engleski

Is there a relation between phonotactic probability and distinctive features?

Underneath fascinating productivity of language there is limited number of well-defined discriminative units that are available, i.e. phonemes which are arranged in sequences creating syllables and words. The ordering of the phonemes and phoneme sequences in the syllables and words of a given language is described by phonotactical probabilities. Although phoneme systems of languages differ, the pool of phonological possibilities is limited by acoustical and articulation abilities which are defined as distinctive features. Distinctive features are well described across different theories of phonology and phonotactics is exhaustively investigated, but are these two phonological phenomena related and in what manner remains an open question. In this study we examined how distinctive features affect phonotactic probability. Since there are extensive differences in the way distinctive features are defined in different linguistic theories, in this study distinctive features were observed in three theoretical frameworks (structuralist, generative and functional) and correlated separately with phonotactic probability of pseudowords in order to investigate sublexical level of phonological representations. Additionally, this gives an insight into differences between the descriptions of distinctive features within different theories and into efficacy of different theoretical frameworks in explaining posed research question. Results showed that distinctive features explained within functionalist theory successfully predict phonotactical probabilities.

phonotactic probability, distinctive features

nije evidentirano