MINISTERY OF HIGHER

EDUCATION AND SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH

UNIVERSITY OF BABYLON
COLLEGE OF EDUCATION FOR HUMAN SCIENCES
DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH

12/7/2020

Natural Phonology

A Presentation for a Course in

Phonetics and Phonology

Ph. D. Programme

First Semester

By

Omar Osama Nashaat

&

Ali Hussein Abdulameer

Under the Supervision of

Asst. Prof. Dr. Qasim Abass
 1. Natural Phonology
Natural Phonology (NP) is a phonological model which represents a
dramatic departure from the main stream of generative phonology. It has
its origin in David Stampe's dissertation on natural phonology submitted to
the University of Chicago in 1973 and published in 1979. Stampe begins
his dissertation in the context of children's acquisition of phonology and
draws attention to what he calls 'phonological processes'. A phonological
process is a 'mental operation that applies in speech to substitute, for a class
of sounds or sound sequences presenting a specific common difficulty to
the speech capacity of the individual, an alternative class identical but
lacking the difficult property. The processes are not rules of the language
acquired as the child masters language, but reflections of what we might
call the child's inbuilt tendencies. Thus, by the very nature of the human
articulatory and perceptual organism, a child will prefer to articulate
plosives as voiceless rather than voiced (because of the relative difficulty
of maintaining voicing while the supraglotttal tract is closed off) or will
prefer to nasalize vowels next to nasal consonants. What the generative
phonologists call rules constituting a phonological system are seen by
natural phonologists as processes motivated by the nature of production
and perception (Clark and Yallop, 1995: 404).
NP is a primarily non-structuralist theory of language structure, in which
the nature of the phonological system is shaped by the nature of its users
(human beings) and specifically by their speech-production and perception
abilities (Nathan and Donegan, 2009: 2). Its basic thesis is that " the living
sounds of languages, in their development in each individual as well as in
their evolution over the centuries are governed by forces implicit in human
vocalization and perception"(Donegan and Stampe, 1979: 126).

2. Phonological Naturalness and Other Notions

The notion of naturalness has been explained in terms of a number
of other notions such as 'economy', 'simplicity', 'frequency', 'plausibility',
'markedness', as well as in terms of a psycholinguistic factor which is 'first
language acquisition'.
A phonological property is more natural if it is more economical than
another. A solution with fewer phonemes is judged more economical than
a solution recognizing more phonemes. Similarly, we might say that a

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solution using fewer rules is more economical than a solution requiring
more rules, and so on. Economy, then, is a quantitative measure by which
a given solution can be evaluated as requiring fewer or more mechanisms
(phonemes, rules, conventions, etc.) than another solution (Hayman, 1975:
99).
A phonological property is more natural if it is simpler than another.
In phonology, simplicity has been equated with feature counting. As such
a phonological description is said to be simple if it requires fewer features
than another (Hayman, 1975: 103)..
Frequent combinations of features are said to be more natural than
less frequent ones. Thus, in Turkish, the vowels /i/ and /u/ are more
frequent (and hence more "natural") than the vowels /ü/ and /Ɯ/ (Hayman,
1975: 143). Nasalized vowels, though widespread, are still much less
frequent than their oral counterparts both in the world's languages and in
those languages where they occur. As such oral vowels are more natural
than nasalized ones (Katamba, 1996: 99).
Naturalness has been explained in terms of plausibility. Certain
phonological rules are described to be plausible because they are found to
occur frequently and they do so in fairly predictable ways. Thus, a plausible
phonological rule is more natural than an implausible one (Hayman, 1975:
98).
Naturalness can be approached in terms of markedness. What is
natural can be said to be unmarked, and what is not natural can be said to
be marked, i.e. in some sense unusual (Katamba, 1996: 98). The terms
'marked' and 'unmarked' has been used by phonologists to refer to the
'presence' versus 'absence' of a particular feature.
The opposition between marked and unmarked is often defined as follows:
Marked Unmarked

