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Part of
Beyond Markedness in Formal Phonology
Edited by Bridget D. Samuels
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 241] 2017
► pp. 121–152

Chapter 6
The phonetic salience of phonological head-dependent structure in a modulated-carrier model of speech

| Tohoku Gakuin University

In terms of the roles of heads and dependents, there is a mismatch between phonology and syntax. In phonology, heads are important in both structural and informational terms. In syntax, on the other hand, heads have a different function: syntactic heads, like phonological heads, have an important structural role because they license dependent structure, but unlike phonological heads their informational role is relatively unimportant because they usually bear less linguistic (e.g. lexical) information than dependents. In order to achieve a greater degree of uniformity between phonology and syntax, this chapter proposes a reassessment of the roles of heads and dependents in phonology. Contrary to the widespread view, it is argued that heads in phonology, like those in syntax, are structurally important but lexically unimportant whereas dependents are structurally unimportant but lexically important. This view is supported not only by segmental distribution patterns but also by the size of the modulated carrier signal (rather than by the more standard phonetic measure, the sonority scale).

Keywords: head, dependent, prominence, linguistic information, modulated carrier signal
Article outline
  • 1.Segmental and structural markedness
  • 2.Syntactic structure and its phonetic realisation
  • 3.Defining the notion of prominence
    • 3.1The sonority scale
    • 3.2The modulated carrier-signal
    • 3.3Head-dependent relations between syllable constituents
  • 4.Phonological structure
    • 4.1Head-dependent structure in phonology
    • 4.2Head-dependency relations in the foot
    • 4.3Redefining head-dependency relations in the foot
    • 4.4Redefining head-dependency relations in the rhyme, the nucleus and the onset
  • 5.Phonological structure: melody
    • 5.1Head-dependent relations in intra-segmental structure
    • 5.2More complex melodic compounds
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 16 November 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.241.06nas
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