Waiting in the wings: The place of phonology in the study of multilingual grammars

Abstract

Certain properties of second language (L2) speech are well studied, yet it is uncontroversial to note that Ln phonology (where n = any natural number; e.g. L2, L3, etc.) is under-represented in generative approaches to language acquisition compared with the domain of morphosyntax. If, however, we look at Ln input and output without taking the learnability of abstract mental representation seriously in our psycholinguistic probes then we miss out on fundamental knowledge as to the nature of a multilingual grammar. Ln knowers have complex, phonological grammars whose properties help us to describe and explain their knowledge and behaviour. Many approaches (e.g. usage-based; exemplar) have assumed that phonology can be learned by ‘noticing’ elements in the input. Such a view ignores Plato’s Problem of the acquisition of knowledge as well as the corollary of Orwell’s Problem. Phonology is rich, hierarchical, recursive, governed by UG (universal grammar), and subject to poverty-of-the-stimulus effects. Assigning phonetic tokens to phonological categories entails an algebraic function in which the phonological categories act as variables. Interestingly, this is related to the question of whether phonology is ‘merely’ a system of externalization (which implies it evolved after Merge) or whether there is evidence of it emerging earlier in the lineage of Homo sapiens. I present some arguments that human phonology is not just the linearization of syntax implemented by computationally-simpler, evolutionarily-older machinery. I discuss empirical data which demonstrate the utility of explaining multilingual phonological grammars with reference to hierarchical constituents at the levels of feature, syllable, foot, prosodic word, and phonological phrase; none of these structures are read off the input in a straightforward way. By recognizing the epistemological, representational, and learnability issues related to phonological knowledge (and its interfaces), we deepen our understanding of the full range of the cognitive architecture of the multilingual language faculty.