Less natural More natural

More complex Simpler
More specific More general
Less common More common
Unexpected Expected
Not basic Basic
Less stable Stable
Appears in few grammars Appears in more grammars

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 Later in language acquisition Earlier in language acquisition
Subject to neutralization Neutralization targets
Early loss in language deficit Late loss in language deficit
Implies unmarked feature Implied by marked feature
Harder to articulate Easier to articulate

Another explanation offered for naturalness is based on a

psycholinguistic factor stating that what is acquired first is more natural
than what is acquired later. For instance, in Turkish which has four high
vowels/i/, /u/, /ü/ and /Ɯ/.), children are said to acquire /i/ and /u/ first and
only later they learn /ü/ and /Ɯ/. So, /i/ and /u/ are more "natural" than the
vowels /ü/ and /Ɯ/ (Hayman, 1975: 143).

3. Characteristics of Phonological Naturalness

There are two characteristics of phonological naturalness:
(1) it is based on ease of articulation.
(2) it is relative.
It is helpful to point to a good articulatory reason for a natural
process like assimilation where adjacent sounds are made similar to each
other so that one avoids using any more effort than is required. What about
perception? While assimilation makes the task of speech production easier,
it can make speech perception more difficult. It is easier to discriminate
between sounds if they are very different from each other than it is to
distinguish them when they are very alike. To counterbalance assimilation,
there are natural processes which have the effect of enhancing differences
between sounds. These facilitate the task of the hearer. A natural process
from the perception perspective would be 'dissimilation' (Katamba, 1996:
108). Naturalness is relative because what is natural in one phonological
context might be unnatural in another context. For instance, we said that
oral vowels are more natural than nasalized ones because the former are
more frequent than the latter. Yet; in the context where a vowel is followed
by a nasal consonant a nasalized vowel is more natural than the oral one
(Ibid.).
Concern with naturalness tends to be a strong motive in recent
phonology, so much so that two schools of phonology have enshrined the
term in their titles: Natural Phonology and Natural Generative Phonology
(Clark and Yallop, 1995: 156).

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 4. Schools of phonological naturalness
Being a strong motive in recent phonology, naturalness has been found
under the cover of two schools: natural phonology and natural generative
phonology (Clark and Yallop, 1995: 156).

4.1. Natural Generative Phonology (NGP) emerged from a number of

papers by Venneman in the early 1970s and is most comprehensively
expounded by Hooper in a 1976 book (An Introduction to Natural
Generative Phonology). As the title of this school suggests, its proponents
do not claim to depart radically from the mainstream of generative
phonology. They describe their school as "based in part on transformational
generative theory as developed since the mid-1950s". However, NGP is
quite radical in its attack on abstractness. Whereas classical generative
phonology emphasizes the abstractness of phonological representations;
NGP concentrates on their naturalness (Clark and Yallop, 1995:402-3).

4.2. Natural phonology (Evolution)

As all theories, Natural Phonology has evolved and changed over the years
since its inception in the 1960s and 1970s. The type of explanation offered
by NP originated in a variety of phonetic and phonological studies of the
19th and 20th century (Maddieson, 2006: 80-100). NP is natural in the
sense established by Plato in that it presents language (especially the
phonological aspects of language) as a natural reflection of the needs,
capacities, and worlds of its users rather than a merely conventional tool.
The theory itself was founded by David Stampe (1969, 1973) and
expounded by Patricia Donegan and David Stampe (1979). ).
NP's study was abandoned, early in the twentieth century, not because
of certain inadequacies but because the questions about language, that had
inspired it, were set aside in favor to questions about linguistics and its
methodology and its model of description. The role of explanation which
had directed NP was rejected as being unscientific by Bloomfield and his
generation. For the generation of Chomsky which has concentrated on
formal constraints on linguistic description (grammar), the goal of
explanation was redefined that is an explanatory theory is one which
provides, in addition to a description of a set of possible grammars, a
procedure for selection the correct grammar for given data(ibid.).

