On the use of Evolutionary Phonology for phonological theory

Abstract

Theoretical phonology centrally focuses on representing the implicit knowledge that speakers have of the sound patterns in their language, as Blevins (this volume) points out on the first page of her synopsis. Equally important, according to Blevins, is it to provide explanations for the dis- tribution of sound patterns across attested spoken languages. While this has been aimed at in numerous studies in dierent frameworks, Blevins mentions Generative Phonology and Optimality Theory in this context, the alternatively proposed Evolutionary Phonology (henceforth: EP) is claimed to dier from previous work in maintaining a principled distinc- tion between phonological and extra-phonological explanations for sound patterns. For this purpose, EP focuses on diachronic processes and tests the hypothesis that ''regular phonetically based sound change is the com- mon source of recurrent sound patterns'' (p. 2). In the following I argue that EP is only of limited use for phonological theory. I focus on Blevins' criticism of alternative accounts (§2), EP's sup- posed simplification of phonological theory by ascribing the occurrence of typological patterns to sound change (§3), and a short description of the grammar model by Boersma (§4), which follows restrictions similar to those posed in EP.