Archibald, John (2025) Waiting in the wings: The place of phonology in the study of multilingual grammars

A synopsis of the article:

This keynote article in Second Language Research presents arguments to support the idea that phonology is a computational and representational system that occupies a place in language faculty known as Universal Grammar (UG). These arguments oppose the view that phonology is merely an interface with the sensory-motor system and which the Minimalist program (Chomsky, 1995) describes as a late, spell-out process mapping morphosyntax to Phonological Form.

Hierarchical algebraic phonology

Using the example of metrical phonology and the complexity of stress systems, Archibald argues that there are architectural similarities between phonology and syntax.

Learnability and complexity

Archibald states that phonology is hierarchical, recursive, algebraic, governed by UG, and subject to poverty-of-the-stimulus.

Does phonology have recursive structures? He gives an example of intonational phrase recursion as pointed out by Féry & Truckenbrodt (2005), phonological phrase recursion (Féry, 2010), and the foot level (McCarthy, 1982):

Foot recursion can account for secondary and tertiary stress as well:

He also notes that coda status and extrametricality cannot be read off the acoustic input, yet the former seems to influence L1 Korean-L2 English speakers' grammars, and the latter seems to influence L1 Polish-L2 English speakers' stress assignment. Both of these structures are part of an abstract, hierarchical representation.

Another example that seems to require access to underlying structure not accessible from the surface acoustic signal is the phenomenon of opacity. For example, the underlying form of the word "biting" is /baɪtɪŋ/, which induces raising of the vowel /aɪ/ to [ʌɪ] before a voiceless consonant, but the flapping process also applies, changing /t/ to voiced [ɾ], resulting in [bʌɪɾɪŋ], where it seems that raising has overapplied, i.e., raising is opaque in this word.

Phonology and UG

Domain-general approaches.

Empirical evidence

Metrical feet

Syllables

Phonological words

Phonological phrases

Segments

Conclusions