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 It is no longer true to say that NP lacks any a priori methodology or
formalization” (Donegan and Stampe 1979: 168); the methodology stems
from universal, functional and semiotic, principles, while formalizations
are being introduced without deterimen to the theory . Finally, the holistic,
all-embracing, and interdisciplinary nature of the theory tunes in very well
with the interdisciplinary demands of modern research, and thus directly
responds to the scholarly challenges of the 21st century.

5. Explanation in NP
NP is regarded as a functional theory in two senses: The first is its
focusing on explanation and thus increasing our understanding of how
language works. The second is as having practical applications, especially
to second language acquisition . NP focuses on explanation, on answering
the “why” questions rather than on a precise description, as formal theories
do. The functionalists think that language is a non-autonomous faculty, and
they assume that the human ability to use language is fundamentally not
different from other cognitive abilities humans have.
What is related to linguistic knowledge is that knowledge of meaning
and form on all levels of the language system, i.e. phonology, morphology,
syntax and semantics, is conceptual. Although sounds and utterances are
physical entities with a formal structure, they must be produced and
comprehended. Comprehending and producing speech is possible thanks
to cognitive processes which accept speech sounds as input and produce
utterances as output. NP stresses that the function of conveying meaning
as well as cognitive and physiological factors influence language to such
an extent that it is not feasible to describe and explain language without
referring to the broadly understood functions it has.
Concerning the second sense which is the NP's practical applications on
L2 acquisition phonology. The choice of NP as a framework for L2 speech
research is associated with the assumption that phonetic detail plays a
crucial role in phonology in L2 acquisition. The suitability of NP for L2
acquisition is seen in its views on the phonetics-phonology relationship.
Both phonetic and phonological types are seen as interconnected.
Phonetics deals with regularities in speech acoustics typical for a given
language, whereas phonology has a twofold task. On the one hand, it looks
for phonemically meaningful regularities; on the other hand, it tries to
explain these regularities and determine why they occur in a given

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language. In other words, phonology is about the priorities the speech
system of a given language has.
NP is a theory which sees the acoustic signal, phonetic detail and phonemic
categories as belonging to a systematic speech processing continuum, in
that phonetic detail is based on what acoustics offers, and phonemic
categories are based on what phonetics has to offer, and phonological
processes apply already to underlying representations, and shape the sound
until it reaches its ultimate phonetic form.

6. Natural Phonological Processes

A phonological process is a 'mental operation that applies in speech
to substitute, for a class of sounds or sound sequences presenting a specific
common difficulty to the speech capacity of the individual, an alternative
class identical but lacking the difficult property. Those processes are not
part of language acquisition , but rather are an integral part of the human
capacity for language. The acquisition of a phonological system takes place
through suppression and limitation of some articulatory and perceptive
processes; in this way, final devoicing has been eliminated from English in
the course of language acquisition. Natural phonological processes are
irreversible, thus there is no such thing as ‘denasalization’ or ‘final voicing’
(Bussmann, 2006: 789).
Processes are used to derive a given surface variant of a sound from
a specific phoneme, and then this phoneme must be an underlying intention
of this sound. This means that phonological representations are explicable
in terms of phonetically motivated processes. Processes manifest
themselves in all types of phonological behaviour of language users: in
normal performance, in child language, in second language acquisition, in
aphasia and other types of disorders, in casual speech, in emphatic speech,
in slips, errors, language games, whispered and silent speech, as well as in
the changing phonological behaviour resulting in sound change. Processes
account for all these types of behaviour. The task of NP, then, is a constant
search for processes in the languages of the world (Dziubalska-Kolaczyk,
2004: 4).
Phonological processes are innate and universal in the sense that
they are natural responses to the phonetic difficulties encountered in
speaking. They are universal because the human vocal and perceptual
apparatus is universal. They may be discovered by the child in the process

