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Phonological Targets and Unmarked Structures

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 April 2026

John Haiman
John Haiman*
Affiliation:
Australian National University
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Abstract

Three formally unrelated conditions in the phonology of Turkish ensure that no non-initial syllable in native words will have the nuclear vowel o or ö. Far from being arbitrary, this constraint, a phonological target in Turkish, produces a result that is compatible with a target in a number of unrelated languages, among them Russian and Romantsch. It is suggested that ‘universal’ or widely shared targets are often, if not always, maximally unmarked structures, and that the means languages employ to satisfy such targets may vary. But if these means are idiosyncratic, they will generally reflect structural peculiarities of the languages involved.*

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 48 , Issue 2 , June 1972 , pp. 365 - 377
Copyright
Linguistic Society of America 1972

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Footnotes

*

This paper was written while I was on Canada Council Doctoral Grant W70-0168. I wish to thank George Lakoff, Osman N. Tuna, and David Huntley for their helpful suggestions on previous drafts of this paper, but hasten to absolve them of all responsibility for whatever errors remain.

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