Evolutionary Phonology

Why?  Many universals and universal tendencies: phonetics, stress, syllable structure  Can’t be explained through rules alone  Common phonetically-motivated sound changes and patterns  Rare sound patterns are NOT part of common sound changes

Diachronic versus Synchronic  Diachronic: over time  Synchronic: at one point in time  Central Premise of Evolutionary Phonology:  Diachronic explanations have priority over competing synchronic explanations (unless independent evidence demonstrates otherwise)

Evolutionary Biology ENVIRONMENT: Lovely ponds and streams

Evolutionary Phonology ENVIRONMENT: Speech acts and interlocutors

Similarities to Darwin’s Model  Historical  Inheritance  Simultaneous evolution  Interactions with environment  Undirected and non-optimizing  Naturalness/unnaturalness

Sources of Change  CHANGE  Can XaY be misheard as XbY?  CHANCE  Are there multiple ways of analyzing XaY?  CHOICE  Is XaY a possible variant of XbY, XabY, XY, etc.?

CHANGE  Misperception  Listener mishears utterance due to similarities of actual utterance with perceived utterance.  Shot to the heart…  and you’re to blame  and you’re too late  and you’re too lame  and I’m in pain

CHANCE  Phonetic signal is accurately perceived, but the lexical form is ambiguous.  The listener associates a phonological form with the unintended one  Gladly the cross-eyed bear vs. Gladly the cross I’d bear.

CHOICE  Multiple phonetic signals represent variants of a signal phonological form  Accurately perceived by listener  Acquires prototype of phonetic category which differs from speaker