Mentalism vs physicalism: a comment on Hammarberg and Fowler

Abstract

Two questions arising from the ongoing debate between Robert Hammarberg and Carol Fowler are dealt with in this paper. (1) Are coarticulation and phonological assimilation distinct processes? (2) Are phones and phonological segments physically definable entities? We conclude that the first question is still open, and we outline the type of evidence that would bear on it. However, we suggest that the opposition between coarticulation and phonological assimilation is best recast as an opposition between effects with “mental cause” and those with “physical cause.” Moreover, we argue that the burden of proof falls on those who want to argue for a distinct class of assimilation which has “physical cause.” We find that the second question falls within the domain of theory evaluation. We argue that Hammarberg’s view (segments are solely mental ) is preferable to Fowler’s (segments are both mental and physical ) on three counts. (1) Historically, the “mentalist” view in linguistics supplanted the “physicalist” view because the latter could not account for all relevant observations. (2) The non-physical nature of linguistic entities in general would lead us to expect a priori the non-physical nature of segments. (3) The assumption of physical segments within the articulatory mechanism does not resolve any pressing problems in linguistics or speech science.