Syllabus
This course is an introduction to the theory of phonology. The content and course design are
oriented primarily toward graduate students in linguistics, though other interested
participants are very welcome.
The course has three goals, which will be pursued in roughly the following order of
logical (not chronological) priority:
•to acquaint you with the major issues in contemporary phonological theory. This
will begin preparing you to conduct research on your own and read articles
critically — preparation which continues in subsequent courses of this
Department’s phonology program.
•to give you instruction and practice in organizing and analyzing phonological data.
•to offer you some minimal essentials of articulatory and acoustic phonetics. This
course is by no means an introduction to experimental phonetics, which you
will find in other Departmental offerings.
Requirements: The course revolves around problem sets. These are extremely important —
they are essential to mastery of the material. You must do these problem sets thoroughly and
turn them in on time. You should participate in the discussion of the problems in class. When
you budget your time for the semester, you should assume that you have a substantial
homework assignment due each and every week. Except when the assignment is unusually
brief, I will always give you at least a weekend, and usually a full week, to complete the
homework. (That is, I will never give a long assignment out on Tuesday and expect it to be
done two days later, on Thursday.)
If the requirements of another course come into conflict with the requirements of this
course (for instance, two large assignments due simultaneously), you should raise the matter
with me and the other instructor. Do not assume that faculty members consult with one
another about the homework they assign.
If you are persistently late in turning in problem sets or if you frequently miss class,
you and I will discuss whether you should withdraw from the course.
You will also write a very short (3-5pp.) paper by the end of the semester, with
detailed instructions on topics ahead of time. The frequency of problem sets will decrease
as the deadline for the paper comes near.
There is no textbook and there will be relatively few readings, which I will supply.
There will be extensive handouts, and you should study them closely. If you want to do
additional reading on any topic, ask me for suggestions, look at the reference lists on the
handouts, talk to an advanced student in phonology, or visit the Rutgers Optimality Archive
(http://ruccs.rutgers.edu/roa.html) and search for the topic you’re interested in.
From Introductory OT on CD-ROM (version 1.0). Copyright © 1999 by John McCarthy.
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Policy on collaboration: You are permitted (you are even expected and encouraged) to
collaborate with other students in the class on the homework assignments. But I insist that
you write up the results on your own. And be careful about collaborating with students whose
knowledge is much more advanced than yours; it may not be the best way for you to learn
the material.
Prerequisites: There are no formal prerequisites for this course. I don’t assume that you have
any background in phonology beyond what you would acquire in a decent introductory
linguistics course, such as:
•the meaning of the most common phonetic transcription symbols, such as g or ×.
•basic notions of articulatory phonetics, like which sounds are nasal, which sounds
are voiced, and so on.
•the traditional idea in generative phonology that there is a lexicon of (possibly
abstract) underlying representations which is transformed by a sequence of
rules into a surface representation.
•the meaning of the expression A B / C___D and what it does to /CAD/.
Quite literally, this is all I expect for background. But if you feel insecure, then talk to me
and I’ll recommend some reading from one of the various fine phonology or phonetics
textbooks that are available.
The Plan in Outline: The goal of this syllabus is to get up to speed on issues in
contemporary phonological theory as quickly as possible. Rather than a backward-looking,
historical orientation, the plan is my attempt to devise a course that is more forward-looking.
Precedents in earlier work aren’t ignored, of course, but they aren’t allowed to determine the
overall direction taken either.
Our primary focus will be on the role of constraints in determining phonological
patterning, alternations, and typology. The organizing principle we will be looking to is the
idea that constraints are ranked and violable, which is the fundamental tenet of Optimality
Theory (Prince & Smolensky 1993). Simultaneously, we will depend on the problem sets and
class discussion to draw in other issues that are important to phonology, such as the role and
character of underlying representations, ways of organizing and analyzing phonological data,
the relation of phonology to phonetics, types of phonological processes, and so on.
Here’s an approximate schedule of how we will proceed:
Weeks 1–8
Introduction to constraints, Optimality Theory, phonological analysis,
learnability. As empirical basis for this introduction, we will study prosodic
phonology (syllabification, deletion, epenthesis, alignment, sentence
phonology).
Readings:
5Prince, Alan, and Paul Smolensky (1993). Optimality Theory:
Constraint interaction in generative grammar, Rutgers
University, New Brunswick, NJ. Report RUCCS TR-2. [To
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appear, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.] Chapters 2 (with
extensive annotations) and 7.
5McCarthy, John, and Alan Prince (1993). Prosodic Morphology I:
Constraint Interaction and Satisfaction, University of
Massachusetts, Amherst, and Rutgers University. Report
RUCCS TR-3. [To appear, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.]
Chapters 2 and 4.
5Selkirk, Elisabeth O. (1995). The prosodic structure of function
words. In J. Beckman, L. Walsh Dickey and S. Urbanczyk
(eds.) Papers in Optimality Theory. Amherst, MA: GLSA.
439-470.
5Tesar, Bruce, and Paul Smolensky (1998). Learnability in
Optimality Theory. LI 29. 229-268.
Weeks 9-13
Segmental phonology (allophony, inventories, assimilation, dissimilation,
harmony).
Readings:
5Pater, Joe (1999). Austronesian nasal substitution and other NC
effects. In R. Kager, H. v. d. Hulst and W. Zonneveld (eds.)
The Prosody-Morphology Interface. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press. 310-343.
5Lombardi, Linda (1995). Why Place and Voice are different:
Constraint interactions and feature faithfulness in Optimality
Theory, University of Maryland, College Park, MD.
5Clements, G.N., and Elizabeth V. Hume (1995). The internal
organization of speech sounds. In J. A. Goldsmith (ed.) The
Handbook of Phonological Theory. Cambridge, MA, and
Oxford, UK: Blackwell. 245-306.
5Padgett, Jaye (1995). Feature classes. In J. Beckman, S. Urbanczyk
and L. Walsh Dickey (eds.) University of Massachusetts
Occasional Papers in Linguistics UMOP 18. Amherst, MA:
GLSA. 385-420.
Week 14
Overview and Summary of the Course