Proposals for incorporating phonological representations into LKB grammars.

Depending on the level of detail required:

• character strings "a", "b", "c", …

• typed objects (e.g. French phoneme hierarchy)

• articulatory feature bundles

  phoneme := avm &
     [NASAL bool].
  consonantal := phoneme &
    [PLACE place-of-articulation,
     MANNER manner-of-articulation,
     VOICING voicing].
  vocalic := phoneme &
    [HEIGHT vowel-height,
     BACK vowel-backness,
     PHONATION phonation,
     ROUND bool].   
    vowel := vocalic.
    consonant := consonantal.
    glide := vocalic & consonantal.
  

  • place: {bilabial, labiodental, dental, alveolar, postalveolar, velar, glottal, …}
  • manner: {stop, trill, fricative, approximant, …}

• division into segmental and suprasegmental features:

  syllable := avm &
    [SEG segmental,
     SUPSEG suprasegmental].
  

• segmental information:

  • either list of segments mapped to onset-nucleus-coda structure (with possibility of unsyllabified "floating" segments)

    segmental := avm &
      [SEGMENTS list-of-phons,
       ONSET list-of-phons,
       RIME rime].
    rime := avm &
      [NUCLEUS list-of-phons,
       CODA list-of-phons].
    

  • or more simply: declare syllable with [SEG list-of-phons] or [SEG string]

• suprasegmental features associated with entire syllable (problematic?)

  suprasegmental := avm &
    [STRESS stress,
     TONE tone].
  

List of syllables, but also PHONS attribute for flat list of (realized) phonemes or some other conveniently accessible representation.

phonology := avm &
  [PHONS list-of-phons,
   SYLBS list-of-syllables].