The course will acquaint the students with the principles of Natural Phonology (NatPhon), the theory originated by David Stampe and Patricia Jane Donegan in the 1960’s and 70’s, and further developed and elaborated into Natural Linguistics (NatLing) by Wolfgang U. Dressler and followers. Natural Phonology/Linguistics belongs to the unorthodox approaches to phonology and acquisition. Its focus is on the speaker and language use as well as on the extralinguistic conditions that shape the usage and acquisition of language. It aims at providing a big picture view on language, informed by disciplines outside of linguistics.
NatLing linguists are interested more in the circumstances of language acquisition and use than in the formal description of language system. They are interested in explaining how language works in the brain/mind to let us think and communicate as well as in how specific languages cope with those tasks. The explanations resort to general principles governing human behaviour rather than to abstract notions.
The forthcoming Cambridge Handbook of Natural Linguistics will help us see the development of the theory up to the present time.
Bibliography: background and overview
Donegan, Patricia & David Stampe. 1979. The study of Natural Phonology. In Dinnsen, D.A. (ed.). Current Approaches to Phonological Theory. Bloomington: IUP. 126-173.
Dressler, Wolfgang.U. 1985. Explaining Natural Phonology. Phonology Yearbook 1. 29-50.
Dressler, Wolfgang.U. 1996. Principles of naturalness in phonology and across components. In Hurch & Rhodes (eds.) Natural Phonology: The State of the Art. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 41-52.
Dressler, W.U. 1999. On a semiotic theory of preferences in language. The Pierce Seminar Papers. vol. 4. New York: Bergham Books. 389-415.
Dziubalska-Kołaczyk, Katarzyna. 2002. Beats-and-Binding Phonology. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.
Dziubalska-Kołaczyk, Katarzyna. 2002. Challenges for Natural Linguistics in the twenty first century: a personal view. In University of Hawai`i Working Papers in Linguistics, Vol 23 (2001-2002).15-39. Honolulu: University of Hawai`i at Mānoa. and in Dziubalska-Kołaczyk & Weckwerth (eds.).
Stampe, David. 1969. The acquisition of phonetic representation. Bloomington: Indiana University Linguistics Club (1979).
Stampe, David. 1979. A Dissertation on Natural Phonology. Bloomington: IULC.
Forthcoming:
Dziubalska-Kołaczyk, Katarzyna, Patricia Donegan, Wolfgang U. Dressler. (eds.). forth. The Cambridge Handbook of Natural Linguistics. Cambridge: CUP.
- Nauczyciel: Katarzyna Dziubalska-Kołaczyk