The principle of least effort within the hierarchy of linguistic preferences: external evidence from English Małgorzata Kul Praca doktorska napisana pod kierunkiem prof. dr hab. Katarzyny Dziubalskiej- Kołaczyk w Instytucie Filologii Angielskiej Uniwersytetu im. Adama Mickiewicza Pozna ń 2007 Acknowledgements The thesis has been made possible thanks to the School of English, Adam Mickiewicz University, which granted me the PhD scholarship in 2002. But the thesis would have been impossible without its spiritus movens, the head of the School and my supervisor, Prof. Katarzyna Dziubalska-Kołaczyk, whose continuous intellectual support guided me throughout the process of the thesis completion. In fact, Prof. Katarzyna Dziubalska- Kołaczyk has turned out to be somebody more than just a supervisor. In the times when I really needed it, she acted as a mother to me out of the goodness of her heart and for her invaluable help as well as for the spontaneous and wonderful help of all the School of English staff, I remain forever indebted. 2 Table of contents Table of contents............................................................................................................... 3 List of tables...................................................................................................................... 7 List of figures.................................................................................................................... 8 List of abbreviations ....................................................................................................... 10 Introduction..................................................................................................................... 11 Chapter One: The principle of least effort: origins and meaning ................................... 14 1.1. The aim of the chapter ...................................................................................................14 1.2. Review of terminology ..................................................................................................15 1.3. The idea behind the principle.........................................................................................15 1.4. Operation of the principle ..............................................................................................17 1.5. Typology of effort: the speaker’s and the listener’s ......................................................20 1.6. Review of literature .......................................................................................................21 1.7. Motivation of the principle ............................................................................................27 Chapter Two: Hierarchy and preference in Natural Linguistics: epistemology of the concepts .......................................................................................................................... 35 2.1. The aim of the chapter ...................................................................................................35 2.2. Natural Linguistics.........................................................................................................35 2.3. The concept of a hierarchy.............................................................................................38 2.4. The concept of a preference...........................................................................................41 2.5. Preference-based theories in linguistics.........................................................................44 2.5.1. Stampe (1973)............................................................................................... 44 2.5.2. Dressler (1997) ............................................................................................. 45 2.5.3. Vennemann (1983, 1988) ............................................................................. 48 2.5.4. Dziubalska-Kołaczyk (2001) ........................................................................ 51 3 Chapter Three: Articulatory effort.................................................................................. 53 3.1. The aim of the chapter ............................................................................................. 53 3.2. The notions of easy and difficult sounds .......................................................................53 3.3.1. Whitney (1878 [1971]).................................................................................. 59 3.3.2. Baudouin de Courtenay (1877 [1972]) ......................................................... 60 3.3.3. Zipf (1935 [1969]) ........................................................................................ 61 3.3.4. Lindblom (1990)........................................................................................... 63 3.3.5. Boersma (1998)............................................................................................. 65 3.3.6. Maddieson (p.c.) ........................................................................................... 66 3.4. Articulatory gestures......................................................................................................68 Chapter Four: Effort management: the experiments....................................................... 72 4.1. The aim of the chapter ...................................................................................................72 4.2. The principle of least effort as effort management.................................................. 73 4.2.1. Explanation of effort management ............................................................... 73 4.2.2. The predictions of the experiments............................................................... 74 4.2.3. Methodology of the experiments .................................................................. 75 4.2.4. The measure of articulatory effort ................................................................ 77 4.2.5. Discussion of effort parameters .................................................................... 78 4.2.6. The status of the parameters ......................................................................... 80 4.3. The statistical aspect of the experiments .......................................................................80 4.3.1. The method of establishing the sample size ................................................. 80 4.3.2. Confidence interval....................................................................................... 84 4.4. The empirical evidence..................................................................................................85 4.4.1. The results of the first experiment ............................................................... 86 4.4.2. The results of the second experiment ........................................................... 97 4.4.3. The attention hypothesis ............................................................................. 103 4.4.4. The results of the third experiment............................................................. 104 4.5. Discussion of the results ..............................................................................................108 4.6. Effort management in text messages ...........................................................................110 4.6.1. Omission of punctuation............................................................................. 111 4.6.2. The use of small letter instead of capitals in proper names........................ 111 4.6.3. The lack of spaces between words and the use of capitals to mark word beginnings............................................................................................................. 111 4.6.4. Emoticons ................................................................................................... 112 4 4.6.5. Onomatopoeic expressions ......................................................................... 112 4.6.6. Replacement of the Polish characters with the ASCII ones ....................... 112 4.6.7. Borrowings.................................................................................................. 113 4.6.8. Number homophones.................................................................................. 114 4.6.9. Letter homophones ..................................................................................... 114 4.6.11. Phonetic respellings .................................................................................. 115 4.6.12. Clippings................................................................................................... 116 4.6.13. Initializations ............................................................................................ 116 Chapter Five: Phonological processes in Natural Phonology....................................... 118 5.1. The aim of the chapter .................................................................................................118 5.2. The general nature and motivation of phonological processes....................................119 5.3. Phonological processes in language acquisition..........................................................122 5.4. The organization of phonological processes................................................................125 5.5. The semiotic principles and parameters in phonological processes ............................128 5.6. Luschützky (1997) .......................................................................................................138