Substance-free approaches to phonology
Alex Chabot
October 2024 

This chapter provides an overview of substance-free approaches to phonology. Substance-free approaches assume that phonetic substance plays no role in the composition of representations or the way phonological computations operate over those representations. As a consequence, they assume that formal grammars which claim to model phonological knowledge are insensitive to phonetic substance. The chapter proposes an overview of phonetic substance in the history of phonology, in particular as a way of limiting overgeneration and providing explanation for typologically recurrent patterns. It then discusses some of the basic principles of substance-free approaches, demonstrating how reasoning without recourse to phonetic patterns can yield insight into the fundamental properties of the human faculty of phonology. It concludes with a brief overview of specific proposals and some of the major questions and sources of debate within the substance-free program. This chapter is a draft of a chapter for the Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Phonology (PhonCom2) edited by Kuniya Nasukawa, Bridget Samuels, Geoff Schwartz & Miklós Törkenczy. Comments welcome. chabot at umd dot xxx

Format:	[ pdf ]
Reference:	lingbuzz/008428 (please use that when you cite this article)
Published in:	Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Phonology (PhonCom2)
keywords:	phonology, phonology
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