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Chapter 1
Introduction: The Phonetic Bases of Phonological Markedness
Bruce Hayes
Donca Steriade
“If phonological systems were seen as adaptations to universal
performance constraints on speaking, listening and learning to
speak, what would they be like?” Lindblom (1990: 102)
- Introduction
Our starting point is a hypothesis central to contemporary phonology: that the markedness
laws characterising the typology of sound systems play a role, as grammatical constraints, in the
linguistic competence of individual speakers. From this assumption, a basic question follows:
how are grammars structured, if markedness laws actively function within them as elements of
linguistic competence? We find the answer offered by Optimality Theory (Prince and
Smolensky, 1993) worth investigating: the grammatical counterparts of markedness laws are
ranked and violable constraints and the latter form “the very substance from which grammars are
built: a set of highly general constraints which, through ranking, interact to produce the elaborate
particularity of individual languages” (p. 217). With qualifications, this view is adopted by many
of the contributions to this volume.
The focus of our book is on a different, complementary question: where do markedness laws
come from? Why are sound systems governed by these laws and not by some conceivable
others? What is the source of the individual’s knowledge of markedness-based constraints? The
hypothesis shared by many writers in this volume is that phonological constraints can be rooted
in phonetic knowledge (Kingston and Diehl 1994), the speakers’ partial understanding of the
physical conditions under which speech is produced and perceived. The source of markedness
constraints as components of grammar is this knowledge. The effect phonetic knowledge has on
the typology of the world’s sound systems stems from the fact that certain basic conditions
governing speech perception and production are necessarily shared by all languages, experienced
by all speakers and implicitly known by all. This shared knowledge leads learners to postulate
independently similar constraints. The activity of similar constraints is a source of systematic
similarities among grammars and generates a structured phonological typology.
In this introduction, we explain why it is useful to explore the hypothesis that knowledge of
markedness derives from phonetic knowledge: how one’s view of markedness changes under this
hypothesis and what empirical results come from this change of perspective. We outline first
how research on phonetically based markedness can be beneficially explored in the framework of
Optimality Theory (section 2); and how the OT search for the right constraint set can be speeded
up on the view that markedness is phonetically based (sections 3 and 4). We then discuss a
specific example of a phonetically based markedness constraint which illustrates several options
in mapping the facts of phonetic difficulty to the elements of grammar (section 5). In the
remaining sections we relate the general discussion of markedness to the specific contents of the
once. Faithfulness and Markedness constraints conflict; and moreover, there are conflicts
between different types of Markedness constraints (notably, those grounded in production vs.
those grounded in perception). There is no reason to expect the resolution of these conflicts to be
uniform across languages. The postnasal voicing example just mentioned is a plausible case of
multiple resolutions of the same difficulty.
The more direct argument for OT is that phonetically-based constraints discussed here are
frequently both active and violated, yielding Emergence of the Unmarked effects (McCarthy and
Prince 1994) which require explicit ranking. Kirchner’s, Kaun’s and Crosswhite’s chapters
provide extensive evidence of this type, as does a voicing example discussed below.
- Markedness
The term markedness is ambiguous. It can be used in a strictly typological sense, to
identify structures that are infrequently attested or systematically missing, as in Active use of
[ -ATR ] is marked (Archangeli and Pulleyblank 1994:165 and passim). The term can also refer to
an element of a formal linguistic theory, as in OT, where the term markedness characterises a
constraint type: markedness constraints penalise particular structures in surface forms, whereas
faithfulness constraints evaluate dimensions of similarity between specified pairs of lexically
related structures, such as the underlying and surface representations.
The definition of markedness in OT is also sometimes related to the hypothesis that
Markedness constraints are universal and innate. This claim is logically independent of the central
tenets of OT about constraint interaction.
1
Accordingly we are free to assume that a constraint
need not be universal or innate to qualify as a markedness constraint; rather, we use the term in
the purely technical sense of a constraint whose violations are evaluated solely on surface forms.
We use the term markedness law to denote patterns found in typological data, which markedness
constraints are often meant to explain. We may add that the correspondence conditions
themselves are formulated with the intention of deriving key aspects of phonological typology.
2
The terms thus clarified, we turn now to the options available to phonologists who study
markedness in either of these two senses.
- Inductive and Deductive Approaches to the Study of Markedness
Lindblom (1990:46)
3
observes that the study of distinctive features can proceed in two
ways: inductively and deductively. The inductive approach in the study of features is to
introduce a new feature whenever the descriptive need arises. The deductive approach, e.g.
