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190]

Perspective Article

A Critical Review of Phonological

Theories
M. N. Hegde
Professor emeritus, California State University-Fresno

Abstract
This is a critical review of two major phonological theories: linear natural phonology and the nonlinear optimality
theory. Natural phonological theory asserts that phonological processes are phonetically based. Phonological
error patterns help organize treatment targets and assess generalization. However, the natural phonology’s
explanation of speech sound learning in children does not attain the status of a scientific theory. Process
proliferation and poor definitions are other limitations. Optimality theory proposes that speech sounds may be
marked (complex, more difficulty to produce, etc.) or unmarked (simple, easier to produce, etc.). Optimality
replaces rules with markedness and faithfulness constraints. Constraints are common to all languages, but
their ranking are unique to each language. Speakers can violate constraints ranked lower, but not those ranked
higher in their language. When speech is imminent, GEN the generator generates a variety of output (response)
options and EVAL the evaluator selects an optimal output that is faithful to the higher-ranked constraints. There
is no independent evidence for the existence of universal and innate constraints, specific language-based
rankings, and the operation of GEN or EVAL. Assumptions of universality of phonological rules and even the
existence of such rules are speculative. That children have innate phonological knowledge is an untenable
assumption. Most generative phonological theories have little or no empirical validity. Investigations of child-
directed speech, statistical learning, implicit learning, sociolinguistics, usage- and exemplar-based phonology
and behavior analysis have all supported the view that children master their speech sounds (and language
structures) through social interactions.
Keywords: Phonological error patterns, linear natural phonology theory, nonlinear optimality theory, phonological
theories

P honology is a study of speech sounds and the rules

that dictate the formation of sound sequences in
forming syllables and words. The root of phonology goes
back to Panini, the Indian Sanskrit grammarian of the 5th
century (Cardona, 1998; Shukla, 2006). Phonology as the
study of a mental and innate sound system and the rules
that govern that system is a product of the 20th century.
Phonology is linked with phonetics, which is the science
of speech sound production and classification. Speech
articulation is a phonetic event. Both phonology and
phonetics study certain common factors of speech sounds.
For instance, both are concerned with the description of
speech sounds, sound sequences, and sound patterns
that result when speech is produced. A major distinction
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is that phonology is concerned with abstract rules and
knowledge that govern the production of speech sounds.
Phonetic rules are grounded in speech physiology and
acoustics; hence they are empirically observable and
measurable. Phonological rules are a part of mental
and unconscious knowledge; hence they are abstract
and not directly observed. Phonetics is descriptive and
experimental, whereas phonology is theoretical.
In speech-language pathology (SLP), the value of phonetic
study of speech sounds is well-established and devoid
of controversy. Speech-language pathologists (SLPs)
appreciate the need to understand the physiological
mechanism of speech sound production as well as the
physical (acoustic) properties of speech sounds produced
and modified in the human vocal tract. The value of
Address for correspondence: Prof. M.N. Hegde
Professor Emeritus, M. N. Hegde, California State
University-Fresno.
E-mail: girih@mail.fresnostate.edu

DOI: 10.4103/jose.JOSE_7_21
Received: 18-Nov-2021 Accepted: 10-Mar-2022
Published: 06-Sep-2022.

© 2022 Journal of The All India Institute of Speech and Hearing | Published by Wolters Kluwer - Medknow 3
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Hegde: Phonological theories: a review
phonological theories that entered SLP in more recent
times, however, is debatable. Therefore, this paper offers
a critical review of two major phonological theories and
their relevance to an understanding of speech sound
disorders in children.
A prototype of an innate mentalistic approach to
language that began to influence SLP in the 1960s
was Chomsky’s (1957) theory of universal grammar.
Subsequently, Chomsky and Halle’s (1968) distinctive
feature theory influenced the analysis of speech sounds
and speech sound disorders. However, since the advent
of newer phonological theories, the distinctive feature
analysis has tapered off in SLP. Therefore, this review will
be limited to currently influential phonological theories.
Natural Phonology: A Linear Theory
In a linear phonological theory, phonemic segments are
independent of each other, not hierarchically organized,
and form a linear string of segments. A segment may be a
sound, a combination of sounds, or a unit that is more
abstract than a sound (e.g., the sonorant quality of a
sound). Examples of phonemic segments include such
properties as vocalic, sonorant, low, nasal, voiced, and so
forth. Chomsky and Halle’s (1968) distinctive feature
theory is a classic and standard linear theory in which
phonemic segments are a bundle of independent features
that may combine with any other segment. Children
have an inner level of mental representation of speech
sounds from which they derive the outer level of surface
productions. To translate mental representations to
speech production, children apply the rules sequentially
(i.e., linearly), one at a time, not simultaneously.
Phonological Processes
In their Natural phonology or natural phonological
theory (NPT), Stampe (1979) and Donegan and Stampe
(1979) proposed that to learn their speech sound
productions, children simplify adult productions.
Such simplifications are phonological processes that may
affect an entire class of sounds sharing a common
articulatory difficulty. Simplifications result in speech
sound errors in the context of adult models, but those
errors are unlearned because they stem from phonetic-
physiological limitations. Learned speech sound errors
cannot be attributed to a natural process (Donegan and
Stampe, 1979). In SLP, the currently preferred term is
phonological patterns, but I  shall continue to use the
term phonological processes because that is the term in
the theory.
4 Journal of The All India Institute of Speech and Hearing - Volume 40, Issue 1, January-December 2021
The theory is called natural because the children’s
simplifications of adult sound productions are due to
their phonetic (speech production) limitations. Because
children learning different languages simplify the adult
production in similar ways, Stampe proposed that
phonological processes are both universal and natural.
NPT retains the Chomskyan assumption (Chomsky,
1995) of innately given adult phonological system that
children are supposed to possess. However, in contrast
to the Chomskyan theorists, natural phonologists
believe that children do not follow some kind of rules
in learning to produce their speech sounds. Processes
are not abstract cognitive or mental rules, but they are a
product of phonetic or physiological limitations of young
children trying to master speech sounds. Children’s
speech improves as their speech production mechanism
becomes more competent and their productions better
match the adult models. Consequently, the simplification
processes fade.
Phonological Processes vs. Rules
Phonological processes are unlearned, innate, involuntary,
and natural and work at an unconscious level. Children
cannot verbalize the process they exhibit. Rules, on the
other hand, are not natural because they are not based
on physiological (phonetic) limitations. Most language
rules are characteristics of dialects of a verbal community,
and hence are learned. Learned rules may be verbalized.
Americans pronounce the word pentagon as [pεntagɑn] and
the British pronounce it is [pεntəgən]. Both are instances of
dialectal learning, not a matter of phonetic limitations of
the speakers, and hence not phonological processes. Most
speakers in either dialect (American or British) may be
able to describe the rule of how pentagon is pronounced in
their dialect. However, a child who says [top] for stop is not
following a rule. Given the child’s phonetic limitations, it
is a natural phonological process of cluster simplification,
not a learned response. The child cannot verbalize the
process of cluster reduction (Donegan and Stampe, 1979).
Having rejected phonological rules, the NPT proposes
phonological constraints, which are restrictions a
language imposes on a phonological process. Constraints
force children to overcome phonological processes. For
example, many typically learning English speaking
children may delete the final consonants. Natural
simplification as it is, the final consonant deletion process
has a constraint on it: there shall be final word consonants
in English. (It may be noted that such constraints are not
universal; words in Spanish, Vietnamese, and many
other languages have few or no final word consonants.)
Because of this constraint, typically developing children
have to master the production of final consonants and
thus eliminate that process.
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Hegde: Phonological theories: a review

