Fission in component-based phonology

This paper advances a novel view of the interrelatedness of the ultimate phonological components. Accepting that these are unary, the paper hypothesises that the phonological components in the three segmental gestures, articulation, categorisation and initiation, can be seen as modulations of basic pulmonic pressure. The modulation is viewed as a result of fission processes splitting nuclei into fragment nuclei which again can undergo further fission at the same time as the nuclei undergoing fission are preserved. The fragment components arising from fission exhibit greater phonetic sophistication than their mother nuclei, because they appear as a result of a demand for more detailed phonological differentiation. Fissional fragment components are developed for all three gestures and the paper deals with a variety of phonological contrasts and attempts to calculate the markedness value of representations. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.