Edward Flemming

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Research

I take the central task of phonetic and phonological theory to be the development of a theory that delimits the set of possible phonological-phonetic systems, and explains why languages use sound in the way that they do. I am exploring the hypothesis that phonological-phonetic systems are shaped by the communicative function of language, so the basis for most cross-linguistic generalizations about phonology and phonetics is that all languages have developed to serve rapid, robust communication, and that all language-users share essentially the same sound production and perception capabilities, and similar cognitive capacities. Since speech production and perception are considered the domain of phonetics, this theory implies that phonetics shapes phonological systems.

This research program is not motivated by an a priori assumption that phonology is functionally grounded, rather it is motivated by a basic goal of linguistic theory, to 'achieve greater empirical coverage and deeper explanation with fewer resources' (McCarthy and Prince 1999). Many phonological constraints that have been proposed in the literature have been argued to have some basis in ease of articulation or ease of perception. Explicitly formalizing these motivations within phonological theory allows us to replace many parochial constraints with a small number of very general constraint families, and results in better empirical coverage.

For example, many researchers have proposed a constraint against front rounded vowels to account for the cross-linguistic preference for front vowels to be unrounded. It has been argued that this constraint is motivated by the fact that the front unrounded vowels are perceptually more distinct from back vowels. Directly implementing this analysis in terms of constraints favoring more distinct contrasts replaces a highly specific constraint with much more general ones, and provides a better account of the facts since it correctly predicts that the preference for front unrounded vowels disappears where there are no contrasts between front and back vowels (Flemming 2004a).

In Optimality Theoretic terms, this research program seeks to answer the vexed question 'what kind of constraints are there?', but working towards an answer to this question turns out to have implications for most aspects of phonology.

More specifically, most of my research centers around two related topics: (i) the Dispersion Theory of Contrast, and (ii) phonetic realization as an optimization problem. These two lines of research come together in work on a unified model of phonetics and phonology. An additional research interest is the relationship between discourse function and intonation.

The Dispersion Theory of Contrast

• Asymmetries between assimilation and epenthesis. Handout, LSA, Chicago. (2008).
• The role of distinctiveness constraints in phonology. Draft (2006).
• Speech perception and phonological contrast (pre-publication version). D. Pisoni and R. Remez (eds.) The Handbook of Speech Perception. Blackwell. (2005).
• Contrast and perceptual distinctiveness (pre-publication version). B.Hayes, R.Kirchner, and D.Steriade (eds.) Phonetically-Based Phonology. Cambridge University Press, 232-276. (2004)
  
• The relationship between coronal place and vowel backness (pre-publication version). Phonology 20, 335-373. (2003).
  
• Evidence for constraints on contrast: The dispersion theory of contrast. Hsu, Chai Shune (ed.) UCLA Working Papers in Phonology 1.
• Auditory Representations in Phonology, Phd Dissertation, UCLA. (1995) [ revised version published by Routledge, 2002]

Phonetic realization as an optimization problem

• The grammar of coarticulation(draft). To appear in M. Embarki and C. Dodane (eds.) La Coarticulation: Indices, Direction et Representation. (2008).
  
• Scalar and categorical phenomena in a unified model of phonetics and phonology. Phonology 18(1) (2001).
  
• Phonetic Optimization: Compromise in Speech Production (PDF version),University of Maryland Working Papers in Linguistics 5: Selected phonology papers from H-OT-97. (1997)
  

A unified model of phonetics and phonology

• The phonetics of schwa vowels (Draft). To appear in Donka Minova (ed.) Weak Segments in English. (2007).
• E. Flemming and S. Johnson. Rosa's roses: Reduced vowels in American English. JIPA 37, 83-96. (2007).
• Contrast and schwa vowels in English. Slides from a presentation. (2006).
• A phonetically-based model of phonological vowel reduction. (2005).
• Deriving natural classes in phonology (prepublication version). Lingua 115, 287-309. (2005).
• Scalar and categorical phenomena in a unified model of phonetics and phonology. Phonology 18(1) (2001).
  
• Phonetic detail in phonology: Towards a unified account of assimilation and coarticulation . K. Suzuki and D. Elzinga (eds.) Proceedings of the 1995 Southwestern Workshop in Optimality Theory (SWOT), University of Arizona. (1997)
  

Other work

• The role of pitch range in focus marking. Slides from a talk given at the Workshop on Information Structure and Prosody, Studiecentrum Soeterbeeck (2008).
• Stop place contrasts before liquids. Proceedings of the 16th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, 233-236. (2007).
• Modeling listeners. Commentary for LabPhon 10. (2007).
• D.I. Beaver, B.Z. Clark, E. Flemming, T.F. Jaeger and M.K. Wolters. When semantics meets phonetics: Acoustical studies of second occurrence focus (prepublication version). Language 83.2, 251-282.
• Flemming, E. and P. Jones. Cues to stop place in Stop-Liquid clusters. Poster presented at 152nd Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, Honolulu, Hawaii. (2006).
• Slides from a lecture on gemination contrasts.
• Flemming, E., P. Ladefoged, and S.G. Thomason. The Phonetic Structures of Montana Salish. To appear in Journal of Phonetics. (2005).
• Laryngeal metathesis and deletion in Cherokee UCLA Occasional Working Papers in Linguistics 16: Cherokee Papers from UCLA (1996)
  
• The Role of Metrical Structure in Segmental Rules, Proceedings of NELS 24 vol. 1, GLSA, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. (1994)
  
• Byrd, D., E. Flemming, A. Mueller, and C.C. Tan (1995) Using regions and indices in EPG data reduction, Journal of Speech and Hearing Research 38, 821-27.
  
• Johnson, K., E. Flemming, and R. Wright (1993) The hyperspace effect: Phonetic targets are hyperarticulated, Language 69, 505-528.
  
• Keating, P.A., D. Byrd, E. Flemming, and Y. Todaka (1994) Phonetic analyses of word and segment variation using the TIMIT corpus of American English, Speech Communication. 14, 131-142.
  

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