Phonological Error Patterns
Whether a phonological process is normal or of clinical
interest depends on the normative information. Natural
phonological processes become of clinical interest only
when a child who, based on normative information, is
expected to produce the sounds correctly. The process of
final consonant deletion, for example, is typical (hence
not a disorder) in a 2-year-old but atypical (hence a
disorder) in a 6-year-old. Children who misarticulate
sounds their peers produce correctly have a speech
sound disorder. Main phonological processes and the
ages at which they are expected to disappear are shown
in Table 1.
NPT asserts that children suppress phonological
processes as they become more proficient in correct
speech sound productions. Children who did not
suppress their phonological processes beyond the
expected age ranges have a phonological disorder.
Evaluation of Natural Phonological Theory
NPT offers several clinical advantages to SLPs. Stampe’s
(1979) basic claim that phonological error patterns stem
from a still developing speech production mechanism
makes practical sense. Clinicians intuitively believe
that articulatory errors in typical language learners
are due to an immature articulatory system. Clinicians
find NPT’s claims more acceptable than the generative
theorists’ claim that some deeper mental processes cause
speech sound disorders. Speech sound developmental
data have documented a steady decline in speech
sound errors or patterns of errors and a corresponding
increase in sound production mastery as children grow
older and presumably gain greater control over their
speech production mechanism (see Peña-Brookes and
Hegde, 2022 for a review and evaluation of studies).
Furthermore, availability of phonological pattern
(process) assessment tools have facilitated the application
of NPT in speech sound disorders. Phonological error
patterns are a convenient way of grouping multiple
errors that may seem bewilderingly scattered. SLPs may
monitor the treated error patterns for generalized correct
productions during treatment.

Although some clinical researchers have investigated
the nonlinear optimality theory, SLPs continue to use
phonological processes of NPT in assessing children with
speech sound disorders (Peña-Brookes and Hegde, 2022).
Henceforth I use the preferred term phonological patterns
instead of processes. A vast majority of clinicians diagnose
phonological disorders in children on the basis of the age
of disappearance of phonological patterns [see Table 1].
As a scientific hypothesis, the proposal that phonetic
(physiological) limitations of typically learning children
cause speech sound errors appears plausible. At
a minimum, speech sound learning in children is
correlated with age; age is correlated with improved
speech production skills (see Peña-Brookes and
Hegde, 2022 for a review of research). That children’s
phonological processes disappear as they become more

Table  1: Major phonological processes in natural phonological theory

Phonological process Examples Ages of Disappearance
Syllable Structure Processes
  Final Consonant Deletion [bu] for books 3
  Cluster Reduction [top] for stop 4 (Clusters without /s/)
5 (Clusters with /s/)
  Unstressed Syllable Deletion [medo] for tomato 3-4
 Reduplication [wawa] for water 3
  Epenthesis (insertion of an unstressed vowel) [səpun] for spoon 8
Substitution Processes
  Stopping (substitution of stops for fricatives or affricates) [tun] for sun 3.6-4
  Liquid Gliding (substitution of a glide for a liquid) [wæbit] for rabbit 4-5
  Vocalization (substitution of a vowel for a syllabic liquid) [pepo] for paper 5
  Depalatalization (substitution of an alveolar fricative for a palatal fricative) [fis] for fish 4.6-5
  Velar Fronting (substitution of alveolars for velars) [rin] for ring 3.6
  Deaffrication (substitution of fricatives for affricates) [ʃεr] for chair 4
Assimilation Processes
  Labial Assimilation (a non-labial consonant is changed into a labial) [bʊb] for book 5
  Velar Assimilation (a non-velar is changed into a velar) [kʌg] for cup 3
  Nasal Assimilation (a non-nasal is changed into a nasal) [mɑm] for mop 3
 Voicing Assimilation (a voiceless sound is changed to a voiced or a voiced [dεn] for ten 3
sound is changed to a voiceless sound) [pit] for pig
Note: Suggested age of disappearance of phonological patterns are approximate; different sources report slightly different age levels. Information must be used only
as rough guidelines to make clinical decisions.