Stevens’ Quantal Theory (1989) or Lindblom’s Dispersion Theory (1986), proceeds not from a
question of description (“What are the features used in language?”) but from a principled
expectation: “What features should we expect to find given certain assumptions about the
conditions [under which] speech sounds are likely to develop?” (Lindblom and Engstrand,
1989:107). The deductive approach can thus hope to provide not only an empirically verifiable
feature theory, in the form of principles from which feature sets derive, but may also yield
answers to further questions, such as “Why are the mental representations of speech sounds
feature-based (and likewise segment-, syllable-, foot-based)?”. These questions simply don’t
arise under approaches that take for granted the existence of such units and merely aim to
discover in the data a basis for their classification.
order. Without a general conception of what makes a possible markedness principle, there is no
more reason to look into the markedness patterns of, say, initial retroflex apicals (a useful
subject, as it turns out; see section 6.1) than into those of prenasal high tones (a topic whose
interest remains unproven). The researcher has to take a stab in the dark. In light of this, it seems
a sensible research strategy to hypothesise general principles concerning why the constraints are
as they are, and let these principles determine a structured search for markedness patterns. We
also see below that pursuing the deductive strategy can yield a completely different picture of
markedness in several empirical domains.
The work reported in this volume proceeds deductively—as advocated by Lindblom (1990)
and Ohala (1983, and much later work)—by asking at the outset variants of the following
question: are there general properties distinguishing marked from unmarked phonological
structures, and, if so, what are they? Earlier work in phonetics
4
and phonology
5
suggests that a
connection can be found between constraints governing the production and perception of speech
and markedness patterns. Certain processes (cluster simplification, place assimilation, lenition,
vowel reduction, tonal neutralisation) appear to be triggered by demands of articulatory
simplification, while the specific contexts targeted by simplification (e.g. the direction of place
assimilation, the segment types it tends to target) are frequently attributable to perceptual
factors.
Deductive research on phonological markedness starts from the assumption that markedness
laws obtain across languages not because they reflect structural properties of the language
faculty, irreducible to non-linguistic factors, but rather because they stem from speakers’ shared
knowledge of the factors that affect speech communication by impeding articulation, perception
or lexical access. Consider the case discussed below, that of the cross-linguistic dispreference for
voiced geminates. The deductive strategy starts from the assumption that this dispreference
cannot reflect an innate constraint that specifically and arbitrarily bans [b˘ d˘ g˘], but must be
based on knowledge accessible to individual speakers of the factors that might interfere with the
production and perception of voicing. This knowledge and its connection to the grammar have
then to be spelled out.
Is the deductive strategy reductionist? Clearly so, but in specific respects. The research
presented here bears only on the possibility of systematically deducing the contents of
phonological constraints from knowledge of grammar-external factors. This is not the same as
deducing the grammar itself: to the contrary, structural properties of the grammar may well filter
phonetic knowledge and limit the ways it is mapped onto grammatical statements, as suggested
by Gordon (chapter 9) and summarised below (section 5.7). Further, none of the contributions
addresses systematically the nature of phonological representations or deduces their properties
from extra-grammatical factors or discusses whether such reduction is feasible (Gafos 1999). The
same goes for the nature of constraint interaction. On the issue of external grounding for all of
these components, see Pierrehumbert’s overview (2000), and the discussion of representations
and constraint interactions by Flemming (2001).
- Markedness from Phonetics: A Constraint and its Phonetic Basis
We now examine a specific example of the deductive strategy. This section introduces a
markedness scale and points out its sources in the aerodynamics of speech.
understand how constraints like (1) are induced from evidence about the conditions under which
voicing is perceived and produced and what form they take if they are so induced. It is useful
here to make the four-way distinction shown below:
(3) a. Facts of phonetic difficulty
b. Speakers’ implicit knowledge of the facts in (a)
c. Grammatical constraints induced from the knowledge in (b)
d. Sound patterns reflecting the activity of the constraints in (c)
Facts about phonetic difficulty (3a) and sound patterns (3d) are, in principle, accessible;
they are obtainable from experiment, vocal tract modeling, and descriptive phonological work.
But the precise contents of (3b) and (3c) have to be guessed at. We see no alternative to drawing
these distinctions and making some inferences.
With Prince and Smolensky (1993), we assume that constraint organisation, (3c), reflects
transparently the structure of markedness scales, (3b).
8
We also assume that the correspondence
between the facts of phonetic difficulty (3a) and the markedness scales (3b) is necessarily
indirect: the crucial question is how indirect.
The markedness scales phonologists have mainly relied on so far do not, in their current
formulations, explicitly relate to scales of articulatory or perceptual difficulty. Examples are:
(a) the nucleus goodness scale in Prince and Smolensky (1993); (b) a place optimality scale like
( { Labial, Dorsal } _ Coronal _ Pharyngeal ), where ‹ denotes ‘worse than’; Lombardi (in press);
and (c) syllabic markedness scales like CVCC, CCVC ‹CVC ‹CV. This may reflect the fact that
there is no connection between markedness constraints and phonetic scales or that the exact ways
in which phonetic scales map onto phonological markedness has no consequences for the
functioning of the phonology. However, the research reported in this book as well as in earlier
work indicates that there is often evidence for a much closer connection.
