LISTENER ORIENTED REPRESENTATIONS IN NATURAL PHONOLOGY

Abstract

While Natural Phonology has long contended that phonemes are specified for their phonetic properties, followers of the theory have concentrated primarily on phonological processes, in- stead of delving into the details of pronounceable representations. In the area of representation, NP has thus failed to pursue its claim that systematic articulatory and perceptual phenomena be- low the level of segmental contrast must be treated phonologically. By building an explicit model of representation in NP, we may help the theory to meet one of its primary challenges: “to con- firm the hypothesis that speech processing is categorical, or phonological, down to the level of the actual phonetic (pronounceable) representation” (Donegan 2002: 79). Prominence Phonology (Schwartz, in press) is an NP-inspired model that seeks to take Donegan’s call to action to heart, introducing new and phonetically explicit representations based upon scalar yet monovalent ele- mental primes. This paper introduces these representations with the goal of refining our view of the signal so as to develop a phonological view of speech.