-
Aspects Of Adim Phonology
CHAPTER ONE -- [Total Page(s) 4]
Page 3 of 4
-
-
-
Recursiveness, according to Saheed (2003:10), “is a situation whereby
we have a repetitive embedding and coordination syntactic structure in
languagesâ€.
According to Chomsky(1965:7-9) recursiveness is one
of the very major achievements of generative grammar in which limited
set of rules are used by the native speaker to create infinite number of
sentences from a finite sentence through the rule called
transformational rule.
1.5 Generative Phonology
Hyman
(1915:80) says a phonological structure isan abstract phonemic
representation which postulates the rules that are derived from various
surface forms. It postulates the underlying forms at the systematic
phonemic level from which such have systematic relationship termed
“Linguistically Significant Generalizationâ€. The structure is of three
basic levels, these are, Underlying representation (PR).
1.5.1 Underlying Representation
According
to Oyebade (1998:13) “underlying representation is the non-predictable,
non-rule derived part of wordsâ€. It is a form with abstract
representation existing in the linguistic competence of all utterances
and it exists in the mental dictionary. At this level, items with
variant meanings have identical representation. For instance, the
different forms of negation prefix in English likeŋ-(ŋkɔrɛkt),
im-(impossible), in-(intolerable), il-(illegal), ir-(irregular) have the
same meaning, Oyebade (1998).
1.5.2 Phonetic Representation
Kantoszwich
(1994:8) states that the phonetic level indicates “how the lexical
items are to be realized in speechâ€. It is at the level after
phonological rules have been applied to the underlying representation.
According to Hyman (1975:19), “phonetic representation represents
possible pronunciation of forms in the realization of speech and the
surface levelâ€. Generative phonology considers phonetics representation
as a level that is some what trivial and not worth too much attention,
except, perhaps, justification of the proposed underlying representation
(Oyebade 1998:21).
1.5.3 Phonological Rules
These are
directives which map underling forms unto the surface forms. They show
the derivational sequence or path of an item in its journey from the
underlying level to the phonetic level (Oyebade1998:15).
As
Hyman (1975:26) points out, they are derivational sequences of phonetic
level. Phonological rules are predictablerules; examples of phonological
rules are the rules that assimilate a nasal segment to the place of
articulation of the following segments e.g
n → m ─ b :[+ nas ] → + ant +ant
¬ cor ¬ con
n → n t :[+ nas ] → + ant +ant
¬cor ¬cor
n→ n g : [ + nas ] → + ant +ant
¬ cor ¬cor
These rules can be captured by one rule:-
[± nas ] → α ant α ant
β cor β cor
CHAPTER ONE -- [Total Page(s) 4]
Page 3 of 4
-
