[tied] Abstractness (Was Re: [j] v. [i])

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Piotr Gasiorowski"
<piotr.gasiorowski@...> wrote:

> To note that [j] and [i] are regularly related via phonological

rules

> is one thing. To claim that _every_ [i], also in non-alternating
> morphemes, is therefore derived from underlying /j/ is to employ the
> "free ride" principle: what works when motivated must also work when
> unmotivated. Chomsky and Halle, who pioneered that approach in _The
> Sound Pattern of English_, analysed _all_ instances of English [aI]

as

> being derived via a _synchchronic_ rule of Vowel Shift from

underlying

> /i:/. The failure of the expected operation of Trisyllabic Laxing in
> words like <nightingale> (not "nittingale", unlike <divinity> with a
> lax vowel) had then to be explained by introducing a shadow

underlying

> fricative /x/ and ordering the rules so that the loss of /x/ with
> compensatory lengtghening was ordered after the Trisyllabic Laxing
> rule but before the Vowel Shift. And so on, and so forth, making
> English phonology unspeakably complex but fearfully symmetrical.

I found _The Sound Pattern of English_ very hard going until I
realised it should have been subtitled, 'How to Read English'. There
have been some weird analyses based on the false premiss that speech
rather then writing is primary throughout the English lexicon.

Richard.