The Role of Phonetic Distance in the Acquisition of Phonological Alternations

Abstract

In phonology, it has often been noted that some regularities are typologically more frequent than others. For example, alternations that change [i] to [u] occur more often than alternations that change [i] into [i] (Chomsky and Halle, 1968). In order to explain such typological asymmetries, many phonological theories refer to their phonetic bases: Typologically frequent regularities tend to ‘make sense’ from a phonetic point of view (e.g. Donegan et al., 1979; Archangeli and Pulleybank, 1994). Two proposals as to how phonetic naturalness gives rise to typological asymmetries are the following. First, cognitive biases have been argued to play a role during phonological acquisition in each individual language learner; these biases typically favor the acquisition of phonetically natural regularities (e.g. Jusczyk, 1998; Wilson, 2006). Second, sound changes that take place over generations of speakers have been argued to yield more phonetically natural regularities than unnatural ones (e.g. Ohala, 1992; Blevins, 2004). Thus, phonetically natural regularities might be typologically frequent because they are easier to acquire (synchronic perspective) or because they arise more frequently (diachronic perspective).

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