Phonetic explanation in phonology

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter reviews the history of phonetic explanations of phonological patterns from the 1920s to the present. Structuralist efforts to separate phonology from phonetics are sketched first, and the eventual development of distinctive feature theory from those structuralist arguments is then traced. Contemporaneous research on the relationship between speech perception and production that should have but did not inform this development is reviewed, as are later reactions that provided various kinds of phonetic explanations of recurrent phonological patterns. Phonological patterns that are unexpected on phonetic grounds, including crazy rules, are discussed before turning to Natural Phonology’s explanations. A review of recent efforts to distinguish phonological form from phonetic substance follows, and the chapter closes by showing that contemporary disagreements are so deep that no consensus is currently possible as to whether and how phonological patterns can be explained phonetically.