The emergent paradigm in Laboratory Phonology: Phonological categories and statistical generalisation in Cutler, Beckman and Edwards, Frisch and Bréa-Spahn, Kapatsinski, and Walter

AbstractThis commentary responds to Abigail Cohn's review of successes and challenges in Laboratory Phonology at the LabPhon10 meeting in 2006 (Cohn, Laboratory Phonology: Past successes and current questions, challenges and goals, Mouton de Gruyter, 2010), and her call for “truly integrated” theoretical models. In my view, the sort of integrated theory that Cohn endorsed relies on the availability of a scientific paradigm to organise our approach to data, methodology and theory. I propose that, from its codification as an approach by the first LabPhon meeting in 1987 (Beckman and Kingston, Introduction, Cambridge University Press, 1990), research in Laboratory Phonology has been (and still is) in the process of acquiring such a paradigm. My commentary argues that the occurrence of categorisation at various levels of granularity, together with evidence for gradient category membership at all levels, are central findings in Laboratory Phonology. These sit in the paradigm alongside the core research question about how the physical, cognitive and social properties of speech sounds are related, and a commitment to using hybrid methodologies from phonetics and phonology, computational linguistics, psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics. My commentary highlights these aspects of the emerging LabPhon paradigm in the papers in this issue by Cutler, Beckman and Edwards, Frisch and Bréa-Spahn, Kapatsinski, and Walter.