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Hegde: Phonological theories: a review
proficient in sound production is also consistent with the
developmental data and common sense.
In spite of its reasonable assumptions about the origin
and disappearance of phonological patterns in children,
the NPT’s has significant limitations. Its status as a
scientific theory is questionable. NPT simply restates
what investigators of speech sound learning in children
have stated since Wellman et  al.’s 1931 publication:
As children grow older, (1) their speech production
mechanism matures, (2) correct production of speech
sounds increases, and (3) the articulatory errors decrease.
This is hardly a scientific theory. Most parents of typical
speech sound learners will have concluded that much.
It is akin to the statement that as children’s motor skills
improve, they walk better. No one takes this as a serious
scientific theory of walking.
SLPs have uncovered other limitations of the NPT. A basic
problem for the clinician is the ever-expanding number
of poorly defined phonological processes or patterns.
Researchers disagree on the definition and number of
patterns that exist (Miccio and Scarpino, 2011). A  few
to more than two dozen patterns have been described.
Even with a large number of patterns recognized, some
errors of children remain unclassifiable. Distortions, a
common category of speech sound disorders, does not
fit any pattern. Errors that are more complex than the
adult model are puzzling because by definition, patterns
are simplifications. For instance, a child’s production of
yak as [ræk] is not a simplification of the adult model
(yak is thought to be simpler than ræk). Few errors that
many children exhibit do not form patterns. The typical
suggestion that fewer errors are a motorically based
articulation disorder whereas multiple, pattern-forming
errors are a phonological disorder begs a crucial question.
Do fewer errors (mild articulation disorder) have
different causes than multiple errors (severe disorder)?
Perhaps not. An affirmative answer suggests an unlikely
causation of disorders. Generally, compared to a mild
medical or behavioral disorder, a more severe disorder
may have more of the same kind of causal variables.
Therefore, the very distinction between articulation and
phonological disorders is questionable.
The existence of unique patterns across languages and
in children speaking the same language suggests that
patterns are not universal. Initial consonant deletion,
uncommon in English, may be fairly common in French,
for example. Also, some children exhibit patterns that
their peers do not (Yavas, 1994). The NPT cannot explain
such unusual patterns. Within the theory, clinicians have
no way to classify vowel errors, although others have
suggested ways of classifying them (Ball et  al., 2010;
Reynolds, 1990).
6 Journal of The All India Institute of Speech and Hearing - Volume 40, Issue 1, January-December 2021
NPT does not adequately explain how children learn to
produce their speech sounds. The statement that to master
speech sound productions, children should suppress
phonological processes does not explain learning. But
how do children suppress natural processes? In fact,
NPT does not need a suppression construct. If processes
are errors due to an immature speech production
mechanism, then a more mature mechanism will help
produce the sounds correctly. Nothing needs to be
suppressed. (Still, the other learning variables will have
to be specified.) Bernhardt and Stemberger (1998) have
found the construct of process suppression absurd. They
suggest that the construct is equivalent to proposing that
children learn to walk only when they suppress a falling
down process. Bernhardt and Stoel-Gammon (1994) point
out that positive progression, not negative suppression,
characterize skill mastery.
The need for constraints that replace phonological rules is
also unclear. Children do not learn to produce word-final
consonants because of a constraint there shall be final word
consonants in English. When they are phonetically capable,
children begin to produce word-final consonants simply
because they hear them in the speech directed to them.
NPT also shares some general limitations with other
phonological theories. In a later section, I  return to a
general evaluation of phonological theories.
Optimality: A Nonlinear Theory
As noted, the classic Chomskyan assumption that
phoneme segmentals are a bundle of independent
features that may freely combine with each other is
a linear concept. Rejecting that concept, several later
theorists have built nonlinear models in which segmental
and suprasegmental aspects of phonemes (and speech)
are organized into hierarchically arranged tiers, not as
linear strings. A nonlinear tier may be created to account
for a speech phenomenon that linear theories fail to
address. For instance, Chomsky and Halle (1968) did
not handle tonal variations in their theory. Therefore,
Goldsmith’s (1979) autosegmental nonlinear theory
inserted a tonal tier just above the sound segments.
Another nonlinear theory, the metrical theory (Goldsmith,
1990; Schwartz, 1992) is mostly concerned with the
syllable structures, stress patterns, and rhythms of
speech, all inadequately handled in the Chomsky-
Halle theory. None of these nonlinear theories have
made significant inroads into SLP. The one that has
been applied to some extent in analyzing speech sound
disorders is the optimality theory.
In addition to a hierarchical notion of phoneme
features, optimality and all other nonlinear theories
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Hegde: Phonological theories: a review
share certain common assumptions. Most nonlinear
theorists (1) redefine mental and surface representations
of the Chomskyan linear theories as input and
output representations; (2) claim to have abandoned
phonological rules and processes in favor of phonological
constraints that are universal and innate: and (3) assume that
in the minds of children, there is a representation of the sound
system which constitutes an innate universal phonological
knowledge.
Prince and Smolensky (1993) and McCarthy and Prince
(1994) are the original proponents of optimality theory
(OT). But first, what is optimality? Assume that a child
gets a speech input. (She heard her brother say “cat,” for
example.) Now the child is ready to exhibit an output.
(She is ready to imitate her brother or give a verbal
response.) But for reasons I will specify later, the child
will encounter numerous output options, including the
word cat, an approximant of that, and many that are
totally different. (The child could say any number of
different words or syllables when trying to imitate or
produce a specific word.) A  mechanism in the child’s
mind will select one of those countless options as the
most optimal to produce. (The child said something.)
That optimal output is the winner, all other potential
outputs are losers, and hence the name optimality.
In OT, phonological constraints control speech production.
Constraints are innate and universal specifications
of acceptable (and unacceptable) sound sequences in
languages. Speakers generally obey these universal
constraints. Whereas the rules of the Chomskyan
universal grammar (UG) invariably apply to all
languages, OT’s universal constraints are ranked
differently and uniquely in each language. Across
languages, the same constraint may be ranked higher
or lower.
Constraints are innate, so children need not learn them.
They only have to learn how the constraints are ranked
in their language, because the rankings are not innate.
Unlike the inviolable Chomskyan universal grammar
rules, OT’s constraints may be violated or obeyed
because even though they are universal, a specific
constraint in a language may be ranked so low that it
Table  2: Major faithfulness constraints in optimality theory
Constraint Stipulates
