Dynamics in grammar : comment on Ladd and Ernestus & Baayen *

The derivational view of phonetics-phonology (Ladd, this volume) expresses an intuition that seems valid, namely, that there is a distinction to be made between quantitative and qualitative aspects of phonetics-phonology. Incomplete neutralization (Ernestus and Baayen, this volume) and other phenomena like it indicate that the specific way of drawing that distinction is too rigid. At the same time, these phenomena underscore the need for a different formal language, where discrete and continuous aspects of phonetics-phonology can interact. A way of reconciling the core intuition of the derivational view with phenomena like incomplete neutralization is proposed using the mathematics of nonlinear dynamics. This allows one to integrate the continuous and the discrete without the additional postulate that phonology is derivationally antecedent to phonetics.

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