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of using his vocal tract – during vocalization, crying, or babbling – and still
we call them “innate”, since their origins and motivations are innate. The
innate elements in phonology are the phonetic forces (processes,
constraints, or preferences) that press toward optimization and motivate
substitutions (Donegan and Stampe, 2009).
The universality of processes does not mean that they apply to all
languages – only that they are motivated in all speakers. Phonological
processes determine what a speaker can do, but not what they must do.
Although processes are universal in form and motivation, they do not
apply universally. Each language selects a set of processes which
constitute its language-specific natural phonology. In this way, some
processes are allowed to apply while some difficulties remain and have to
be mastered by the native speakers. For example, Polish or German allow
the process of word final obstruent devoicing to apply, while English
requires its speakers to master the difficulty of producing word final
voiced obstruent, i.e. to maintain voicing during the closure or obstruction.
Still, the process of obstruent devoicing itself does not lose its universal
motivation (Dziubalska-Kolaczyk, 2004: 10).

6.1. Natural Application of processes

Processes apply in a way that follows from their nature. First, since
processes represent responses to phonetic difficulties, it follows that if a
certain difficult representation undergoes a substitution, all other
representations with the same difficulty undergo the same substitution.
This explains why processes operate on natural classes of segments. To
this observation, it is possible to add that processes operate over natural
prosodic constituents, syllables, accent groups, and words. For example:
English reflects the following process –sonorant becomes nasalized before
nasalized segments within a stress group but optionally across syllable
boundaries.
Natural classes are not a matter of descriptive simplicity as
suggested by Halle (1962), but a matter of fact: nasalization applies to
novel sonorant and before novel nasals.
A natural class cannot be explained in terms of cognitive simplicity
in the acquisition of a rule. The natural class, then, operates on having a
natural connection. Nasalization never applies only before nasals. So the
natural connection is the phonetic teleology of the process.

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 For a natural process, then, applies to a natural class of
representation (representations which share a common articulatory,
perceptual or prosodic difficulty to a common degree) and each process
makes substitution by altering a single phonetic property to remedy the
difficulty. Since the substituted sound, in each case, should be similar to
the original target, it follows that the changes process will be minimal: a
process changes only on feature. This means that the apparent two- feature
changes take place in two steps; a change in which [Ù] becomes [ˆ]is in
fact a change in [Ù]…[i]… [.^] or [ˇ]….[>]….[.^]
It has been noted that such series of simple changes are changed into single
substitution by an operation called rule telescoping so that processes A
……B and A….C are collapsed into A…..C . This may be true of learned
rules, which lack phonetic motivation and which may therefore substitute
one phoneme for another regardless of the number of feature changes
involved. But processes do not telescope, because distinct processes have
distinct phonetic causalities. To establish the telescoping of two processes
A .. …B and B…..C would require examples of languages in which
A ….. C while B does not become C.
Donegan and Stampe (1979) list twenty four types of processes. Below
are some of these processes:
1) Consonant clusters are reduced to single segments; fly [flai] becomes
[fai].
2) Ustressed syllables are deleted; potato [p'teitou] becomes ['teitou].
3) Voiced stops (e.g., [b], [d] are made voiceless ([p], [t]) since the airflow
required by voicing is interrupted by the fact of complete closure of the
vocal tract.
4) Consonants produced with the tongue body (e.g., [k], [g] become
articulated with the tongue blade [t], [d] respectively).
5) Sonorant become nasalized before nasalized segments within stress-
group, but only optionally across syllable boundaries: rallying [rᴂ'l.i.Ῐη]
6) After nasals, before spirants, a stop is inserted homorganic to the nasal
and the same voicing as the spirant: sense [sεn(t)s], bans [bᴂn(d)z]
a) stops after homorganic nasals before spirants are deleted: cents
[sεn(t)s]
7) flapping of intervocalic syllable-final apical stops: that apple
→[ðᴂrᴂpl], batted →[bᴂrid]

