silverman book review silverman , daniel . ( 1997 ) . phasing and recoverability . outstanding dissertations in linguistics series . new york : garland publishing . 242 pages . reviewed by stefan frisch , university of michigan . this book is a revised version of the author 's 1995 ucla dissertation . the primary thesis defended by silverman is that auditory salience plays an important role in explaining the typology of phonological segment inventories . the relative phasing of laryngeal and supralaryngeal gestures is examined as a case study . silverman demonstrates there is a typological preference for phasing patterns in which the gestures are optimally recoverable . further , he proposes that sub-optimal patterns are only found in inventories where the optimal patterns are also present . ( note that silverman does not crucially adopt the segment as a phonological primitive . he is concerned primarily with gestures and their realization in a system of syntagmatic contrasts . the terms 's egment ' and 's egment inventory ' are used only for expository convenience . ) synopsis : chapter 1 . introduction this chapter introduces the primary thesis : cross - linguistically , laryngeal and supralaryngeal gestures are phased to make their values maximally auditorily salient . silverman argues that parallel production of contrastive gestures is informationally optimal , but only if those gestures are auditorily recoverable . in cases where parallel production would make contrastive values unrecoverable , gestures are serially sequenced . for example , in aspirated stops , laryngeal abduction is sequences to follow the stop closure , resulting in broadband noise . if laryngeal abduction and stop closure were simultaneous , the state of the larynx would not be recoverable from the resulting acoustic signal ( silence ) . silverman also introduces the ' gestural score ' notation of articulatory phonology ( browman & goldstein , 1986 ) used in the description of the gestural patterns . each gestural score is accompanied by a set of temporally aligned descriptions of acoustic cues which highlight the importance of the recoverability of the gestures . the resulting segmental percept is also given , to highlight whether all of the contrastive segmental information has been effectively transmitted . using this notation , he exemplifies the four logically possible phasing patterns : parallel , sequenced , expanded , or truncated . in the parallel phasing pattern , two gestures are phased to be fully simultaneous . in the sequenced pattern , two gestures are serially ordered . in the expanded pattern , one gesture both begins before and ends after another . in the truncated pattern , one gesture is phased to be simultaneous with a portion ( beginning or end ) of another gesture . chapter 2 . previous work in this chapter , silverman reviews previous research on articulatory timing , auditory response to acoustic signals , and the relevance of auditory contrastiveness to segmental inventories . two results are of particular importance . first , a combination of auditory factors favor patterns where low intensity signals are followed by high intensity signals . second , languages employ contrasts which are maximally auditorily distinct . chapter 3 . obstruents and laryngeal gestures this chapter contains typological evidence to support silverman 's thesis . cross - linguistically , laryngeal gestures of abduction or constriction are overwhelmingly phased to follow supralaryngeal constriction , which maximizes the recoverability of both gestures . the sub-optimal pattern , where the laryngeal gesture precedes the stop release is found only when the optimal pattern is also present . for obstruents , which have a minimum of acoustic energy to work with , these are the only two phasing patterns . chapter 4 . sonorants and laryngeal gestures sonorants have a greater amount of acoustic energy , and so laryngeal gestures can overlap with supralaryngeal gestures . the most attested pattern , for languages which do have a laryngeal contrast for sonorants , is for the laryngeal gesture to be truncated to the beginning portion of the supralaryngeal gesture . parallel to the obstruent case , this phasing pattern puts the low-energy breathy or glottalized portion of the sonorant before the high-energy modally-voiced portion , maximizing auditory salience . again , the less optimal pattern truncates the laryngeal gesture to the latter portion of the supralaryngeal gesture . ordinarily , the laryngeal and supralaryngeal gestures are not completely overlapped , as contrastive supralaryngeal gestures ( such as nasal place of articulation , for example ) would be rendered non - recoverable . however , an interesting special case is found in laterals . due to the formant structure of laterals , languages generally do not have contrasts in their place of articulation . thus , in some cases ( e . g . zulu ) , contrastive laryngeal gestures are realized fully parallel with the supralaryngeal gesture . a similar pattern is found for coda nasals in comaltapec chinantec , where the place of articulation is contextually determined . in contrast to onset nasals , which have