Sem: Phonology

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Is speech in the mouth or in the brain? Do we hear with our ears or our minds? The answer is: both. The sounds of language are both physical objects and cognitive constructs. The physical aspects of speech are the province of Phonetics: sound waves that are produced by the movement of articulators and received by the ear. Phonology studies cognitive aspects: systematic patterns in the ways that languages combine sounds to create meaning. Various linguistics courses look at Phonology and Phonetics as separate disciplines. This seminar will examine the interaction between the two. The patterns of phonology are often clearly dependent on the principles of phonetics; yet they can also abstract away from them in sometimes complex ways. How different can phonology and phonetics be? How similar? Where exactly does the border between them lie? We will read and discuss both classic and current papers that theorize about how physical and cognitive factors interact in the mind of the speaker, and in the language system as a whole. (We should also have available the manuscript of my new book on the subject, forthcoming from Edinburgh University Press.)