Sunday 3 September 2017

Locating Both Expression And Content Within One Level Of Form

Fawcett (2010: 34n):
In the current model, however, 'segmental phonology' is regarded as being the internal specification of items, i.e., as a phenomenon that occurs within the level of form (rather than being a 'realisation' of (part of) it). See (Fawcett 1980:59) for a fuller statement of this position.

Blogger Comments:

To be clear, Fawcett's model locates both expression (phonology) and content (syntax) "within the level of form". Without the realisation relation between the two, this is equivalent to locating both the phonemes that realise the word 'stop', and the word 'stop', at the same level of symbolic abstraction.

Moreover, it is only one of the four ranks of phonology, phoneme, that is modelled this way.  The other three ranks, tone group, foot and syllable are not included.  This creates an internal inconsistency within this theoretical inconsistency.

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