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SUMMARY:Problems with phonemes - Dr John Coleman (Phonetics Laboratory\, U
 niversity of Oxford)
DTSTART:20061116T170000Z
DTEND:20061116T183000Z
UID:TALK5647@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Christopher Lucas
DESCRIPTION:From the early years of phonological theory\, various problems
  with\nphonemes were identified\, and at the time were well-known and wide
 ly\ndiscussed. In consequence\, many structuralist phonologists came to\nr
 egard phonemes as a "convenient fiction"\, useful for e.g. alphabetic\nnot
 ation or orthographic purposes\, but without a clearly demonstrable\,\npri
 ncipled basis. In the UK\, the London School of phonologists\nassociated w
 ith J. R. Firth came to reject phonemic theory completely\,\nand developed
  an alternative conception of phonological structure that\ncame to dominat
 e phonological thought in Britain for decades (and still\nattracts conside
 rable interest today). The displacement of the\nnominalist ("convenient fi
 ction") view of phonology by generative\nphonologists in the 1950's and 60
 's led initially to the rejection of\nthe phonemic level of representation
  (Halle 1959)\, although the phoneme\nwas later somewhat rehabilitated\, f
 ollowing Schane (1971).\n\nDespite these problems\, elementary textbooks a
 nd courses in linguistics\nhave continue to present the phoneme construct 
 as an established truth\,\nand the various well-studied problems and objec
 tions of earlier years\nare little-studied. In this talk\, I shall revisit
  a selection of classic\nstudies and some more recent work on the problems
  of the phoneme\, and\nreview some proposals that have been advanced to ad
 dress these problems.\nMy presentation is addressed in particular to those
  who work on language\n(e.g. linguists\, psychologists\, educationalists\,
  speech technologists)\nwho are not normally particularly exercised by mat
 ters of phonological\ntheory.\n
LOCATION:LG17\, Law Faculty\, 10 West Road (Sidgwick Site)
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