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8) regressive nasalization is not bled(followed) by nasal-elision: can't
[khᴂnt]→[khǣt]
9) Nasal elision occurs only before homorganic consonants: lamp
[lᴂmp]→[lǣp], tenth [tεnθ]→[tέθ]

6.2. Constraints on Application

Although processes are universal, they don’t apply identically in all
situations. A child must be learnt that the constraints his language imposes
on process rather than the processes themselves. Phonological alternations
are motivated by the nature of the learner rather than the language and do
not involve the cognitive burden of modern phonological theory. So the
German child does not have to learn to devoice all and only the class of
word- final obstruent because these are natural restrictions.
The mechanism of learning in NP is simply described as: the learner
must master certain inputs of natural processes, as required by the words
of his language. The child who says the /g/ in hug rather than devoiced it,
he can say the /g/ in bug with under the same conditions.

6.3. Types of Natural Processes

There are three main types of processes, each with distinct
functions:
(a) Prosodic processes map words, phrases, and sentences onto prosodic
structures, such as patterns of rhythm and intonation. Insofar as syllabicity,
stress, length, tone, and phrasing are not given in the linguistic matter, they
are determined by the prosodic mapping, which may most easily be
described as an operation in real-time speech processing of which setting
sentences to verse or music are special cases. The application of prosodic
processes is the most important factor in the living phonological pattern of
a language and its long-range phonological 'drift'; the selection of
segmental processes is largely determined, even in childhood, by the way
segmental representations are mapped onto prosodic structure in speech
(Donegan and Stampe, 1979: 142).
(b) Fortition processes (also called strengthening processes) intensify the
salient features of individual segments and/or their contrast with adjacent
segments. They invariably have a perceptual teleology, but often
incidentally make the segments they affect more pronounceable as well as
more perceptible. Dissimilations, diphthongizations, and syllabifications

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are fortition processes. Some fortition processes may apply regardless of
context, but they are particularly favored in 'strong' positions, applying
especially to vowels in syllable peaks and consonants in syllable onsets,
and to segments in positions of prosodic prominence and duration.
Similarly, they apply in situations and styles where perceptibility is highly
valued: attentive, formal, expressive, and lento speech (Ibid.).
(c) Lenition processes (also called weakening processes) which have an
exclusively articulatory teleology, making segments and sequences of
segments easier to pronounce by decreasing the articulatory "distance"
between features of the segment itself or its adjacent segments.
Assimilations, monophthongizations, desyllabifications, reductions, and
deletions are lenition processes. Lenition processes tend to be context-
sensitive and/or prosody-sensitive, applying especially in 'weak' positions,
e.g., to consonants in 'blocked' and syllable-final positions, to short
segments, unstressed vowels, etc. They apply most widely in styles and
situations which do not demand clarity (inattentive, intimate, and 'inner'
speech) or which make unusual demands on articulation (e.g. rapid

7. Processes Vs. Rules

In this approach, a sharp distinction is drawn between rules and processes.
The term RULE is used to refer to phonetically wholly or partially
unmotivated alternations which are governed by the conventions of a
particular language. PROCESSES are alternations which are regulated by
universal phonetic or functional factors. Unlike processes, rules are
idiosyncratic properties of particular languages and do not form part of
humankind's common phonological inheritance. Natural processes are
more common than idiosyncratic rules .
Processes apply involuntarily and unconsciously, whereas rules, although
they may become habitual and therefore involuntary and unconscious in
their application, are formed through the observation of linguistic
differences of which the speaker is or was necessarily conscious.
Processes may be optional or obligatory. Rules, on the other hand, seem
always to be obligatory .
Processes are of the speaker, rules are of the language. Phonological
processes are universal and innate in that they are related to the human
vocal and perceptual apparatus; whereas rules are language specific and
conventional and must be learned by observing other speakers . Natural

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Phonological phonemes are both real and mental in that they are the
perceived, fully specified sounds, not just lists of abstract features. L1
phonemes form the basis for L2 phoneme formation. Phonological analysis
of L2 acquisition has to concentrate on phonetic details differentiating
phonemes in L1 and L2 and phonetic details involved in lenitions and
fortitions(Donegan and Stampe, 2009:4).

