Evolutionary phonology as human behavior
In this chapter I compare Columbia School Phonology as first sketched in Diver (1974, 1979) to Evolutionary Phonology
(Blevins, 2004a, 2005a, 2006a, 2008, 2009a, 2015, 2017), highlighting similarities and differences between the two
approaches. Where Columbia School Phonology grazes the surface of phonological typology, Evolutionary Phonology
grounds itself in extensive cross-linguistic surveys of common and rare sound patterns. Where Columbia School
Phonology suggests relatively simplistic intuitive phonetic explanations for sound patterns, Evolutionary
Phonology refers to detailed empirical work in distinct sub-fields of phonetics, including articulatory phonetics,
aerodynamic modeling, and perceptual studies of speech. And where Columbia School Phonology proposes usage-based
explanations for skewed distributions of sounds, Evolutionary Phonology suggests ways in which these are
inadequate, and proposes analyses where non-phonetic factors interact in complex ways with overriding phonetic
factors.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.An overview of Evolutionary Phonology
- 3.Evolutionary Phonology and the Columbia School: “Le bon Dieu est dans le détail”
- 3.1Segment inventories: The high frequency of coronal sounds
- 3.2Phonotactics: Explaining Tl-gaps
- 3.3Neutralization: Where substance matters
- 4.Concluding remarks
-
Notes
-
References
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Cited by (1)
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VAN SOEREN, D.P.
2023.
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Journal of Linguistics 59:1
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