Linguistica (Dec 1996)
The psychological status of phonological analyses
Abstract
This paper casts doubt on the psychological relevance of many phonological analyses. There are four reasons for this: 1) theoretical adequacy does not necessarily imply psychological significance; 2) most approaches are nonempirical in that they are not subject to potential spatiotemporal falsification; 3) phonological analyses are estab lished with little or no recourse to the speakers of the language via experimental psy chology; 4) the limited base of evidence which most analyses are founded on is further cause for skepticism.
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