MAX No deletion
DEP No insertion
IDENT[feature] Don’t change features
IDENT[cont] Don’t change continuant
IDENT[laryngeal] Don’t change voiced
Note: Correct productions are faithful to the constraint.
NPT = Natural Phonological Theory.
Journal of The All India Institute of Speech and Hearing - Volume 40, Issue 1, January-December 2021 7
may be violated without consequences. There are two
major sets of constraints: faithfulness and markedness.
Faithfulness
The faithfulness constraint requires that a child’s output
(word productions) should be the same as its underlying
input representation. Identity or similarity between
inputs and outputs is faithfulness. In common terms,
correct productions of sounds and words are faithful.
If the mother said “cat” and the child said “cat,” then
the child’s correct production is faithful to the adult
model. When outputs differ from inputs, the faithfulness
constraint is violated. Then the child’s production is a
mismatch, not faithful, incorrect. Depending on the age
of the child, mismatches may be grounds for diagnosing
a phonological disorder. A  few major faithfulness
constraints are described in Table 2.
Faithfulness constraints are straightforward in their
meaning and application. When inputs and outputs
match, speech sound productions meet the faithfulness
constraints, and are judged correct. Markedness
constraints are not this straightforward in their meaning
or implications.
Markedness
Both the distinctive feature theory (Chomsky and Halle,
1968) and the natural phonological theory (Stampe, 1979)
had accepted the concept of markedness that Trubetzkoy
(1969) and Jakobson (1968) had originally introduced.
Markedness now is a mainstream linguistic concept,
not limited to OT (Haspelmath, 2006). However, it is a
dominant concept in OT.
Originally, marked meant the presence and the unmarked
meant the absence of a specific feature in a phoneme. For
example, /g/ is marked for voicing (+ voice) and /k/ is
unmarked for it (– voice). Such a binary system was in the
distinctive features theory (Chomsky and Halle, 1968).
Currently, the meaning of markedness varies across
theories, but in OT, it means sounds that are (a) complex,
(b) difficult to produce, (c) not natural, (d) infrequent
in languages, (e) abnormal, (f) unpredictable, (g) later-
Examples of violation Comment
[bu] for book Omission pattern in NPT
[pəlet] for plate Epenthesis in NPT
[wek] for lake Substitution pattern in NPT
[tun] for sun
[pik] for pig
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Hegde: Phonological theories: a review
acquired, (h) language-specific, and (i) perceptually
weak. Being the opposite of marked, unmarked sounds are
(a) simple, (b) easy to produce, (c) natural, (d) frequently
occurring in languages, (e) normal, (f) predictable, (g)
early acquired, (h) universal, and (i) perceptually strong
(Haspelmath, 2006; Hume, 2011). Natural are the features
present in most if not all languages; unnatural are those
present in only a few languages. More easily understood
sounds are perceptually strong and difficult to understand
are perceptually weak.
In OT, markedness is a set of universal and innate
constraints that presumably apply to the languages
of the world and help explain speech sound errors
(Dinnsen and Gierut, 2008). Markedness constraints are
counterintuitive in that following them is a disorder,
violating them is normal. A few major constraints are
listed in Table 3.
Languages share segments and segmental sequences
more or less commonly (Yavas, 1994). For instance,
features that are found in most if not all languages include
(1) voiced and voiceless sounds; (2) stops, especially
voiceless stops; (3) voiceless fricatives more so than voiced
ones, especially the dental-alveolar /s/; (4) nasals; (5)
the vowel /ɑ/; and (6) unrounded front vowels (e.g.,
/i/); and (7) CV (consonant-vowel) syllable structure,
among others. In OT, vowels, glides, nasals, and stops are
unmarked; they are natural, universal, innate, and do not
need the environmental input because the child already
“knows” about them (has a mental representation).
Studies on speech development have shown that children
master the unmarked and natural features sooner than
the marked and the less natural. For example, mastery
of unmarked (more natural) unrounded vowels precede
that of marked rounded vowels. Children master the
more natural (less marked) stops earlier than less natural
stops (see Peña-Brooks and Hegde, 2022 for a review of
studies).
Table  3: Major markedness constraints in optimality
theory
Constraint Stipulates Examples Comment
*COMPLEX No clusters [top] for Cluster reduction
stop pattern in NPT
*CODA No final [hæ] for hat Final consonant
consonants deletion pattern
in NPT
*FRICATIVES No fricatives [pæt] for fat Substitution
pattern in NPT
*LIQUIDS No liquids [wuk] for Substitution
look pattern in NPT
Note: Incorrect productions adhere to the constraint. Correct productions
violate the constraint. NPT = Natural Phonological Theory.
8 Journal of The All India Institute of Speech and Hearing - Volume 40, Issue 1, January-December 2021
Marked features, on the other hand, require environmental
input and learning. These include word-final consonants,
consonantal clusters, fricatives, affricates, and liquids—all
less natural, more complex, and unique to languages.
Misarticulations also are more common on less natural and
more unique sounds than on more natural and universal
sounds.
Faithfulness and Markedness Interactions
Constraints are in a constant state of tension because
they oppose each other. Speech production is a balancing
act between these two opposing forces. Speakers cannot
satisfy the opposing constraints simultaneously. When
one constraint is fulfilled, another is violated. When
one constraint is violated, another is fulfilled. Because
conflicts are unavoidable, grammar aims to (a) reduce
the number of conflicts and (b) keep violations to less
serious (lower-ranked) constraints. OT postulates that
an optimal output form (i.e., the eventual utterance) is
the best among the available choices and violates fewer
and lower-ranked constraints.
Unique ranking of universal constraints in a language
distinguishes it from all other languages. For example,
consonant singletons are simple, easy to produce, and
hence unmarked and universal whereas consonant
clusters are complex, difficult to produce, and unique to
certain languages, including English, and hence marked.
But the markedness constraint *COMPLEX (do not
produce clusters) is ranked low in English because it has
such clusters but high in Fijian because it has no clusters.
English language speakers may violate the lower-ranked
do not produce cluster constraint so they can produce the
clusters. The Fijian speakers may not violate the higher-
ranked *COMPLEX; they must be faithful to it. Essentially,
it is the ranking of constraints, not the constraints per se,
that will dictate whether certain features get produced or
not (Barlow and Gierut, 1999). Productions that violate the
lower-ranked constraints in the speakers’ language will be
acceptable (optimal); those that violate the higher-ranked
constraints will not be acceptable (non-optimal).
Vowels must not be nasal is another markedness
constraint. This universal markedness constraint quickly
ran into trouble because several languages do have
nasal vowels. English does not, except in assimilation,
and therefore, the constraint is ranked high and English
speakers cannot violate it, should be faithful to it. In
common terms, English speakers should not nasalize
their vowels, and in fact, they typically do not. However,
in Kannada or Hindi (two languages of India), some
vowels are nasalized. Therefore, the markedness
constraint vowels must not be nasalized is ranked low
in Kannada, Hindi, and many other languages with
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Hegde: Phonological theories: a review

