Phonetic explanations for sound patterns. Implications for grammars of competence

Abstract

Phonological grammars try to represent speakers ’ knowledge so that the ‘natural’ behavior of speech sounds becomes self-evident. Phonetic models have the same goals but have no psychological pretensions. Phonetic models succeed in explaining the natural behavior of speech, whereas phonological representations largely fail. The ‘phonetic naturalness ’ requirement in phonological grammars should be re-examined and probably abandoned

    Similar works