A letter from an incompletely neutral phonologist

Incomplete devoicing in formal phonology

“…For instance, it has been claimed (Fourakis and Iverson, 1984;Baumann, 1995;Manaster Ramer, 1996) that these results were obtained in a laboratory situation in which the orthography -reflecting the 'underlying' distinction -played a role which was larger than in 'real-life' situations, or in labs that were based in the United States with (almost) bilingual speakers, so that we might expect influence from non-devoicing English.…”

Imperceptible incomplete neutralization: Production, non-identifiability, and non-discriminability in American English flapping

“…While much evidence has been adduced for incomplete neutralization in flapping (see sections 1.2.1 and 1.2.2), final devoicing (see section 1.2.3), and other contexts (Gerfen, 2002;Yu, 2007), it has been suggested that putative cases of incomplete neutralization may be the result of extragrammatical or experimental factors (Fourakis and Iverson, 1984;Mascaro, 1987;Manaster Ramer, 1996a;Warner et al, 2006; though see Port and Crawford, 1989). This concern, however, has not been addressed in the literature on flapping.…”

Against Formal Phonology

“…The Port-Crawford study ruled out the possibility that the different production patterns reflect the use of orthographic presentation (where the distinction is maintained) or that subjects were trying to be cooperative by producing the difference they thought the experimenters were looking for. This unsettling array of facts led Manaster Ramer (1996) to express concern that if the incomplete neutralization phenomena were correct, then it would imply that linguists could not rely on their own or anyone's auditory transcription. We agree entirely with his conclusions.…”