nasalized vowels. Speakers of these languages, thanks
to the low ranking of the constraint by the English
phonologists, are permitted to violate the constraint and
produce nasalized vowels.
GEN and EVAL
In OT, two mental mechanisms are operative in speech-
language production. When there is an input to a child
(i.e., the child heard a word, say, elephant), there is a GEN
(the generator) that creates a variety of output candidates
the child can select from. The generated outputs maybe
optimal (accurate or nearly so) or nonoptimal (less
accurate or outright wrong).
The second mechanism, EVAL (the evaluator) scrutinizes
the candidates that GEN has generated and selects a
winning and optimal output that succeeds (gets said).
The winning candidate adheres to higher-ranked
constraints, violates the least number of constraints, and
violates only the lower-ranked (less serious) constraints
(Teser, 2000). The unselected candidates are the losers the
child’s EVAL will have rejected. Figure 1 illustrates how
GEN and EVAL work.
Speech Sound Disorders in
Optimality Theory
OT proposes that children’s speech sound disorders
are due to their phonological grammar ranking the
constraints differently than the ranking in the adult
grammar. A  constraint ranked higher in a child’s
phonological grammar than in the adult grammar
prevents correct production of certain sounds. A  few
examples will illustrate the OT explanations of specific
speech sound disorders. It should be noted that in all
examples, a faithfulness constraint is ranked lower in
the child’s grammar, hence violated, thus causing errors
(Barlow, 2001):
• Fronting errors are due to *DORSAL, a constraint that
prevents velar outputs.
• Final consonant deletions are due to *CODA, which bans
final consonants.
• Stopping errors (stops substituted for fricatives) are due to
*FRICATIVES, which prohibits the child from producing
fricatives.
• Cluster reductions are due to *COMPLEX, which instructs
the child not to produce sounds in clusters.
• Epenthesis is due to a failure to obey DEP, a faithfulness
constraint that tells the child not to insert an unnecessary
vowel into words [see Table 2].
• Many other kinds of errors are due to a violation of IDENT-
FEATURE, a faithfulness constraint that instructs children
to not change phoneme features of inputs in their outputs.
Evaluation of Optimality Theory
OT’s basic concepts—naturalness and markedness,
innate universal constraints and their varied rankings
across languages, and hypothetical GEN and EVAL are
all questionable because they lack empirical support.

