Abstract

1. Introduction

Theoretical phonology centrally focuses on representing the implicit knowledge that speakers have of the sound patterns in their language, as Blevins (this volume) points out on the first page of her synopsis. Equally important, according to Blevins, is it to provide explanations for the distribution of sound patterns across attested spoken languages. While this has been aimed at in numerous studies in different frameworks, Blevins mentions Generative Phonology and Optimality Theory in this context, the alternatively proposed Evolutionary Phonology (henceforth: EP) is claimed to differ from previous work in maintaining a principled distinction between phonological and extra-phonological explanations for sound patterns. For this purpose, EP focuses on diachronic processes and tests the hypothesis that “regular phonetically based sound change is the common source of recurrent sound patterns” (p. 2).