Course outline for L212 Firthian Prosodic Analysis

Week	Lecture	Reading for seminar/exercises	Seminar topic:	
1	Background
 History and demise of FPA; reasons for current interest.	Introduction
Anderson (1984)
Sounds and Prosodies (1948)	Anderson writes (p. 179) that “Firth’s writings on general linguistics… are nearly Delphic in character. Even…Firth (1948) [is] full of obscure and allusive references and completely unclear on essential points.” How true do you think this view is?	
2	Terminology 1
Basic terms of FPA, including ‘prosody’, ‘phonematic unit’.
	Pitch and intonation
Firth & Rogers 1937 (Hunanese)
Henderson 1949 (Siamese)	A current interpretation of the word “prosody” is as “supersegmental”, ie. pitch, duration, etc. How adequate is this understanding for making sense of Firth & Rogers (1937) and Henderson (1949)?	
3	Terminology 2
More terms of FPA, including ‘polysystemic’ and a look at notation. 
	Syllable structure
Henderson (1966) (Vietnamese)
Scott (1957) (Sea Dayak)	One current interpretation of the syllable is as follows: 
Syllable Æ Onset Rhyme
Rhyme Æ Nucleus Coda
The Rhyme is the Head of the syllable, and the Nucleus is the Head of the Rhyme: ie. every Syllable has to have a Nucleus. 
How might we formalise the notation in the papers by Henderson and Scott?	
4	Phonetic exponency 1
Language of description; separation of levels; abstraction and accountability to data.	Speech styles
Sprigg 1957
Simpson 1993
cf. Lass 198X:296	Both Sprigg (1957) and Simpson (1993) deal with variability in the phonic material. Describe how they handle this variability. Is it at the phonological level, or at the level of phonetic exponency? What constraints apply? (ie. what do you think they cannot do?)	
5		Reading week
		
6	Phonetic exponency 2
Possible types of exponency relation; constraints on exponency 	Vowel harmony
Carnochan 1960
Sprigg 1961
Waterson 1956	Explain, if you can, what properties you think characterise an analysis of vowel harmony in FPA terms.	
7	Congruence with other levels
Putting phonology together with other levels of linguistic description; a notation to allow this.	Gemination
Carnochan 1957
Palmer 1957
Schein & Steriade	How do the analyses by Carnochan and Palmer meet the points made by Schein and Steriade on gemination? Whose analysis of gemination do you prefer, and why?	
8	Modern FPA
Models of phonetic interpretation; need for phonetic detail	Declarative Phonology
Coleman 1992, 1995	Evaluation of FPA 1:
What might FPA’s contribution be to modern phonology?	
9	FPA and other phonologies
Problems with commentaries; FPA’s strengths and weaknesses; points of similarity and difference.	Comparisons with other types of phonology
Broe 1991 & Allen 1957
Goldsmith 1992, Ogden & Local 1994
Fromkin 1965 & Lyons 1962	Evaluation of FPA 2:
What misunderstandings of FPA have there been?	
Assessment
Assessment will be in three parts. You will write up the material for two of the seminars, in 800 word reports; the third component is an exercise from weeks 8-9 (approx. 400 words). Each component has equal weighting. You may choose whichever weeks you like for the seminar write-ups; they are all of equal difficulty.