It should necessarily be considered in phonology which segments are more valid, and which connections of segments are more natural. Of these, since Prague School had, for the first time, issued 'markedness theory' taking note of the neutralization of ...
It should necessarily be considered in phonology which segments are more valid, and which connections of segments are more natural. Of these, since Prague School had, for the first time, issued 'markedness theory' taking note of the neutralization of contrasting segments, SPE succeeded after all in systemizing the form of natural phonology with its 'marking-linking conventions'. Phonological processes of human languages, however, have been proved to be so complicated that it can't be satisfactorily explained only by means of formalism, and accordingly many factors in the marking-linking conventions were presented to be reviewed based upon functionalism.
Schane claims that the segments more convenient to pronounce and more effective to perceive are the more valid, and the phonological processes directing to this tendency are the more natural, supplying the physiological and psychological base to his natural process theory. Stamps holds that a child learns his language by imposing suppression, limitation, ordering constraints, and learnt rules to his innate system of phonological process and that the intrinsic system freed from the four amendments is the fixed universal set of natural process.
For now it is not clear, however, just how all the information thus far considered about natural phonology is to be integrated into the grammars of individual languages. Since phonological throry has not yet been able to provide us with a complete and reliable account of natural phonology, we are forced to write even the most natural rules, as though they were specific rules of the individual languages, rather than universal processes.
Natural phonology aims to write eventually a universal grammar which defines the form lauguae will naturally take. Given such a grammar it would be necessary in describing individual languages only to note those areas where the language in question deviated from the natural uvuversal pattern, but many quetions are left to be answered before we can write this sort of natural phonology. More studies need to be done.