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.