Speech Timing in Linguistics
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Abstract
Language is not static but dynamic. We show that the view that language is a strictly formal symbol system, is based on two hypotheses: The Symbolic Language Hypothesis, that languages consist entirely of symbolic units at levels from phonetics to the sentence; and the Atomic Inventory Hypothesis, that there is a universal inventory of symbol atoms that provide the basic components from which all other linguistic structures are composed. We offer evidence that both of these hypotheses are false: many linguistic structures cannot be formal symbols, and there is no universal phonetic inventory. Some of the main sources of evidence: (1) The voicing/tensity contrast in Germanic (e.g., English) versus most other languages shows that temporal patterns can be part of the phonological grammar. (2) Stress units (e.g., feet) in English in contrast with, e.g., the mora-timing constraint of Japanese show that there are language-specific temporal patterns (not representable in terms of serial order) at longer time scales as well. (3) Finally, speech is easily entrained by certain nonlinguistic temporal structures, such as `meter' (nested periodic patterns), given the slightest opportunity. The speech cycling task reveals patterns that closely resemble musical and other temporal patterns where vowel or syllable onsets are strongly attracted to phase zeros of nested cycles. We claim that language does NOT consist of strings of symbols - despite a full 100 years of exploration of that assumption. But, of course, language is clearly symbol-LIKE. It has some properties resembling those of symbols (e.g., approximate discreteness, strong tendency toward categoricity, invariance of states across time, nested or hierarchical structures, etc). It is just that words, phonemes, phrases etc cannot actually BE formal symbol structure, even though they may approximate them. The appropriate task of linguistics should be to illuminate the ways in which symbol-like units could be created and employed by humans in speech.
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