contrastive place of articulation , laryngeal abduction is realized in parallel with the supralaryngeal gesture in coda nasals and no contrasts are lost . chapter 5 . vowels and laryngeal gestures in this chapter , vowels with contrastive laryngeal gestures are discussed . silverman claims that , since vowels have an abundance of acoustic energy , laryngeal gestures can be implemented in parallel with supralaryngeal gestures without loss of auditory contrast . however , this pattern is auditorily the least optimal . like the sonorant case , the optimal pattern is for the laryngeal gesture to be truncated to the beginning portion of the vowel , resulting in ? v or hv sequences . less optimal is the opposite phasing pattern , resulting in v ? or vh . typologically hv is indeed much more prevalent than voiceless vowels or vh ( and similarly for laryngeal constriction ) . the bulk of the chapter ( and the book ) is devoted to ' laryngeally complex ' vowels in the otomanguean languages . the term larygeally complex is used for vowels which realize both contrastive phonation ( breathy or creaky ) and tone . one example , comaltapec chinantec , has eight vowel qualities with five tonal qualities and two voice qualities . in addition , this language has nasalization and a length contrast which leads to 320 possible realizations of the nucleus . not surprisingly , words in this language are generally monosyllabic , and nucleus quality is used to differentiate many of the lexical contrasts . silverman argues that simultaneous realization of breathiness / creakiness and tone would render the tone contrasts unrecoverable . the cross-linguistically prevalent pattern is for the laryngeal contrast to be truncated to the beginning of the vowel , which is auditorily optimal . the tone is then saliently realized during modal phonation in the latter portion of the vowel . the opposite sequencing , with the laryngeal after the tonal contrast ( and modal phonation ) is also attested . silverman finds only two cases where tonal and laryngeal contrasts are executed simultaneously ( the tibeto - burman languages mpi and tamang ) . in one of those cases , there are only two tones , so tonal contrasts may not be in as much danger , as the tones would be more distinct than in the case of comaltapec chinantec , with eight tones . critical evaluation : overall , this is an inspirational volume demonstrating the importance of auditory / phonetic explanation for phonological patterning . it is one of the first of a series of ucla dissertations on this topic , which together address a wide range of phonological phenomena . silverman 's analysis bridges the phonetics / phonology gap in a number of ways . for example , an arbitrary number of phasing differences , which might be dismissed as ' phonetic implementation ' , are shown to be reducible to a small set that can be phonologically contrastive . this reduction , via the more abstract temporal relationships of simultaneity and precedence , nicely complements work in speech perception on the cross-linguistic ( and cross-species ) robustness of the categorical perception of voice onset time continua ( kuhl & miller , 1975 ; pisoni , 1977 ) . to its credit , this book contains over a dozen reasonably detailed case studies on the realization of laryngeal contrasts in different languages . in many cases , recordings were available so the presence of the phasing relationships were verified , and spectrograms of appropriate examples are given . these case studies often address potential counterexamples to silverman 's typological claims . for example , the mon - khmer language chong possesses coda stops with contrastive creakiness , but creakiness is realized only in the non-optimal way as a pre-glottalized stop . in the chong case , however , other aspects of the morphophonology require the non-optimal realization to avoid loss of contrast . in particular , coda stops are obligatorily unreleased , and the language is non-suffixing . due to these additional constraints , post-glottalized phasing would not saliently encode the larygneal contrast . this type of constraint interaction is quite compatible with the general approach of optimality theory ( prince & smolensky , 1993 ) , and in fact the original version of this dissertation presented constraint tableau in such cases . the proposed constraints are quite broad and were informally described , so the optimality theoretic analysis did not add to the exposition , and the book reads more easily without it . despite the lack of a formalist analysis , this book raises a number of issues which are relevant to current formal concerns . in the otomanguean language copala trique there are different phasing relationships between vocalic and laryngeal gestures . the laryngeal gestures ( breathiness and creakiness ) can be truncated to the first portion of the vowel , the second portion of the vowel , or can ' interrupt ' the vowel , appearing in the middle . these three locations for a laryngeal gesture support lexical contrasts , and there is clear evidence that the interrupted vowels are monosyllabic . encoding these three configurations using more abstract representations