Criteria for Phonetic Similarity

On the role of substance, locality, and amount of exposure in the acquisition of morphophonemic alternations

“…The algorithm proposed by Peperkamp et al takes phonetic similarity into account and learns to predict which sounds are true allophones and which sounds are spurious allophones. However, if the algorithm only takes occurrence into account and not phonetic similarity (Austin 1957), it will also find spurious allophones. To consider another example, the segment / h/ occurs before vowels and never after vowels in German, and the segment /ŋ/ always occurs after vowels and never before vowels.…”

Levels of Abstraction in Phonetic and Phonemic Analysis

“…Even on the first, least abstract of them, functional aspects have been taken into consideration. The preliminary functional analysis -the establish ment of some kind of opposition -was the starting-point and 1 The reason why the so-called relevancy of the Prague school was so often mis understood was that it was not always explicitly pointed out in what respect the "irrelevant" phenomena were irrelevant. They are irrelevant to the establishment of the phonemic system of oppositions of a language (on the symbolic level), but only for that.…”

“…By phonetic(s) I understand speech sounds and their peculiarities and mutual differences without con sideration of any linguistic function, by phonemic(s) functional units and distinctions. By distinction I mean a linguistically valid sound difference, by opposition a linguistic function with regard to 1 William XI. Austin (1) lias formulated a similar statement about levels when trying to answer the question of whether phonetic similarity has any importance for phonemic interpretation.…”

The Measurement of Functional Load

“…with respect to the physical dimensions or features of the phonemes would be especially interesting in the light of some recent hypotheses about the unidimensionality of sound change, e.g. Austin (1957).…”