Phonetics / Phonology

This volume showcases the current state of the art in phonologization research, bringing together work by leading scholars in sound change research from different disciplinary and scholarly traditions. The authors investigate the progression of sound change from the perspectives of speech perception, speech production, phonology, sociolinguistics, language acquisition, psycholinguistics, computer science, statistics, and social and cognitive psychology. This volume highlights the fruitfulness of collaborative efforts among phonologists with specialists from neighboring disciplines seeking unified theoretical explanations for the origins of sound patterns in language, as well as seeking to move toward a new and improved synthesis of synchronic and diachronic phonology.

This volume endeavors to bridge one of the gaps between linguistic theory and the biological sciences by presenting a comprehensive view of phonology which simultaneously addresses linguists and those who from other fields who would like to make contact with phonological theory. It proposes a new theory of phonological computation using representations and operations informed by a broader biolinguistic perspective, breaking the human language externalization system into component parts and investigating their possible origins in cognitive abilities found throughout the animal kingdom. Issues discussed include phonology in evolutionary perspective, the role of phonology within a Minimalist conception of the language faculty, phonological operations and representations, arguments for parallel cyclicity across linguistic modules, the order of operations at the syntax/phonology interface, diachronic phonology, the role of language acquisition in language change, and the sources of linguistic variation.