Positional Neutralization - Linguistics - University of California ...

model of phonetics-phonology incorporating phonetic information directly into the
phonological grammar might be equally successful. In the next section I will discuss this
option briefly, arguing that there are problems with this approach that the
phonologization model avoids.
5.2. On the integration of phonetics and phonology
A very different approach to modeling the relationship between the phonological
patterns of positional neutralization presented in this study and their phonetic antecedents
is to allow the phonology direct reference to phonetic information, creating in effect an
integrated model of phonetics-phonology. Such models include Steriade’s Licensing-by-
Cue approach (Steriade 1994, 1997) and Flemming’s integrated model of phonetics and
phonology (passim) introduced in Chapter 1. A model which derives phonological
licensing patterns directly in synchrony from the phonetic patterns which have
engendered them diachronically would succeed, as Steriade has argued, in accounting for
the typological patterning of neutralization processes with far greater accuracy than a
phonetics-free approach to PN such as that of Beckman (1998). Direct derivation of
categorical neutralization patterns from phonetic cues or pressures, however, makes
strong predictions characterizing the relationship between phonetic sources and
phonological consequences as far more intimate a connection than in fact it is. The split
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