Against strict correspondence between phonetic measurements and phonological representations

As observed in different subfields of psychology, the relationship between knowledge and performance is rather remote. Similarly, in linguistics, there is no guarantee about the correspondence between phonetic measurements and phonological representations. There are multiple interacting sources that affect speech production, e.g. lexical knowledge, phonological knowledge, memory and processing constraints, etc. Consequently, phonetic manifestations cannot automatically or solely be used as a diagnostic of any phonological representations. However, in previous literature, the strict correspondence between phonetic distributions and phonological representations is often explicitly or implicitly assumed. In this dissertation, I will argue using data from Huai'an Mandarin that non-linguistic performance factors can have significant influence on phonetic manifestations in unexpected directions. To be more specific, I will present production data from Huai'an Mandarin to make three points. First, I will show a case of phonologically complete neutralization that results in phonetically incompleteness with a large effect size. Second, I will show a case of phonetically complete neutralization that results in phonological behavioral differences. Third, I will show a case where optional phonological processes lead to more phonetic incompleteness.For the first point, I will show in Huai'an Mandarin that derived Tone 3s from Tone 1 or Tone 4 sandhis are phonetically very different from underlying Tone 3 that did not undergo any phonological processes. The Tone 3 category of derived Tone 3 is established by the previous description that only Tone 3 can trigger Tone 3 sandhi in Huai'an Mandarin. Since both derived Tone 3 from Tone 1/Tone 4 sandhis and underlying Tone 3 can trigger Tone 3 sandhi, derived Tone 3 should be phonologically identical with underlying Tone 3. For the second point, I will use evidence also from Huai'an Mandarin arguing that two Tone 3s derived at the lexical and the post-lexical levels have different phonological behaviors despite that they are arguably phonetically identical. The phonological behavior difference in this case is indicated by different rates of the two derived Tone 3s triggering another Tone 3 process. Despite being arguably phonologically different, the described derived Tone 3s are indistinguishable in all major phonetic cues including f0, duration and intensity. For the third point, I will show in Huai'an Mandarin that only optional phonological processes (Tone 1/Tone 4 sandhis) can have incomplete phonetic neutralization with a rather large effect size, while mandatory phonological process (Tone 3 sandhi) in the same language can only have incomplete neutralization with a very small effect size.Overall, data from Huai'an Mandarin provide strong evidence for the gap between phonetic measurements and phonological representations. And phonetic measurements can only inform of phonological knowledge when accompanied by other evidence under certain circumstances.