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Dynamics of Phonological Cognition| old_uid | 293 |
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| title | Dynamics of Phonological Cognition |
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| start_date | 2005/12/02 |
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| schedule | 15h-17h |
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| online | no |
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| summary | How is the discreteness of phonological systems related to the continuity of phonetic substance? According to the conventional view, the relation between the discrete aspects of phonological systems and the continuous dimensions of their phonetic substance is to be fleshed out by a process of translation from discrete symbols to continuous physical properties of an articulatory-acoustic nature. This is the view in the background of most current work in linguistics and cognitive science in general. I will argue for a different view using a single formal language, the mathematics of non-linear dynamics. This formal language enables us to express qualitative and quantitative aspects of a complex system within a unified framework, and does away with the temporal metaphor of precedence between the qualitative and the quantitative, without losing sight of the essential distinction between the two. Specifically, in this talk, I will present models of the relation between continuity and discreteness for two language-particular but nevertheless generalizable phenomena: the phonetic basis of transparency in vowel harmony and the incompleteness of a class of neutralization phenomena. In each case, the proposed model links the experimentally observed continuous distinctions to the discreteness of phonological form. |
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| responsibles | Information non disponible |
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