No Melody, Just Structure
Harry van der Hulst
In this paper, I will tackle the topic of this conference ‘head on’ and defend the position that
phonology is ‘just structure’, where structure is understood in a cognitive, computational
sense. My defense takes the form of proposing a fully explicit theory of phonological
structure at the segmental and syllabic level. The focus of my attention will be on the
segmental level, since the structural nature of syllabic organization is not controversial.
(Neither is the structural nature of higher levels of organization, which cannot be discussed in
the given time span.). The working title of the theory, that I have been developing for a
number of years, has been Radical cv Phonology (RcvP), but in this talk I will argue that the
notions ‘C’ and ‘V’ are too ‘phonetic’ and that a strict adherence to Head-Dependency
relations is called for. This line of work, that finds its roots in Dependency Phonology
(Anderson & Ewen 1987) and Government Phonology (Kaye, Lowenstamm & Vergnaud
1985, 1990, Ritter 1997), forms part of a larger enterprise ‘Head-driven Phonology’, HDP; cf.
van der Hulst & Ritter 1999). I claim that HDP, more specifically the part of it, that I discuss
in this talk (i.e. HDP[segment]), represents a logical development of the tenets of the former
two theories.
In a way, the notions ‘C’ and ‘V’ represent the last residue of having phonetically-driven
primitives (i.e. ‘melody’). I will argue that all phonology, not just stricture (cf. Golston & van
der Hulst 1999), but also place and laryngeal distinctions, is structure, defined in terms of
binary head constituents. Phonetic Events (sounds, including so-called alternations in sounds)
are interpretations of ‘pieces of structure’ (which, following Government Phonology, will be
called Phonological Expressions). In proposing a strict separation of form and substance, I
will briefly mention historical links to other ‘non-phonetic’ phonologies such as Hjelmslev’s
theory.
The more specific contribution of this talk will be to outline a theory of ‘complex segments’.
In fact, HDP[segments] allows us to make a precise distinction between ‘basic structures’ and
‘compound structures’. These are technical terms, since even basic structures display various
degrees of complexity. Compound structures, as I will show, display an interesting and
systematic asymmetry that cannot be captured in formal terms, but instead requires reference
to the phonetic events. Compound structures involve a combination of two phonological
expressions such that the phonetic event that corresponds to the head expression involves a
greater degree of closure than the phonetic event that corresponds to the dependent
expression. (Interestingly, in RcvP, this generalization could be captured by saying that all
adjunction is V-to-C, which clearly shows that the symbols V and C have phonetic content.) .
Thus, the fact that [kw] is a possible secondary articulation, but [uk] not, is, in my view,
requires an extra-phonological explanation, presumably the same explanation that must
account for the fact that CV is a better syllable than VC.