than articulatory phonology is no trivial task . in addition , the correspondence theory approach to faithfulness considers segmentally aligned and ordered input and output ( mccarthy & prince , 1995 ) . the presence of relatively small but contrastive differences in phasing require subsegmental correspondence relations between the input and output . another missing aspect of an optimality theoretic analysis would be a factorial typology of constraint interactions . while silverman 's coverage is quite extensive , i would be interested in seeing a discussion of the pros and cons for each logical possibility in phasing between laryngeal and supralaryngeal gestures . such a discussion will eventually be needed in order to determine whether the silverman 's proposal is is truly predictive , or just informally defined to the extent that any observed pattern could be explained . in a few instances , silverman makes use of the upsid database of segmental inventories ( maddieson , 1986 ) to demonstrate that the typological predictions are satisfied . unfortunately , quantitative differences are not reported in most cases . while sufficient data may not be available , a quantitative analysis is desirable in order to address a current question in work on phonetic explanation for phonological patterns : are non-optimal patterns avoided to the degree that they are non-optimal ? in other words , is the hypothesized functional force of auditory recoverability transparently reflected in the patterns within and across languages , or is it ' phonologized ' in some way by the language learner such that there is no quantitative relationship ? the answer to this question has implications for the architecture of the phonetically grounded grammar , as quantitative constraints or quantitative constraint rankings would be required . this book touches on a number of other very important issues that should be topics of ongoing research . the central role of the recoverability of contrasts leads inevitably to the question : what is a contrast ? assuming the psychological reality of the segment provides a simple answer , but one which is not entirely correct . the three contrastive phasing relationships in copala trique are not amenable to a segmental analysis . in chong , a combination of coda unrelease and lack of suffixation is claimed to lead to pre-glottalized stops . this case is contrasted with korean , where there is some suffixation , and post-glottalized stops are maintained in that environment but neutralized elsewhere . i wonder how frequent the neutralizing environment must be before a non-optimal pattern becomes necessary or the contrast is lost ? why is n't the laryngeal gesture phased before the stop closure in the neutralizing environment , but after in the non-neutralizing environment ? perhaps some other constraint is involved here . in many of the case studies given , the simple syllable structure and monosyllabic tendencies of the languages are mentioned as reasons why complex and non-optimal phasing relations are found at all ( in most cases , the optimal recoverability of supralaryngeal gestures is found if contrastive laryngeal gestures are not used at all ) . this suggests that there is some minimal set of contrasts required to create a sufficient number of open class items for a language to be a useful communication system , and that differences in syllable structure , word length , and segmental inventory size interact in some fashion to this end . the answers to these deeper questions appear to be closer to our understanding when the phonological system is conceptualized as implied in this book , as a combinatorial system of articulatory / acoustic contrasts highly constrained by a variety of functional factors . references : browman , c . p . & goldstein , l . ( 1986 ) . towards an articulatory phonology . phonology yearbook 3 : 219-252 . kuhl , p . k . & miller , j . d . ( 1975 ) . speech perception by the chinchilla : voiced - voiceless distinction in alveolar plosive consonants . science 190 : 69-72 . mccarthy , j . j . & prince , a . ( 1995 ) . faithfulness and reduplicative identity . papers in optimality theory . university of massachusetts occasional papers 18 . amherst , ma : glsa . pp . 249-384 . pisoni , d . b . ( 1977 ) . identification and discrimination of the relative onset time of two component tones : implications for voicing perception in stops . journal of the acoustical society of america 61 : 1352-1361 . prince , a . & smolensky , p . ( 1993 ) . optimality theory : constraint interaction in generative phonology . rutgers university center for cognitive science technical reports 2 . new brunswick , nj : ruccs . reviewer : stefan frisch , language learning visiting research assistant professor , program in linguistics , university of michigan . ph . d . , northwestern university , 1996 . research interests include phonetics , phonology , psycholinguistics , and computational linguistics . reviewer 's address : stefan frisch program in linguistics university of michigan 1076 frieze building 105 s . state st . ann arbor , mi 48109-1285 safrisch @ umich . edu http : / / www-personal . umich . edu / ~ sfrisch
