Columbia School of Linguistics - Phonology

Phonology

CSL differs from other schools in the other major aspect of language, phonology, as well. Here again, CSL does not posit entities, such as binary features, unless they can be shown to have a function. There is nothing in information theory that requires every message to consist ultimately of a binary code. Any linguistic message can be represented by a binary code, just as our decimal number system can be represented binarily. Therefore the bit can be used as convenient but arbitrary measure of information for speech or for numerical information. But nobody seriously proposes that people fundamentally use binary digits in counting, as some linguists do for speech.

Unlike most other schools, CSL concentrates on articulation, rather than sound, as its object of study (but see also articulatory phonology). For example, CSL attributes the relative rarity in most languages of words beginning with /g/ to its relative difficulty of articulation, not to auditory causes. In the production of a (voiced) /g/, air must pass through the vocal cords while the back of the tongue stops up the vocal tract, blocking that air. Since the resulting chamber of air for /g/ is smaller than for /b/ or /d/, there is less time for air to build up, making it harder to produce a vocal vibration when starting to speak. Thus, through its physiological theoretical orientation, CSL gives an articulatory explanation of the low frequency of initial /g/ in human language. CSL does not neglect sound as the means through which spoken language is transmitted and whose perceptible differences serve to distinguish linguistic signs. However, it considers articulatory gestures, not binary acoustic features, to be the physical units of which any utterance is made up.