Phonotactic theory

Synopsis

English speakers, it is said (Halle 1978), know that blick is a "possible" word in their language (though Blick means 'glance' in German), but bnin and mgla are not (even though the former means 'delicious' in Maltese and the latter means 'darkness' in Russian). The theory of phonotactics is concerned with the origin and nature of these language-specific intuitions.

In this class, we will review and critique theories of phonotactic knowledge and the experimental methods used to study it. According to one tradition, phonotactic knowledge reflects speakers' knowledge of morpheme structure constraints (MSCs), redundancy rules over underlying representations; according to another—strongly associated with Optimality Theory and its forebears—it reflects surface structure constraints. Is one account preferable, or are both needed? Does phonotactic knowledge reflect prosodic structures like the syllable (cf. Pierrehumbert 1994, Blevins 2003) or putative universals like sonority sequencing (Daland et al. 2011)? What role do phonological processes play (e.g., Kisseberth 2011, Paster 2013, Durvasula & Kahng 2015)? Are wordlikeness intuitions influenced by similarity to existing words (e.g., Bailey & Hahn 2001, Hayes & Wilson 2008, Albright 2009)? What evidence can be gleaned from loanword adaptation (e.g., Peperkamp 2005, Daland et al. 2019) or sound change (e.g., Iverson & Salmons 2005)?

Schedule

(Please note that this is subject to change and will be updated as we go.)

A full printable syllabus with bibliography is here.