Reviewed by Douglas C. Walker, University of Calgary
Phonologie: Champs et perspectives is an interesting, if heterogeneous, collection of articles that deal with several of the dominant themes in current phonological discussions. As the editors appropriately note, underlying these articles is the need to ensure that phonological structure is ultimately grounded in the speech signal and is therefore compatible with the constraints that arise from the fact that such structures are learned by children and used by speakers in a variety of situations. In a period of renewal (not to say upheaval) of phonological theorizing, this book sets out not to defend any particular approach but rather to illustrate the great variety of questions that phonologists confront and the evidence that they deploy.
The first of the seven contributions is by one of the editors, Sophie Waquier-Gravelines, ‘Du réalisme des formalisations phonologiques contemporaines: Que nous apprennent des données d’acquisition?’ (9–34), who uses data from the acquisition of liaison in French to argue for the incorporation of performance constraints in the development of optimality theory (OT). G. N. Clements, ‘Les diphthongues brèves en anglais: Fonction phonétique du trait tendu/relâché’ (35–55), ventures into the thorny fields of diphthongs and vowel length in English and how to best characterize tense-lax distinctions. Clements concludes, in part on the basis of sophisticated instrumental data, that even if a tense-lax distinction has no distinctive role in the current system of General American English, it cannot be excluded from representations given its future potential for phonologization.
Poetic language is the focus of the longest contribution, ‘Phonologie et poétique: Le blason du fol Triboullet (Rabelais, Tiers livre XXXVIII)’ (57–104) by Audrey Walczak. Walczak provides a glimpse into the field of (François) Rabelaisian studies with her investigation of the pronunciation of French in the sixteenth century. She then turns to an exploitation of the theory of phonological elements (à la Jonathan Kaye, Jean Lowenstamm, and Jean-Roger Vergnaud) in her study of a dialogue between Pantagruel and Panurge (concerning a character named Triboullet). In addition to a brief study of the semantic structure of the dialogue, Walczak provides a detailed analysis of its complex multilevel and multifactorial phonological organization. Her analysis is a fascinating blend of current phonological theory and the poetics of literature. Next, in ‘La syllabe ou la more en tonologie africaine, ou comment se fait l’interface entre segments et tons’ (105–29), Annie Rialland examines, on the basis of a number of African languages, syllables and morae as tone bearing units; she considers the implication that morae are subunits of syllables, although syllables can impose constraints on the number of tones and on tonal contours.
In ‘Conséquences de la décomposition du phonème en traits’ (131–55), Georges Bohas and Rachida Serhane study the Arabic root morpheme. Using an analysis in which features—rather than segments—play the key role, they show, contrary to various structuralist or generative proposals, that meaning can be linked to matrices of phonological features rather than to the morpheme (which is commonly viewed as the smallest indivisible meaningful unit). The following article, ‘Phonologie et connexionnisme’ (157–72) by Atanas Tchobanov, ventures into the domain of neurolinguistics, linking phonological analysis to studies of neural behavior through a discussion of four connectionist models and expressing the preliminary—and no doubt controversial—view that such models reinforce arguments for a phonology without constituency and without derivational rules.
No discussion of current phonology should omit a treatment of the diachronic dimension, and the final contribution, ‘Phonologie et diachronie’ (173–94) by Jean-Pierre Angoujard satisfies this requirement. Angoujard proposes that phonological evolution be viewed similarly to the way changes in languages are often viewed: as a change in parameters. It is then not segments (or their realizations) that change but rather parametric values, an effect that anchors change in a functional (principles and parameters) approach. Classic examples from the history of French (diphthongization, prothesis, cluster simplification, and nasalization, all couched in terms of phonological elements) serve to exemplify Angoujard’s analysis.
Phonologie: Champs et perspectives provides a stimulating discussion of a number of phonological issues, such as acquisition, literary analysis, tonology, psycholinguistics, and diachrony. As a result, this volume constitutes a worthwhile demonstration of the vitality of current phonological debate and opens the way for further developments in a field that is increasingly linked to what has been called external evidence.