Laboratory phonology

Abigail C. Cohn (1) , Cécile Fougeron (2) , Marie K. Huffman (3)

1 Department of Linguistics [Ithaca]
2 LPP - LPP - Laboratoire de Phonétique et Phonologie - UMR 7018
3 SUNY - State University of New York

Over the past 30 years, laboratory phonology has developed with the core idea that how speech is structured, learned, and used is best investigated through experimental approaches and integrated methodologies. Laboratory phonology (LP) draws on theories and tools from various branches of the sciences to elucidate the linguistic, cognitive, and communicative nature of speech. Thus laboratory is used here in a broad sense, representing experimental approaches, and phonology is meant to include all aspects of the organizational structure of speech. We see the term laboratory phonology as roughly synonymous with experimental phonology. In this chapter, our aim is to introduce LP: its key questions, methodologies, and critical results. The critical ingredients of the LP enterprise are the interplay between experimental work, broadly defined, and theorizing (theory development and testing), combined with method-ological innovation, conducted in a collaborative, integrative, and multidisciplinary manner. The scholars working in this approach share an understanding of the central questions about the nature of speech and how they are best investigated, but don't necessarily share more specific theoretical views. Common caricatures of phonetics and phonology hold that phonetics doesn't use enough (linguistic) theory and phonology doesn't use enough (experi-mental) data; LP is an intellectual space where the strengths of each can complement the other. Ultimately, LP is agnostic on the relationship between phonology and phonetics and on the adoption of particular theoretic approaches to phonology (beyond rejecting theoretical assumptions that do not accord with empirical findings). By embracing, even demanding, creative and careful research using the broadest possible range of methodologies, work in LP illuminates the relations between the many different aspects of our knowledge and use of speech and language. At its outset, LP focused primarily on the use of phonetic methodolo-gies to inform phonological questions (as discussed in section 18.2), but it has evolved into an expansive investigation of speech and signed language, integrating questions common to a variety of fields including phonology, phonetics, language acquisition, psycholinguistics, speech sciences, sociophonetics, and historical linguistics. In short, it has developed into the multidisciplinary study of speech as part of a linguistic, biological, and social system.

Domaines: Linguistique

Abigail C. Cohn, Cécile Fougeron, Marie K. Huffman. Laboratory phonology. The Routledge Handbook of Phonological Theory, 1, Routledge, pp.504-529, 2017, ⟨10.4324/9781315675428-18⟩. ⟨hal-02427701⟩