Experimental Approaches to Phonology---Preface

Experimental approaches to phonology focuses on two central facets:
(1)One focus is on the experimental methods which are foundational to testing hypotheses concerning speakers’ and listeners’ knowledge of their native sound systems, the acquisition of those systems, and the laws that govern sound systems.
In recent years there has been increased use of experimental methods in phonology along with the rise of new techniques. There are several factors responsible for this change.
---(a)Phonology is addressing increasingly diverse questions, so phonology needs to be multifaceted in its methods.
---(b)Technologies relevant to phonological inquiry continue to evolve, as does the availability of large-scale linguistic corpora; new technologies and databases open up new opportunities, new questions, and new grounds on which to test hypotheses.
---(c)Phonological inquiry should be embedded within a framework informed by the biological, social, and cognitive sciences; application of standardized experimental techniques from these disciplines allows us to account for phonological structure in ways that are both consistent with established knowledge in these fields and able to provide a unified account of language and speech.
---(d)A clear demonstration that we understand phonetic and phonological principles is the ability to model relevant behaviors and patterns.
(2)A second focus is on the phonological findings that emerge from the use of experimental techniques and their theoretical implications. This is not a “how to” volme on methods in phonology, but is rather a volume on the types of answers and insights into phonological structure and phonological knowledge provided by experimental approaches to phonology.

Experimental approaches to phonology is organized in terms of major phonological issues:
◎ Explain phonological universals.
◎ Understand the phonetic factors that may give rise to phonological change.
◎ Maintain, enhance, and model phonological contrast.
◎ Assess phonological knowledge.
And techniques are applied to these core issues:
◎ Traditional field methods---Hyman.
◎ Psycholinguistic methods---Derwing; Grønnum and Basbøll; Nooteboom and Quené; M. Ohala.
◎ Corpus-based methods---Kohler; Maddieson; Pycha; Inkelas, and Sprouse.
◎ Aerodynamic and articulatory methods---Bonaventura and Fujimura; Busà; Demolin; Solé.
◎ Acoustic-perceptual methods---Beddor, Brasher, and Narayan; Blevins; Roengpitya; Shin.
◎ Statistical and modeling methods---Engstrand, Frid, and Lindblom; Fujisaki, Gu, and Ohno; Johnson; Nearey and Assmann; Schwartz, Boë, and Abry; Vaissière.
The specific contributions demonstrate that the application of well-established methods from other disciplines to phonology has created new theoretical perspectives that have changed the window through which we view phonology.
There are five parts in Experimental Approaches to Phonology:
Part I delineate various theoretical considerations and provide background concerning the application of methods from other sciences.
Part II, “phonological universals”, are concerned with providing explanations for the similarities that hold across the sound systems of many of the world’s languages.
Part III, “phonetic variation and phonological change”, use experimental methods to illustrate the principle that sound changes due to universal phonetic and cognitive factors have their origins in synchronic variation.
Part IV, “modeling, maintaining, and enhancing phonological contrast”, address how phonological contrasts or features can be modeled and how they are manifested in the phonetic domain.
Part V, “phonotactic and phonological knowledge”, demonstrate the use of psycholinguistic, phonetic, and corpora-based methods to test fundamental claims concerning speakers’ and listeners’knowledge of phonological processes and representations.
Rigorous argumentation often depends on integrating data from an array of traditonally distinct disciplines. John Ohala thinks that experimental phonology might involve any number of methods but is characterized by the experimentalist’s chief concern with “taking as much care as possible to refine one’s beliefs”. He has encouraged generations of researchers to be imaginative, to look to other disciplines for methods that enrich the study of phonology, and to test hypotheses against evidence from novel, non-traditional sources.