Title: Systems, states, trajectories, and forces: on a dynamical vocabulary for understanding phonological patterns
Abstract: Many theories of phonological representation make use of hierarchical structure schemas comprised of segments, syllables, and syllable-internal constituents such as onsets, nuclei, codas, and rimes, or moras. An examination of the conceptual metaphors that underlie such schemas calls into question their utility for understanding the temporal organization of action in speech. This talk contrasts the metaphors of this more traditional, structural conception with those of a dynamical vocabulary, in which the states of hypothesized systems evolve in time according to change rules that incorporate system interactions. From this perspective, it is argued that the temporal organization of action can be understood parsimoniously with just two types of systems, gestural systems and vocal tract control systems, in combination with the incorporation of internal and external feedback mechanisms in change rules. This theory is applied to explain cross-linguistic variation in phonological and phonetic patterns associated with the moraic status of codas and word-initial consonant clusters. A notable consequence of the theory is that hierarchical structure schemas do not describe temporal organization in any particular utterance; rather, they summarize a recurring developmental progression in which the learning of internal predictive sensorimotor models allows actions that are competitively controlled early in development to become coordinatively controlled.