Figure 1: A diagram illustrating the works of hypothetical GEN and EVAL in generating and selecting word productions in optimality theory. Note that the input candidate
1 is the most faithful. From A. Peña-Brooks and M. N. Hegde, 2015, Assessment and treatment of speech sound disorders in children (3rd ed., p. 119). Copyright 2015,
Austin, TX., Pro-Ed Inc. Reproduced with permission

Journal of The All India Institute of Speech and Hearing - Volume 40, Issue 1, January-December 2021 9
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Hegde: Phonological theories: a review
OT’s terms are imprecise and are used with multiple
meanings. Haspelmath (2006) has described 12 senses
in which the term markedness is used in linguistics. Such
multiple meanings and imprecise definitions make most
of the OT’s terms ineffective in any theory (Haspelmath,
2006; Hume, 2011). Consequently, OT fails to explain the
different patterns of speech production and variations
across languages.
Even if naturalness and markedness are defined precisely,
something common is not necessarily natural and what
is natural is not always simple. Conversely, something
uncommon is not inherently unnatural or something
unnatural need not be essentially complex. Because
both naturalness and markedness are dependent on how
commonly sounds and their sequences appear across
languages, the well-established statistical distribution
of frequency is sufficient to describe them. There is no
need for such pseudotechnical terms like naturalness
and markedness. As Bernhardt and Stemberger (1998)
have pointed out, naturalness and markedness cannot
be independently verified and they are circular: sound
sequences are natural because they are common, and
they are common because they are natural. Haspelmath
(2006), saying that “linguists can dispense with the term
‘markedness’ and many of the concepts that it has been
used to express” (p. 63), suggested that markedness be
replaced with phonetic difficulty. Most phoneticians, too,
believe that the relative difficulty in mastering speech
sounds is a function of the degree of articulatory effort,
acoustic complexity, and the extent of perceptual clarity
(Lowe, 1994). There is still a need to develop procedures
to measure the degree of articulatory (phonetic) difficulty,
but experimental phonetics, not phonology, is likely to
make progress on that front.
An additional questionable assumption of naturalness
and markedness, themselves of dubious heuristic value,
is that frequently occurring sounds and their sequences
are innate and do not need environmental assistance
to learn. Equally questionable assumption is that less
frequently occurring sounds have no genetic basis and
hence are entirely environmentally induced. Specific
speech sounds may occur more or less frequently, but
all may be susceptible to genetic and environmental
influences. Treatment research in speech sound disorders
has amply documented that all sounds and sequences,
regardless of variations in their frequency, are eminently
teachable and learnable (Peña-Brooks and Hegde, 2022).
Although optimality theorists claim to have dispensed
with phonological rules, their constraints are no different
than rules. It does not matter whether such linguistic
injunctions as no deletions, don’t change continuant, no
10 Journal of The All India Institute of Speech and Hearing - Volume 40, Issue 1, January-December 2021
clusters, no final consonants are constraints or rules. They
might as well be described as phonologists’ orders.
OT has not generated any speech sound treatment
procedures. OT’s effect on clinical practice has been on
the selection of treatment targets. Traditionally, easier
sounds (sounds that the child can imitate) and those
that are typically acquired earlier have been the initial
treatment targets. These are the unmarked sounds in
OT. Several treatment research studies have shown
that teaching complex, less common, or more difficult
marked sounds before treating unmarked sound errors
results in a system-wide generalization (Barlow, 2001;
Barlow and Gierut, 1999; Bernhardt and Stemberger,
2011; Bernhardt and Stoel-Gammon, 1994; Storket, 2018).
Whether this insight is indeed due to OT is uncertain.
There is nothing in OT that suggests that complex
sounds should be taught before simpler sounds. That
the teaching of complex sounds will result in system-
wide generalization is not a compelling deduction from
OT. Without any theoretical push, experimentation with
different treatment targets is an established treatment
research strategy.
Finally, GEN and EVAL are invented mechanisms. OT’s
assumption that these two mechanisms work in real
time is improbable. It is not credible that children’s GEN
suggest an infinite variety of output possibilities and the
EVAL examines all of them and selects one for output
(production) in real time. Verbal response-reaction
chains with short reaction times observed in real world
conversations render even the super-computing GEN
and EVAL theoretical fictions.
General Evaluation of Phonological
Theories
Phonology is a taxonomic and theoretical discipline
whereas SLP is an empirical and experimental discipline.
SLP shares a wider knowledge base with phonetics than
with phonology. SLPs and experimental phoneticians
(Beddor, 2015; Ohala, 1995) are committed to empirical
methods of investigation. The substance of phonology
is rational and nativist theoretical speculations. Much
of the difficulty with phonological theories stem from
a few overarching linguistic concepts: universality of
phonological grammar, children’s innate knowledge
of that grammar, and children’s rule-following.
Consequently, the empirical validity of phonological
theories is limited.
Universality
Generative language and phonological theorists
entertain a grand ambition of finding mental,
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Hegde: Phonological theories: a review
universal, eternal, and innate entities such as rules, deep
structures, constraints, processes, representations,
knowledge, and so forth. As soon as a “universal”
rule or constraint is announced to the world, someone
somewhere finds not one but plenty of embarrassing
exceptions to it. For example, a natural phonology
constraint is that there shall be word-final consonants.
But several languages of the world, including Spanish
and Vietnamese have few or no word-final consonants.
As noted before, a constraint of the OT is that vowels
must not be nasal. French and Asian languages, among
many others, have nasal vowels. Because of multiple
exceptions to every claim of language universals, the
claim is essentially false. Even within a language, such
as English or Kannada, regional dialectal variations are
so deep and wide that any theory of innate, invariable,
universal language structures becomes untenable.
Why do phonologists propose such rules and insist that
they are universal against all odds? Based on limited
observations of their own language, American English
linguists and phonologists of the generative school tend
to propose sweepingly broad theories that they insist
are both universal and innate. A  rule or a constraint
that holds good for the mainstream American English,
must be true of all languages. Chomsky (1957) started
this trend that has gotten stronger and spread wider by
the decade. Ironically, aspects of speech sound patterns
and grammar of the mainstream American English
does not apply even to several dialects of American
English, including the Southern, Appalachian, and Black
English. Anyone who has read Mark Twain’s Huckleberry
Finn would be skeptic of language universals. And
yet phonological and grammar rules derived mostly
from American mainstream English are claimed to be
universal. The world’s languages, however, being highly
variable, and culturally, socially, and locally shaped,
seem defiant of the English phonologists’ universal
rules. For the generative linguists, language variations
are a problem, a nuisance, and noise in the signal (Pisoni,
1997) that interferes with the task of developing theories
of universal uniformity.
In face of the mounting evidence that what is most
universal about languages of the world is their diversity,
not uniformity, Chomsky double downed that “there
is only one human language” (1995, 131). It must be
the American mainstream English. This assertion
is so egregious that it deserves no comment. But
most linguists of non-generative school consider the
universal grammar as either dead (Tomasello, 2009), a
myth (Christiansen and Chater, 2009; Dąbrowska, 2015;
Evans and Levinson, 2009), or useless at best (Ambridge
et al., 2014).
Journal of The All India Institute of Speech and Hearing - Volume 40, Issue 1, January-December 2021 11
In science, faulty theories are due to hasty and incomplete
observations. In this paper, I would not go into possible
geopolitical factors or racism. (See International Journal
of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 2020, 23, 7—a
special issue on linguistic racism; also see Frawley, 2007
and Kubota, 2020 on epistemological racism).
Most scientists abandon their premature theories when
replicated and convincing contrary evidence emerges.
But phonologists have a different approach. When certain
