Speech production planning affects phonological variability: a case study in French liaison
Oriana Kilbourn-Ceron
February 2017 

Connected speech processes have played a major role in shaping theories about phonological organization, and how phonology interacts with other components of the grammar (Selkirk, 1974; Kiparsky, 1982; Kaisse, 1985; Nespor and Vogel, 1986, among others). External sandhi is subject to locality conditions, and it is more variable compared to processes applying word-internally. We suggest that an important part of understanding these two properties of external sandhi is the locality of speech production planning. Presenting evidence from French liaison, we argue that the effect of lexical frequency on variability can be understood as a consequence of the narrow window of phonological encoding during speech production planning. This proposal complements both abstract, symbolic and gestural overlap-based accounts of phonological alternations. By connecting the study of phonological alternations with the study of factors influencing speech production planning, we can derive novel predictions about patterns of variability in external sandhi, and better understand the data that drive the development of phonological theories.

Format:	[ pdf ]
Reference:	lingbuzz/003309 (please use that when you cite this article)
Published in:	Proceedings of the Annual Meeting on Phonology 2016
keywords:	speech production planning, corpus phonology, french liaison, phonology, lexical frequency, external sandhi
Downloaded:	700 times

 

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