Learnability in phonology

AbstractThis chapter examines the brief but vibrant history of learnability in phonology. We trace the question of learnability back to the foundational crises in mathematics and computer science, through the synthesis of these fields with linguistics, and onwards to the foundational problems of language, and phonological, learning. We observe this history is mostly one-sided, with many ideas from learning imported to phonology, but rarely the converse. We review some of the most significant interactions between formal learnability and phonology, topics such as the necessity of structured hypothesis spaces, the credit/blame/hidden structure problem, and the subset principle. We finish by discussing several overarching tensions pervading this field: the role of mathematical descriptions versus computational simulations of learning, typological versus learnability concerns in grammar design, and debates on the psychological reality of phonological grammars. As a field, we should not fear rapid change or the many flowering prospects.