universal rules turned out to be untrue (“violated”)
in several languages, phonologists did not abandon
their invalid rules. Instead, they shielded themselves
by creating a new rule: universal rules are violable. Rules
are universal, no doubt apply to all languages, but they
do not apply to specific languages, and in which case,
speakers have permission to violate them. This is a fine
exemplar of an oxymoron. Linguistic universality is
unassailable. No amount of contrary evidence can defeat
it. This is like a government making a rule that you cannot
steal from others, and upon finding out that people are
stealing from each other, issuing a new rule: you cannot
steal from others is a violable rule; you may steal from others.
The most compelling empirical reason for rejecting
universal and innate rules is language diversity. Such
rules, if they are truly operative, can only create uniform
languages. It is true that languages share many common
elements, but it is also true that languages differ in not
so trivial ways. Language is a human activity and other
human activities, too, share common features across
people who differ in many significant ways. Instead of
an excessive concern with universality, a serious study
of language variability and change across time would
give a pause to theorists (Cousse and von Mengden,
2014; Crowley and Bowerman, 2010). It is only a study
of diversity of languages that can also detect empirically
valid, observable, and measurable variables that are
indeed more or less common across languages.
Innate Phonological Knowledge
That children have linguistic knowledge that they follow
in learning to produce speech sounds is a fundamental
assumption stemming from Chomsky’s (1957) universal
grammar hypothesis. That assumption permeates
phonology. Hayes (2004) described three kinds of
phonological knowledge speakers have. First, speakers
have a knowledge of phonological contrasts. The English
speakers, for example, know that /p/ and /b/ contrast in
the voicing feature. But in the Korean language, /p/ and
/b/ are allophonic variants depending on the context;
there is no voicing feature contrast. Therefore, the Korean
speakers would not have the knowledge of /p/ and /b/
contrast. The Korean grammar would set a phonological
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Hegde: Phonological theories: a review
default that /p/ and /b/ are the same (Hayes, 2004.
But why would the Koreans need a default rule that
/p/ and /b/ are the same? Is it because English makes
a distinction between /p/ and /b/? The assumption
seems to be that languages that do not conform to English
phonological rules need default rules that inform the
speakers that they need not worry about English rules.
Why would Korean speakers be concerned about English
/p/ and /b/ that do not exist in their language and do
not produce someone else’s speech sounds? English
distinctions are irrelevant to Korean speakers; they do
not need a default rule. Such rules can only be described
as linguistic Anglocentrism.
Second, speakers have a knowledge of legal structures
(Hayes, 2004). Phonotactics (phoneme sequences) found
in a language are legal; sequences not found in a language
are illegal. In English, for example, /bl/ sequence
is legal but a /bn/ is illegal. In optimality theory, a
higher-ranked faithfulness constraint protects what is
allowed in a language and a lower-ranked markedness
constraint prohibits what is not allowed. Phonotactics
are regularities found in sequenced speech sounds. But
in phonological theories, phonotactic regularities are
elevated to a judicial/extrajudicial status.
Third, speakers have a knowledge of alternate patterns of
pronunciation of phonemes that depend on the context.
For instance, the plural morpheme /s/ may be produced
as /z/ when it follows a voiced sound (bagz as in bags)
but as /s/ when it follows a voiceless consonant (hats
as in hats). Hayes (2004) claims that 8 to 10-month-old
infants have knowledge of such alternate pronunciation
rules. Hayes also claims that infants have the knowledge
of OT’s constraints. These are extraordinary claim about
infants’ knowledge for which Hayes offers no evidence.
The child speech development data do not support
Hayes’s (2004) claims. Typically learning children do
delete phonemes in the initial stages of speech sound
learning; they do not seem to have the knowledge of OT’s
MAX constraint. Sooner or later, they begin to produce
the sounds correctly. For the phonologist, the observation
that children do not hear certain sound sequences in their
language is negative evidence. There is a rule for that, too:
children learning their sound sequences must make no use of
negative evidence (Hayes, 2004). It is not clear how a child
(or a scientist) can discard nonexistent negative evidence.
It is ridiculousness to claim that children’s speech
productions follow some arbitrary theoretical rules that
phonologists have invented. Such rules are summary
statements of observed speech patterns in children that
reflect the speech practices of their immediate verbal
community. No child in the world has ever heard
12 Journal of The All India Institute of Speech and Hearing - Volume 40, Issue 1, January-December 2021
of linguistic rules or constraints. There are no such
rules or constraints imposed on speech or a language.
Phonologists, not children, derived those rules from
patterns of speech and language production. Rules did not
precede speech; speech preceded rules that phonologists
formulated. These rules have nothing to do with children’s
speech sound learning or their knowledge.
Some phonologists claim that children themselves
rank the OT’s phonological constraints. Children are
little linguists. For instance, Gnanadesikan (2004)
who analyzed her two-year-old daughter Gitanjali’s
(G) speech sound productions, claimed that her
daughter’s phonology differed from that of the target
English because “G still ranks certain markedness
constraints above certain faithfulness constraints.”
(p.  74). Presumably, the two-year-old child did what
her mother the linguist did. Gnanadesikan found
that simpler, easy to produce, frequently occurring
sounds and syllables (unmarked) were dominant in her
daughter’s speech samples. Compelled to explain this
puzzling phenomenon, Gnanadesikan theorized that her
two-year-old produced mostly simpler sounds because
she had ranked the markedness constraint *COMPLEX
(do not produce complex structures) above faithfulness
constraint (correct production of complex sounds). If
only G had ranked complex productions higher than
simple productions, the two-year-old child’s speech
would have been complex enough to match the adult
model (input). Gnanadesikan did not specify why her
child did not do that. Therefore, the problem lies not in a
young child’s limited articulatory skills, but in the child’s
mixed-up constraint rankings. This is but one instance
of hypothetical mechanisms displacing empirical reality.
Grammar is an autonomous agent that speaks in OT.
Non-phonologists assume that people speak. But
phonologists replace speakers with grammars. Who
produces syllables? Apparently not children or adults.
According to Gnanadesikan (2004), “. . . grammar
produces syllables. . .” (p. 74).
OT’s constraints work both the ways and shield the
theorists from conflicting data. As noted, they explain
children’s simpler and less accurate productions in terms
of their failure to promote faithfulness constraint above
*COMPLEX (no complex productions). However, if a child
unexpectedly produced complex utterances—which
happens fairly frequently—it is because the child’s
phonological grammar allowed the marked (complex)
utterances, so the child produced them (Gnanadesikan
(2004). Presence or absence of complex productions
are easily explained: the child’s grammar allowed it or
prohibited it. Observed were the speech productions;
unobserved were the grammars.
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Hegde: Phonological theories: a review
There are no explanations in OT. The theorist will have to
explain why there are constraints and why children obey
constraint such as the one that bans complex utterances.
They will have to explain why one-year-olds do not put
the faithfulness constraint at the top of the list, so they can
get ahead of themselves. Because there is no independent
evidence for the existence of constraints or the child’s
ranking of them, it is no more explanatory than saying
that children’s speech productions are simpler than that
of adults.
Speech sound production learning does not require a
knowledge of the sound systems or phonotactic rules.
Children do not know and need not know that speech
sound features are stacked up one over the other like
floors of a multistory building or laid out as a string
of flowers in front of them. They do not know OT’s
constraints or their rankings. To produce words without
voicing the initial /p/ and to produce words with voicing
the initial /b/, no child needs to know the voicing
feature of phonemes. Children just have to hear adults
produce words.
There is no empirical basis to claim that knowledge
of skills that experts develop is necessary to learn and
execute those skills. The claim that children cannot learn
