Explanation in Phonology

The essays reprinted in this volume are concerned with exploring the connections between synchronic phonology and change. The strategy is to identify structure-dependent properties of change and to use them in turn to test hypotheses about structure. For example, if the right way to look at analogical change is not as the projection of surface regularities but as the elimination of arbitrary complexity from the system, in a sense of complexity independently defined in the theory of grammar, then it follows that particular instances of change can show something about the grammars of the languages in question and about the precise way the theory of grammar should be formulated.