In the next subsections we summarise the articulatory difficulties involved in sustaining
vocal cord vibration in different obstruents and consider ways in which speakers can encode
knowledge of these difficulties in markedness scales. Our point will be that among several types
of mapping (3.a) onto (3.b)-(3.c), a more direct one yields more predictive and more successful
models of grammar.
5.2 Aerodynamics of voicing
Phonetic studies (Ohala and Riordan 1979, Westbury 1979, Westbury and Keating 1986)
have located the rationale for the markedness law in (2) in the aerodynamics of voicing
production:
(4) a. Voicing requires airflow across the glottis.
b. In obstruents, the supraglottal airflow is not freely vented to the outside world.
For these reasons, active oral tract expansion (for example, by tongue root advancement
or larynx lowering) is necessary to maintain airflow in an obstruent. These maneuvers cannot be
continued indefinitely or controlled tightly. It is therefore more difficult to sustain production of
voicing in long obstruents. The difficulty is directly witnessed in languages like Ossetic, whose
speakers attempt to maintain a voicing distinction in long obstruents but nonetheless lose “part
or all of the voiced quality” (Abaev 1964: 9) in [b˘ d˘ g˘]. No comparable difficulty exists in
sustaining voicelessness in [p˘ t˘ k˘] or voicing in long sonorants, while the problem of
difficulty, they are essentially the same thing: in both [g] (a singleton with small cavity behind
the constriction) and [b˘] (a geminate with a large cavity) there is difficulty in maintaining voicing
past the point where passive devoicing normally sets in. Thus at the phonetic level we can posit
a single scale of difficulty that includes both singletons and geminates.
(5) *[+voice]: { g˘ ‹ d˘ ‹ b˘ ‹ g ‹ d ‹ b}
The scales we formulate henceforth distinguish a shared target property—[+voice] in
(5)—and the set of contexts in which this property is realised with greater or lesser difficulty: (5)
states that the [+voice] feature is hardest to realise in [g˘], next hardest in [d˘], etc. and easiest to
realise in [b].
The scale in (5) identifies [b˘], the best voiced geminate, as harder to voice than short [g],
the worst singleton. The difference between a singleton and a geminate consonant is typically
much more than the 30 ms that separate the onset of passive devoicing in [b] vs. [g] (Lehiste
1970; Smith 1992). Thus the difficulty involved in sustaining voicing should be far more extreme
for any geminate obstruent than it would be for any voiced singleton: (5) reflects this point.
If knowledge about the difficulty of sustaining voicing in obstruents resembles the scale in
(5), then its grammatical counterpart cannot be a single constraint; nor can the constraints against
voiced geminates remain unrelated to those against voicing in singletons. This is because the
voicing difficulty in [g˘ d˘ b˘] is of the same type—if not of the same magnitude—as that involved
in [g d b]. We need a constraint set that reflects the whole scale in (5), not just its upper region.
The more general point is that knowledge of markedness, when viewed as phonetic knowledge,
generates constraint families and rankings whose structure reflects a broader map of phonetic
difficulty, as the learner understands it, rather than isolated points and relations on this map.
As a specific proposal to this end, consider the set of Markedness constraints in (6).
These constraints are assumed to be ranked a priori, according to the phonetic difficulty of the
segments that they ban (but see fn. 8 above on the issue of fixed rankings).
(6) a. *[–son, +long, +dorsal, +voice] ‘no voiced long dorsal obstruents’ >>
b. *[–son, +long, +coronal, +voice] ‘no voiced long coronal obstruents’ >>
c. *[–son, +long, +labial, +voice] ‘no voiced long labial obstruents’ >>
d. *[–son, –long, +dorsal, +voice] ‘no voiced short dorsal obstruents’ >>
e. *[–son, –long, +coronal, +voice] ‘no voiced short coronal obstruents’ >>
f. *[–son, –long, +labial, +voice] ‘no voiced short labial obstruents’
If the rankings in (6) are fixed, then the relative ranking of this constraint family with respect to
the Faithfulness constraint IDENT(voice) determines the inventory of voiced obstruents, as shown
in (7):
closure duration and cavity size interact—that is, on the [b˘] vs. [g] comparison—and thus makes
rather different predictions. Notably, we find that in ranking IDENT(voice) amid the chains of (8)
(interleaving the chains freely), we cannot derive the inventories for two of the crucial cutoff
points in (5): { b˘ g d b } (forbidding *[d˘] and harder) and { d˘ b˘ g d b } (forbidding just *[g˘]).
