British Academy: The UK's National Academy for the Humanities and Social Sciences

BA PDF Symposium 2005

26 April 2005

Abstracts

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Dr Elinor Payne

Motifs and the Morphogenesis of Sound Structure

Phonetic research has become increasingly engaged in exploring the very high degree of variability between one language or language variety and the next in the way that a given sequence of sounds is articulated. For example, vowels in European Portuguese have a velarised resonance entirely absent from Brazilian Portuguese; in shorter utterances, intonational tunes tend to be 'compressed' in English, and 'truncated' in German. Such variability is the fruit of diverse sets of realisational norms, or behavioural motifs, shared by specific speech communities, and poses a challenge for how we conceive of phonological knowledge.

In this talk I shall examine the semiotic status and creative potential of phonetic motifs and consider more generally, from a poststructuralist perspective, the relationship between phonetic substance ('form') and the underlying abstract system of differentiation ('meaning', in a loose sense of the word). In most theories of phonology, the sound system is seen as a closed, static system of oppositions on the same level of abstraction. Having more than one level of structure, from low-level motifs to (morpho)phonemes, allows, in principle, for the system to be fluid and, over time, permeable to context and the materiality of sound, i.e. to the actual experience of speech. I shall argue that systematic speech behaviour is structural from the outset and continuously tugs at the apparent monolith of more abstract structures. Phonetic motifs may themselves become increasingly decontextualised, acquiring higher functional status (e.g. they may come to signal a word boundary or form the basis of a lexical contrast). Given that phonetic motifs and exchanges between structural levels are to be considered non-universal (language-specific), it is concluded that the morphogenesis of sound structure in general must also be non-universal. In other words, while being bound by certain factors (e.g. physical), the evolution of sound systems is not underpinned by a simple, unifying set of principles but follows a distinct path in different languages.

After working for the UK Government and the European Commission, Dr Elinor Payne returned to Cambridge University to take up a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Department of Linguistics and a Junior Research Fellowship at Wolfson College. Her research interests lie in Phonetic Theory and Experimental Phonology, with particular reference to Italo-Romance. Her postdoctoral research investigates the status of linguistic-phonetic patterns, or motifs, and their role in shaping phonological structure. She has also recently turned her attention to Intonational Phonology, with an investigation of northeast Italian dialects which show rising intonation for statements, a contour more typical of questions. She has a number of publications in progress, and has also lectured and supervised undergraduates and postgraduates.