INTRODUCTION

In the previous chapters we had a look at theories of underspecification and the issue of abstractness in underlying representations in phonological theories. While from a theoretical perspective underspecification is desirable, this doesn’t necessarily have to correspond with psychological reality. Mental representations could be rich and detailed, like high-resolution photographs or like other memories we store in our minds, like the flavour of a particular cheese or an event we have experienced. In this chapter we consider such an approach to underlying representations.

The idea that statistical calculations play an important role in the shaping of language patterns and consequently in lexical storage goes back quite a bit (for a young discipline such as linguistics). Zwirner (1936) held the belief that we cannot properly understand language and language change without statistical methods.

At the time, scholars such as Saussure, Trubetzkoy and Jakobson brought forth forceful arguments in favour of categorical contrasts, as outlined in Chapter 2. Around sixty years later the use of statistical methods, or better, explanations of linguistic patterns through their statistical properties have gained ground again.