8. The Phoneme in NP
Natural phonologists' view of phoneme is quite different from the
structuralists and generative phonologists. For structrulists , phonemes
are defined by their opposition within a system. Generative phonologists,
on the other hand, view phonemes as a bundle of features that characterize
the segment. NP views phonemes as "a unit of perception, mental
representation, and intention"(Nathan and Donegan, 2009: 7-8).
A phoneme is an underlying intention (cf. Baudouin and Sapir)
shared by the speaker and the listener (who are always "two in one"). The
shared knowledge of intentions guarantees communication between the
speaker and the listener within a given language, even if the actually
pronounced forms diverge substantially from what is intended, for
example, in casual speech. In other words, phonemes are fully specified,
pronounceable percepts. Thus, they are real, i.e. they exist in the mental as
well as the physical reality of speech shared by all language users(ibid.).
phonemes in NP are neither contrastive units nor features. They are
fully specified, pronounceable percepts. It means that speakers
subconsciously adjust their intentions to make them fit their environments
and hence they generate allophones.
Phonemes are specific mental targets, so that we could imagine
pronouncing a phoneme such as /i/, whereas a specification such as [V, +hi,
-back] is not pronounceable.
Donegan and Stampe (1979: 13) presented arguments that the alphabet
of the phonology and the grammatical rules is the inventory of phonemes
of a language; he had discovered a way of accounting for the existence of
phoneme inventories purely in terms of the interaction of context-free
(usually fortitive) and context-sensitive (usually lenitive) processes.
Fortitions enhance the phonetic features of individual segments, and they
may result in fewer categories, constraining the phoneme inventory:
(1a) [V +pal] → [+high] maximizes palatality (and bars /e ɛ æ a/).

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(1b) [+cont] → [−nas] maximizes quality (bars nasal vowels etc.).
(1c)[−son, −cont] → [−voi] maximizes obstruency (and bars /b d g/)
Lenitions optimize sequences and, unless they happen to neutralize an
opposition, they multiply the variety of output sounds. For example:
(2a) [V] → [−high] /__ [−high] creates [e o] in some contexts.
(2b) [+son] → [+nasal] /__ [+nasal] creates nasal vowels in some contexts.
(2c) [ ] → [+voi] / [+voi] __ [+voi] creates [b d ɡ] in some environments.
Lenitions (Donegan and Stampe, 2009: 14) include assimilation as well as
‘weakenings’ of various sorts. They reduce the magnitude or number of
articulatory gestures and may relax the timing requirements of the gestural
score.
If both opposing processes (1a, 2a), or (1b, 2b), or (1c, 2c) apply, then:
(3a) */e/ is ruled out of the phoneme inventory, and [e] before a uvular is
perceived and remembered as /i/. That is, [e] is an allophone of /i/.
(3b) Nasalized vowels are allophones of their plain counterparts.
(3c) */b/ is ruled out of the phoneme inventory, and [b] between vowels is
perceived and remembered as /p/. That is, [b] is an allophone of /p/ (Ibid.).

8.1. Phonemes are not Constraints

Concepts such as ‘contrast’ can be used as discovery procedures as
a way for a linguist to get ‘into’ the system if the investigator is not a native
speaker, but contrast and complementary distribution do not define
phonemes. This view, the rejection of ‘discovery procedures’ as a
definition of the phoneme, is not unique to NP, of course, but formed the
basis of Chomsky and Halle’s rejection of structuralist phonology in the
60’s. Because phonemes are not defined by contrast, therefore, concepts
such as ‘archiphonemes’ sounds that do not ‘know’ what they are (i.e. are
indeterminate between otherwise contrasting phonemes) have no place in
NP. Since phonemes are how speakers perceive sounds, the concept of a
different kind of sound that is not quite a sound is incoherent with the NP
view of what phonology is all about (Nathan, 2009: 3-6).

