Abstract
One of the principle aims of research in linguistic theory is to discover linguistic universals which may be represented as a part of linguistic metatheory. In phonological theory there are many examples of such attempts. For example, the formal conventions proposed by Chomsky and Halle (1968) in The Sound Pattern of English were to represent universal constraints for natural languages.It has been shown on numerous occasions (for example, Labov, 1971) that phonological theory must be able to account for the systematic variability regularly present in all phonological systems. Although quantitative studies of phonological variability are still relatively new, it is important all the same to attempt to posit possible universal constraints, both formal and substantive, within the current formulation of variability theory in order to test the theory itself. Of particular interest are questions such as the following: What are universal constraints on the FORM of variable rules? Are there universal constraints on the types of environments in which variable rules may apply?
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