Abstract representations and the phenomenon of incomplete neutralisation

Research over the last few decades has consistently questioned the sufficiency of abstract/discrete phonological representations based on putative misalignments between predictions from such representations and observed experimental results. Here, I’ll first suggest that many of the arguments ride on misunderstandings of the original claims from generative phonology, and that the typical evidence furnished is consistent with those claims. I’ll then narrow in on the phenomenon of incomplete neutralisation and show again that it is consistent with the classic generative phonology view. I’ll further point out that extant accounts of the phenomenon do not achieve important desiderata and typically do not provide an explanation for either the phenomenon itself, or why there are actually at least two different kinds of incomplete neutralisation that don’t stem from task confounds. Finally, I present new experimental data and our explanation that the phenomenon is an outcome of planning using abstract/discrete phonological knowledge.

Karthik Durvasula is Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies for Linguistics in the Department of Linguistics, Languages, and Cultures at Michigan State University. His research is focused primarily on understanding how to interface abstract and categorical linguistic theories with the fine-grained and gradient nature of the observed data in formal experimentation. Over the last 10-15 years, he has used a variety of techniques to probe this question: (a) field-work, (b) formal behavioural and neurolinguistic experimentation, and (c) computational modelling. Most recently, he has been looking at fine-grained effects and timing relationships in speech articulations and gradient sound patterns present in the lexicon of a language to understand the nature of phonological knowledge.