8.2. Phonemes are not Features

However, because phonemes are sounds as perceived, this means
that they are auditory/motor images of sounds per se, not abstract
specifications for sounds. Thus, contrary to what is usually believed in
most (but not all) generative phonologies, phonemes are not ‘merely’ lists

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of features. And particularly, they are not underspecified lists of features.
It is important to how NP works that phonemes are real (although mental)
sounds, fully specified. What makes them phonemes, rather than just
records of how speakers actually speak, is the existence of processes.
Phonemes are very rarely pronounced as stored, but instead are modified
either to fit their environments (lenitions) or in contrast to their
environments (fortitions). Phonemes are specific mental targets (Ibid.).

9. Optimality Theory in NP
Optimality Theory (OT), as proposed by Prince and Smolensky
(1993), is an attempt to account for phonological forms and alternations
through the interaction of universal constraints. Speakers select surface
forms that show the fewest violations of higher ranked universal
constraints. The foundation of Optimality Theory is the idea that
phonology is a system of universal phonetic constraints that a speaker
brings to a language, rather than a system of rules that a learner must induce
from the observation of surface forms. This is an important break from the
position of structural and generative phonology, but it is one that NP made
long ago (Donegan and Stampe, 2009: 22).
OT displays some similarities to NP. The universal Well-Formedness
constraints of OT refer to the same phonetic difficulties as natural
phonological processes do. OT constraints, like natural processes, are
“violable”: constraints may be outranked, as processes may be suppressed
or limited. OT’s Faithfulness constraints, which specify that the output
should be the same in some respect as the in-put, function in the same way
as do inhibitions or limitations of processes (Ibid.).
There are, however, important differences between OT and NP.
Perhaps most important, OT, like its generative forebears, attempts to deal
with morphophonological alternations using the same phonetically-based
constraints as those that govern phonology. OT focuses on articulatory and
perceptual difficulties rather than on the processes that alter difficult forms
into easier ones (Ibid.: 24).

10.Conclusions
On the basis of what has been explored, it is concluded that:
1. NP is founded by David Stampe (1969, 1973) and expounded by
Patricia Donegan and David Stampe (1979). ).

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2. NP is a phonological model which represents a dramatic departure from
the main stream of generative phonology.
3 NP is a modern development of the oldest explanatory theory. Its basic
thesis is that the living sound patterns of languages, in their development
in each individual as well as in their evolution over the centuries, are
governed by forces implicit in human vocalization and perception.
4. Donegan and Stampe claim that their theory is natural because it seeks
to explain why language is the way it is. The theory offers a genuine
explanation by presenting language not as merely conventional but as a
'natural reflection' of the needs, capacities, and world of its users .
5. In NP, a sharp distinction is drawn between rules and processes. A
phonological process is a 'mental operation that applies in speech to
substitute, for a class of sounds or sound sequences presenting a specific
common difficulty to the speech capacity of the individual, an alternative
class identical but lacking the difficult property. The processes are not rules
of the language acquired as the child masters language, but reflections of
what we might call the child's inbuilt tendencies.
6.In their outline of natural phonology, Donegan and Stampe, appeal to
phonological traditions that are much older than 'Sound Pattern of English',
stating explicitly that their model of phonology is a modern development
of the oldest explanatory theory of phonology.

11.References
Bussmann, H. 2006. Routledge Dictionary of Language and Linguistics.
London: Longman
Anna, B. Poznań Studies in Contemporary Linguistics 45(1), 2009, pp. 43–
54. School of English, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland
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