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Unveiling phonological universals: A linguist who asks “why” is (inter alia) an experimental psychologist

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 October 2009

Iris Berent
Iris Berent
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Northeastern University, Boston, MA 02115-5000. i.berent@neu.eduhttp://www.psych.neu.edu/people/faculty/berent.html
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Abstract

Evans & Levinson (E&L) are right to hold theories of language accountable for language diversity, but typological data alone cannot determine the structure of mental phonological grammars. Grammatical universals are nonetheless testable by formal and experimental methods, and the growing research in experimental phonology demonstrates the viability of a comparative experimental evaluation of the Universal Grammar (UG) hypothesis.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 32 , Issue 5 , October 2009 , pp. 450 - 451
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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