Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Language games have had a long and uneasy relationship with phonological theory. There has been a general hesitancy to incorporate this linguistic behavior into mainstream phonological theory until fairly recently, and even now, language games are often seen as useful only to the extent that they can support a particular line of argumentation. Although it probably has multiple roots, this hesitancy stems largely from two factors intrinsic to the data themselves: (1) language game operations are superficially quite unlike ordinary language operations; and (2) language games are alternate linguistic systems which, although found in nearly every human language, have a relatively restricted sociolinguistic function, small speaker population, and uncertain acquisitional process. For these reasons, language games have been brought in to function as so-called external evidence to confirm or falsify the particular analysis of various aspects of the ordinary languages they are based upon, with little attempt to understand them as linguistic systems of their own. Ironically, it was only with the advent of nonlinear theories of phonology that a better understanding of the true nature of language game mechanisms was gained, thereby allowing them to be taken more seriously. With the insights into phonological representation and nonconcatenative operations offered by autosegmental and prosodic ... log in or subscribe to read full text