L212 Firthian Prosodic Analysis.
Lecture 4.
Phonetic exponency 1.
FPA makes a clear separation of levels: we are constantly reminded that phonetics and phonology are different levels of abstraction. There are some advantages of this approach and some apparent disadvantages; this lecture and the next one will look at the phonetics-phonology relation in more detail. This is one of the aspects of FPA which no outside commentator really has understood properly, and yet it’s one of the most essential aspects of FPA.
Separation of levels
Main idea: Phonetics and phonology describe different things. Phonetics describes substance while phonology described form (Hjelmslev’s terminology). Both are abstractions, but of different kinds.
Rivals: Phonemes are (and still are) defined in largely phonetic terms. For example: the difference between /p/ and /b/ is always one of voice±; it can’t be anything else. This isn’t the case in FPA, where the phonological units are defined in different, relational terms. eg. in Henderson (1966) ƒ and m are the phonetic exponents of wm and wr respectively, while in a phonemic-style analysis the differences involve continuant± and nasal±.
Reasons for separating the levels:
• Phonology is about relations such as: contrast; implication (eg. the presence or absence of x determines or precludes the presence or absence of y). Phonetics on the other hand is about articulations, acoustics, etc., physical things. 
• Given the nature of phonetics vs. phonology, it makes no sense to say that the phonological categories could be described in language appropriate to the physical world. (Eg. You might say that a real-world car has four wheels, but you wouldn’t say that your lexical entry {CAR} has four wheels!)
• The languages for phonetics and phonology need to do different things. Phonology needs to be sparing, economical, parsimonious; phonetics needs to be rich, descriptive, and to allow us to describe any possible human speech sound. So there’s a conflict of interests if we use the same language to describe different things. Separating the levels allows us to pay attention to phonetic detail (cf. Kohler 1967, Henderson 1982).
• Phonological objects don’t become phonetic objects. Phonological categories are expressed, made audible by means of phonetics.
• By keeping the levels separate, we can take into account phonetic detail which is usually dismissed as ‘irrelevant’ to phoneme-based analyses (Kohler 1967: 200, Hnederson 1982).
…and some reasons for not separating them!
…but most of these are illusory. 
• It allows us to say that eg. voiceless plosives and close front vowels are common in all languages, in the phonetics and therefore also in phonemic inventories.
• It allows us to say that phonological change often occurs because of phonetic change (arising from phonetic variability).
• The overall number of categories in the phonology can be constrained; the categories of the phonology are prevented from being overly abstract.
• It creates the illusion that phonetic interpretation is unproblematic. There is a lot of handwaving in generative phonology. However, many phonologists are turning increasingly to “Laboratory Phonology” as a way of reconciling phonetics and phonology.
Some supportive quotes from modern phonetics and phonology literature:
.. what might be called the same sound in different languages (or, to be more accurate, sounds which are symbolised by the same letter in different languages). (Ladefoged 1971: 98)
...many speech scientists nevertheless use linguistic terms (consonants, vowels, syllables) as if they were acoustic categories—a classification of speech sounds. (Repp 1981: 1462)
...there is something impossible about the familiar view that linguistic utterances start out nonphysical and somehow become physical later. 
	Rules that take a description in one domain (eg. phonological) into another description in another domain (eg. phonetic) are linguistic things; they are statements composed of symbols. We can have rules that take symbols into other symbols, but we can’t have a rule that takes a symbol into a thing (that is, into something physical). Of course we can transform a symbol that does not refer to something physical into a symbol that does. But how can we, rulefully, leave the realm of symbols and get the vocal-tract moving? I don’t think that we can. (Fowler 1990: 478)
Because phonological and phonetic representations are different, the rules that can operate on each side must be different. (Keating 1990: 452)
Many linguists view phonetics and phonology as forming a continuum, with phonological descriptions presented in the same formal language as phonetic descriptions, for instance in the assemblage of supposedly universal distinctive phonetic properties. Though this is the most orthodox position, it is not a view which is shared by everyone. Foley (1977) calls this hypothesis ‘transformational phonetics’ rather than ‘generative phonology’, a terminological distinction which I shall adopt, since it is possible to support the generative approach to phonology without  extending that approach to phonetic interpretation. (Coleman 1992a: 21)
Descriptions of phonological patterns in languages involve features which are quite distinct from the phonetic parameters; moreover, they cannot account for many of the phonetic differences between languages. (Ladefoged 1980: 501)
Linguistic descriptions must be accompanied by a detailed, language-specific set of algorithms before they can be interpreted in terms of actual sounds. (Ladefoged 1983: 187)
...at minimum, a complete account of particular languages needs to provide for an interpretation of ‘systematic phonetic’ representations along dimensions with multiple phonetic values. (Anderson 1981: 505)
Phonetic exponency in FPA

This direct and positive phonetic approach avoids a false realism implied in such expressions as ‘phonetic implication’, ‘realization’, ‘actualization’, and ‘signal’. While keeping the levels of analysis separate, the introduction of exponents brings the results together and ensures renewal of connection in experience with the language under description. (Firth 1957: 16)
…and in generative phonology:

Language of description
Phonological and phonetic terms suggested for the Handbook (ms, Firthian Phonology Archive): 

Organic basis of phonetic features!
No one-to-one relation.		
I a) Phonetic features
Adaptation of traditional phonetics in order to assign phonic data to phonological categories.	I b) Phonological categories
having frequent (partial) correlation with phonetic features opposite.	
Nasalisation	Nasality	
Aspiration	h-ness	
Friction	Spirance	
Plosion	Plosivity	
Voicing	Voice	
Glottalisation	Glottality	
Pharyngalisation	Pharyngality	
Retroflexion	r-ness	
Palatalisation	y-ness	
(Labio-) velarisation	w-ness	
Tension	Tensity (laxity)	
Pitch	Tone and intonation	
Loudness	Stress	
Duration	Length and quantity	
Speed	Tempo	
This carefulness with language of description, and the notation that goes with it, are one of the things that make the FPA papers hard to read. Many of the symbols are not intuitively understandable! One hint: keep notes of (i) phonological categories and the structure they’re in (ii) the phonetic exponents of these categories. Note that often the exponents are not symbolised using IPA terms, because, as Sprigg (1957) points out IPA symbols have to express a conjunction of features.
Abstraction
If phonetics and phonology are kept so distinct, this leads to problems with abstraction: ie. what stops you from doing anything at all in the phonology just because it works? eg. Chomsky and Halle (1968) proposed that night in English underlyingly was /nIxt/ even though there is no [x] in English. 
• Having a statement of phonetic exponents means that you know what the phonological categories ‘mean’.
• If you hold the FPA view of the phonetics and phonology relation, then phonology has to be abstract: but it’s abstract in the sense that it sets up phonological categories which aren’t phonetic.
• The proposed relation might lead to ‘abstraction’, but it’s no more abstract than the semantic entity {DOG} and a four-legged pet that barks. (Saussure: arbitrariness of the sign.)
• We’ll see next time how we might constrain phonetic exponency in FPA.