10
5.4 From scales to sound patterns: some language data
The special possibilities implied by (6) (i.e., the constraint set that embodies a unitary
scale of voicing difficulty) are confirmed by examples from real languages. The chart in (9)
illustrates patterns of selective voicing neutralisation, on a scale like (5), defined by length and
place categories: shaded cells in the chart indicate that the voiced obstruent in the column header
does not occur. As we compare the three scales introduced earlier with the chart in (9), we
observe first that there exist languages that draw a cutoff on all seven possible points of (5):
(9) Place and length constraints on voicing contrasts
b d g b˘ d˘ g˘
a. Delaware (Maddieson 1984)
b. Dakota (Maddieson 1984)
c. Khasi (Maddieson 1984)
d. Various (citations under (1) above)
e. Kadugli (Abdalla 1973), Sudan Nubian (derived environments;
Bell 1971)
f. Cochin Malayalam (Nair 1979), Udaiyar Tamil (Williams &
Jayapaul 1977), Sudan Nubian (root-internal only: Bell 1971)
g. Fula (Maddieson 1984)
The cases of greatest interest here are (9e) and (9f), which show languages that allow all of the
voiced singletons but only some of the voiced geminates. These cases are crucial to the
comparison at hand (they are allowed by (6) but not (8)), so we discuss them in greater detail.
A dialect of Sudanese Nubian (Nilo-Saharan; Bell 1971), first discussed in this connection
by Ohala (1983), disallows [dZ˘] and [g˘] root-internally but does allow [b˘ d˘]. Derived geminates
pattern differently: derived [b˘] but not [d˘] is preserved as such, with only occasional devoicing
of [b˘], as seen below in (10).
occur. Voiceless geminates are found at all points of articulation, including [p˘ t5˘ t˘ k˘], but voiced
counterparts of the non-labials [d˘ d5˘ g˘] are impossible. Note the * [d˘] vs. [΢] difference: larynx
lowering in [΢] sustains voicing. Moreover, as seen in (9), some languages exclude just geminate
[g˘], allowing [b˘], [d˘] and all singleton voiced C’s.
Of related interest to the discussion of voicing markedness is the fact that Nubian lacks
[p], a gap related to aerodynamic factors reviewed by Ohala (1983). A short [p] must be actively
devoiced, unlike stops at other points of articulation. But [p˘] and [p] differ, because the longer
duration of [p˘] allows it to reach unassisted the point of passive devoicing. In Nubian, this
explains why [p] is absent, while [p˘] is allowed to arise. We return to this point in 5.7.
The patterns reviewed in this section and the overall picture in (9) exceed the predictive
powers of the most modular statement of voicing difficulty examined, the duo of scales in (8).
This is because (8), by hypothesis, limits markedness comparisons to very simple, minimally
different pairs of abstract phonological categories: geminates vs. singletons and labials vs.
coronals vs. dorsals. This argues that the mapping from voicing difficulty to markedness scales
must be more direct and consequently that the scales, and thus the grammars, reflect in greater
detail the complexity of phonetic difficulty. The same conclusion is echoed in this volume in the
chapters by Kirchner and Zhang.
5.5 Markedness scales and language-specific phonetics
In comparing (6) and (8), we found that (6), an approach that sacrifices some degree of
formal simplicity in order to reflect more closely the asymmetries of production and perception,
achieves better descriptive coverage, notably of asymmetrical systems like Nubian. Yet even (6)
is not a purely phonetically based system: it uses standard phonological categories, and refers to
only two of the many factors that can influence obstruent voicing. A more thoroughgoing option
would be to state that any factor whatsoever that influences difficulty of voicing can be reflected
in the constraints and their ranking. This is outlined in the phonetic scale of (11):
(11) [+voice] { x ‹ y }, where x , y is any pair of voiced segments or voiced sequences, such
that, without active oral tract expansion, the ratio of voiced closure to total closure
duration is less in x than in y.
This is not a fixed list of sounds but a schema for generating phonetic difficulty scales
based on knowledge about the phonetic factors that contribute to voicing maintenance. Such a
schema would be expected to respond to fine-grained differences in how particular phonological
categories are realised phonetically in individual languages.
Suppose, for instance, that in some particular language, [d] is a brief flap-like constriction
and [b] is a full stop. In such a case, (11) may predict, depending on the specifics of the
durational difference, that [+voice] { [b] ‹ [d] }, contrary to (6) and (8). There are in fact
languages that allow [d] but not [b] (Maddieson 1984); but the comparative duration of these [d]
relative to other voiced stops is not known to us.
There is some evidence that languages indeed deploy phonological constraints based on
the conditions set up by language-specific phonetic factors. Zhang’s chapter provides an
interesting case, which we review here. In Standard Thai, CVR syllables (V = short vowel, R =
sonorant consonant) have richer tone-bearing possibilities than CV˘O (V˘ = long vowel, O =
obstruent). In particular, CV˘O in Thai cannot host LH or M tones, whereas CVR can host any
