Conceptual Foundations of Phonology as a Laboratory Science

Abstract

Abstract The term ‘laboratory phonology’ was invented more than a decade ago as the name of an interdisciplinary conference series, and all three of us have co-organized laboratory phonology conferences. Since then, the term has come into use not only for the conference series itself, but for the research activities exemplified by work presented there. In this chapter we give our own perspective on how research in laboratory phonology has shaped our understanding of phonological theory and of the relationship of phonological theory to empirical data. Research activities within laboratory phonology involve the cooperation of people who may disagree about phonological theory, but who share a concern for strengthening the scientific foundations of phonology through improved methodology, explicit modelling, and cumulation of results. These goals, we would argue, all reflect the belief that phonology is one of the natural sciences, and that all of language, including language-specific characteristics and sociolinguistic variation, is part of the natural world. In what follows, we explore the ramifications of this position for the relationship of data and methods to phonological theory; for the denotations of entities in that theory; and for our understanding of Universal Grammar (UG) and linguistic competence.