusters in fast speech) that can be found via Google Scholar, the MLA Bibliography, Linguistic Bibliography and similar online bibliographies. Some examples:

Saying consonant clusters quickly. Journal of Phonetics, Volume 24, Issue 2, April 1996, Pages 263-282. Dani Byrd, Cheng Cheng Tan.
Phonetic Structure of Fast Speech in American English. JM Dalby - 1986.
Davidson L. Schwa Elision in Fast Speech: Segmental Deletion or Gestural Overlap? Phonetica 2006;63:79-112

(P) Summarise and discuss the inventory of strategies that English uses to deal with vowel hiatus (= two adjacent vowels).

There's very brief but perhaps useful discussion on p. 23 of Kenstowicz's Phonology in Generative Grammar, and on many pages of
John Harris's English Sound Structure (look in the index under hiatus glide). NB there are many processes that appear to be sensitive to vowel hiatus, including r-insertion, n-insertion, glottal stop insertion, and definite and indefinite article allomorphy. For article allomorphy, see for example Francis 1954, The Structure of American English. For r-insertion (and perhaps some other hiatus-related matters) see also McMahon, the lexical phonology of english.
See also my data list and handout on r-insertion, each available on request if you're having trouble thinking of the data yourself.

(P) "Prosodic structure plays no significant role in English." Discuss with respect to expletive insertion and comparative/superlative formation.

Old exams

Examiners' reports can be found in the MML Library.