PHONOLOGY AND PHONETICS TUTORIAL TOPICS AND READING LIST

In each case, read at least some of the *'ed paper(s) and pick one of the essays to write, where there is more than one option. Titles in red are reprinted in J. A. Goldsmith (ed.) (1999) Phonological Theory: The Essential Readings, and are referred to by chapter thus: [G12] is chapter 12.

A. PHONOLOGY
Phonology topic 1: Segmentation

Essay Question: "To what extent is it reasonable to regard speech as consisting of a sequence of discrete segments?"

Foundations

Problems

A recent contribution

Phonology topic 2: Classification

Essay Question: Compare and constrast the approaches to the classification of EITHER vowels OR consonants in the IPA vs. generative phonology.

Readings


Phonology topic 3: Cyclicity

Foundations
Overview Critics Essay question: Critically appraise the hypothesis that some phonological rules apply cyclically.

Phonology topic 4: Lexical phonology and morphology

Starting points Development Application to English Essay questions
  1. According to Halle and Mohanan (1985), how are the phonological rules of English ordered? On what evidence?
  2. What good is the theory of Lexical Phonology?
  3. Are morphological and metrical structures sufficient to account for the phonology of words?
Phonology topic 5: Metrical phonology of English
Foundations Development Essay title: How is English lexical stress determined, according to  the theory of Metrical Phonology?

Phonology topic 6: Syllables and moras

Foundations Development
English Essay titles:

Phonology 7: Psycholinguistic evidence for syllable structure

Essay question: Who is right, Pierrehumbert and Nair or Treiman and Kessler?

Phonology 8: Autosegmental Phonology and Morphology

More advanced, mainly illustrated via Japanese and Chinese:

Mary E. Beckman and Jennifer J. Venditti (2011) Intonation (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/9781444343069.ch15) Chapter 15 of John Goldsmith, Jason Riggle and Alan C. L. Yu. Handbook of Phonological Theory, 2nd edition. 

Accessible online via SOLO, or directly from Wiley Online Library using the link given above. You'll need to log in to the Wiley Online Library portal, using "Institutional Access". Log in with Shibboleth. The Federation is "UK Higher Education" (right at the bottom of the drop-down list) and the Institution is "University of Oxford".

Phonology 9: Constraint-based approaches to phonology
Background Developments

B. THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PHONOLOGY AND PHONETICS
Phonetics/phonology topic 1: Gemination

Foundations Developments Essay title: How can the view of gemination expressed by Schein and Steriade and Lahiri and Hankamer be reconciled with Local and Simpson's data?

Phonetics/phonology topic 2: Secondary articulation and coarticulation

Foundations Models Seeking the limits of coarticulation

Phonetics/phonology topic 3: The phonetics-phonology interface

Foundations Development Essay question: 

"The data for the study of the articulatory as well as the acoustic aspect of speech sounds can only be gathered from concrete speech events. In contrast, the linguistic value of sounds to be examined by phonology are abstract in nature. They are above all relations, oppositions, etc., quite intangible things, which can be neither perceived nor studied with the aid of the sense of hearing or touch." (Trubetzkoy 1969: 13. English translation of Trubetzkoy 1939 Grundzüge der Phonologie, cited by Coleman 1992: 21)

Assuming that Trubetzkoy is right, what specific mechanisms seem to be necessary to relate phonological representations to phonetic representations?


Phonetics/phonology topic 4: Theoretical views on perceptual representations
Essay title: Summarise and critically appraise any TWO theories of speech perception.


Phonetics/phonology topic 5: Phonetics and phonology in the mental lexicon

Some considerations regarding economy and storage size etc. for symbolic vs. auditory memories:

Essay question: In what form are words represented in the mental lexicon?