Graphophonology and anachronic phonology Notes on episodes in the history of pseudo-phonology

Abstract

AbstractIn the present essay some of what have been the more influential conceptions of phonology are examined in the light of what I see as ‘intrusions’ into its domain, starting with a strand of orthographic influence. I am concerned with the extent to which various ‘phonological’ proposals might be described as ‘graphophonological’ rather than strictly phonological. This examination also reveals the interaction of the graphophonological impulse with the impact of other considerations that are not proper to synchronic phonology. Most pertinent here is the more familiarly controversial formulation as synchronic generalizations of what are substitutes for the diachronic regularities reflected in morphophonological alternations: what I call ‘anachronic’ phonology, associated, for the most part, with the conflation of morphophonology and phonology; another instance of ‘pseudo-phonology’. Scrutinized here are particularly proposals concerning sound structure associated with the classical littera, with the (‘taxonomic’) phoneme, and with the morphophoneme (or ‘systematic phoneme’). Finally, after an evaluation of an overtly graphophonological proposal, the orthographic rather than phonological value of ‘CVCV’ phonology is explored in relation to the inadequacies of the Linear B syllabary.