Linguistics Encyclopedia.pdf

Given a few Turkish words as examples, e.g. el (‘hand’), göz (‘eye’), bas (‘head’), and
kol (‘arm’), prosodic phonology will yield the following analysis (the corresponding
phonemic analysis is added for comparison):
fu Ll
fr gLz
A-Z 485
bu bLs
br kLl
(/el/ /gøz/ /bas/ /kol/)
It so happens that there occurs in Turkish what is called vowel harmony, whereby a
given prosody which occurs in the initial syllable of a polysyllabic word prevails
throughout the rest of the syllable(s), so that, for example, elim (‘my hand’) begins with
[e] which, as has been seen above, possesses the prosodies of front (f) and unrounded (u),
which prosodies also also occur in [i] in the other syllable of this word. We shall see how
elim (‘my hand’), gözüm (‘my eye’), basim (‘my head’), and kolum (‘my arm’) are
analysed in prosodic phonology (the corresponding phonemic analysis will again be
added for comparison):
fu fr bu br
LlHm
gLzHm
bLsHm
kLlHm
(/elim/ /gøzym/ / / /kolum/)
It will be seen that, in prosodic analysis, the Turkish morpheme denoting ‘first person
singular possessive’, corresponding to my in English, is expressed in terms of an identical
form, i.e. Hm, throughout, even though the initial vowel sounds in the above-cited
Turkish words are different, i.e. [e ø a o], as reflected in the corresponding different
vowel phonemes yielded in the phonemic analysis (/e ø a o/), hence the mutually
different forms (/im ym uim um/) for the Turkish morpheme corresponding to the English
word my in phonemic analysis.
Another characteristic of prosodic phonology is the principle of polysystemicness.
This principle is intimately connected with the principle of context, as we shall see
below. By polysystemicness—as opposed to monosystemicness which prosodists
attribute to phonemic phonology—is meant that units operating at a given place in a
structure are independent of those operating at another given place in the structure; in
other words, the sets of units operating in different places in the structure should not be
identified with each other. This applies, prosodists emphasize, even to cases where a
physically identical sound is found in different places in the structure. For example, in
English, [m] occurring in word-initial position where there exists what Firth called an
alternance between [m] and [n], e.g. mice, nice, cannot be identified with [m] occurring
in word-final position where there exists an alternance between [m], [n] and [ŋ], e.g. rum,
run, rung. Furthermore, [m] occurring in word-medial position where there is also an
alternance between [m], [n] and [ŋ], e.g. simmer, sinner, singer, is not to be identified
with [m] in word-final position any more than with [m] in word-initial position. It is
evident that the contexts involved are different in terms of different places in the
structure.
Actually, the principle of polysystemicness is further linked to that of context which,
according to prosodists, operates at every linguistic level, including the phonological.
This means that, to return to an example earlier adduced, [z] in, e.g., rows, which is an
exponent of the grammatical category of number—plural, in this case—is considered to
be a separate unit from [z] in, e.g., rose, which is not an exponent of this grammatical