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Vocalic Underspecification in English Language Production

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 March 2026

Joseph Paul Stemberger
Joseph Paul Stemberger*
Affiliation:
University of Minnesota
*
Department of Linguistics, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455
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Abstract

Phonological underspecification for English vowels is addressed using data from language production. Patterns in speech errors induced by means of the experimental SLIPS procedure argue for radical underspecification; the underspecified vowel place features are [-high], [-low], [-back], and [-round] (as in /ε/). Similarity effects in naturally-occurring speech errors lead to the same conclusions. With respect to the question of why the underspecification of place features is consistent across languages for consonants but highly variable for vowels, it is argued that the difference between vowels and consonants is rooted in similar crosslinguistic differences in phoneme frequencies.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 68 , Issue 3 , September 1992 , pp. 492 - 524
Copyright
Copyright © 1992 by Linguistic Society of America

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Footnotes

*

This research was supported in part by NSF Research Grant #BNS-8820757.

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