to produce their speech sounds without phonological
knowledge is analogous to the patently false claim
that a person cannot learn to ride a bicycle without
the knowledge of the physical laws of motion. Ohala
(2005), an experimental phonetician, put it this way:
“Even a rock obeys the laws of physics without having
to know them” (p.  38). We eat, walk, see, and hear
without consciously or unconsciously knowing about
the physical constraints of those actions, Ohala pointed
out. Analysis of speech samples makes it clear that speech
sounds are patterned, as are other behaviors. However,
knowledge of patterns is unnecessary to learn behaviors
that form patterns; after learning patterned behaviors, a
knowledge of their patterns is unnecessary to maintain
the behaviors. Other than the language experts, no
speaker can describe the various phonological rules and
constraints. Phonologists counter this criticism by saying
that speakers have unconscious knowledge, a contradiction.
Phonological Rule Following
A statement often-repeated without offering evidence
is that language is rule-governed. Empirical linguistic
theories as well as behavioral analysis reject the view
that language learning involves rule-following. Rules
are unnecessary to learn speech sound productions.
English-speaking children do not struggle to produce
the /mb/ sequence in word-initial positions not because
the children are told that the sequence is “banned” in
Journal of The All India Institute of Speech and Hearing - Volume 40, Issue 1, January-December 2021 13
English, but simply because the children have not heard
that sequence. Children and their caregivers know
nothing about constraints that ban speech sounds or
their sequences. Children are unaware of legal and illegal
sound combinations.
Rule-following behaviors may be explicitly taught,
however. Children and adults may be taught to follow
an explicitly stated rule by reinforcing the actions the
rule specifies. Children may be taught not to touch hot
surfaces. Stop the car for the red light is a rule that drivers
are taught. Speakers of foreign languages may learn
grammar rules, follow them, and forget them when
they acquire native-like second language skills. Rule-
governed learner can usually state the rule. Only the
behaviors explicitly taught to follow stated rules are rule-
governed. Childhood speech and language learning in
the natural environment is not rule-governed. Learning
more advanced verbal skills of writing and speaking
under explicit instruction is likely rule-governed.
Rule-governed behaviors are a behavioral learning
phenomenon, but rule extraction is a scientific-analytic
activity. Scientists in all disciplines extract abstract laws
or rules from patterns they observe in the phenomenon
they study. Phonologists, too, extract rules from patterns
of speech sound production in children and adults. In
all sciences, extracted rules are succinct descriptions of
behavioral patterns, but they are not explanations. As
summary statements, phonological patterns are useful,
but they do not suggest the child is following rules. Rules
that are extracted from patterns of behaviors cannot be
driven back to the child’s mind—an undefinable and
mysterious territory.
Empirical Invalidity of Phonological
Theories
SLPs should be most concerned with the dubious
empirical validity of phonological theories. Inductive
method in which data precede theory has a better chance at
avoiding premature theories, but theoretical linguists are
not known for collecting empirical speech and language
data in naturalistic social communicative contexts. In
fact, the generative linguists have consistently denied
the importance learning a language in social contexts.
Even more astonishingly, generative grammarians had
disavowed any interest in what speakers actually do.
Chomsky and Halle (1968, p.3) had warned their readers
that their theory of phonology should not be confused
with “what the speaker and hearer actually does.” There
is no danger of such confusion. It is clear to empirical
scientists that the generative theory has nothing to
do with real speakers and their speech and language
behaviors. Paradoxically, confused are the phonologists
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Hegde: Phonological theories: a review
themselves. Most phonologists, while building theories
based on self-generated speech corpus that are removed
several steps from natural speech, nonetheless “treat
their corpora as accounts (albeit partial) of things that
speaker-hearers do” (Docherty and Foulkes, 2000, p. 115).
Ohala (1995, p. 751) had cautioned that “without having
an ‘anchor’ in the real world, phonology risks having
its claim apply only in an imaginary universe of little
interest to those outside the narrowly circumscribed
world of autonomous phonology.”
Empirical validity sinks to null when cognitivism,
mentalism, rationalism, and nativism are rolled into a
deductive theory. It is difficult to see parallels between
what the theories say speakers do and what the speakers
seem to do in social contexts. It is hard to believe that
mental mechanical devices tell children “no final
consonants,” “no clusters,” “no fricatives,” and so
forth. It appears that the function of such constraints
is to induce speech sound disorders. It is empirically
improbable that children produce all phonemes of a word
just because the hypothetical constraint (MAX) whispers
do not delete any phonemes. It is illogical to assume that
children follow the constraint “no final consonants”
when their language is full of them. It is not clear why
children’s grammar says “no fricatives” when they hear
fricative all the time in their environment. To produce
their nasalized vowels, Kannada or Hindi speaking
children do not need English phonologists’ permission
to violate the dictum no nasalized vowels. Those children
do not feel like they are violating any rule because they
know nothing about them.
There is no empirical evidence to support the claim that
when children are stimulated to say something, their
GEN gets busy generating an infinite variety of output
options, some clearly wrong [see Figure 1]. A child who
is stimulated to say “Mom,” in a social communicative
context does not think of infinite output possibilities,
including totally unrelated and irrelevant utterances (e.g.,
“bom” or “Tom”). Why would GEN suggest anything
other than the correct response? Perhaps to justify the
existence of another hypothetical mechanism EVAL,
which would have nothing to do if GEN suggested only
the correct response.
The hypothesis that child or adult speakers hierarchically
organize the different articulatory-physiologic, acoustic,
prosodic, and other aspects of speech in tiers is not
credible. It is difficult if not impossible to demonstrate
that speakers first move to the tier of segments and
then to the tier of tonal variations. When someone
says a phrase with a certain tonal (prosodic) features,
segments and tonal variations are organized neither into
downstairs-upstairs tiers nor as linear strings on a flat
14 Journal of The All India Institute of Speech and Hearing - Volume 40, Issue 1, January-December 2021
surface. Speech consists of integrated movements that
advance rapidly. At the instance of production, properties
of speech are not separate components of tiers or strings.
When phonologists find that some aspect of speech
production is missing in their theory, they do not move
to collect data to fill the gaps in their theory. Instead,
they draw a new graph, a box, a figure, a linguistic tree,
or some such graphic design, insert the name of the
missing phenomenon into the design, and consider the
job done. Noticing that the classic Chomsky and Halle
(1968) theory did not address tonal variations of speech,
Goldsmith (1990) inserted a tier of tones and placed it above
the sound segments in his new diagram. There is nothing
empirical about such drawing-table theory building.
Generative phonological theorists set aside a staggering
number of empirical variables that are known to be
important in speech-language learning. Such theorists
make no room for environmental stimulus conditions
that trigger speech and language responses. A standard
linguistic criticism of language learning hypothesis
was that nobody teaches the rules of phonology and
linguistics to young children, and hence, speech and
language could not be learned. Several significant
lines of investigation briefly reviewed in the following
paragraphs have contradicted this often-repeated
statement.
That most parents do not explicitly teach the rules of
phonology and grammar does not mean that they do
not teach speech and language skills. These skills are
learned implicitly, not by explicit teaching of linguistic
rules. Contingencies of verbal interactions teach speech-
language skills, not explicit rule-teaching (Hegde, 2010).
A  line of investigation on implicit learning of speech
and language has reliably confirmed this view. Implicit
learning is learning in natural contexts in which children
interact with their caregivers, other family members,
peers in schools, and in larger social contexts (see
Arnon, 2019; Ellis, 2015; Segar, 1994; Rebuschat, 2015 for
overview of studies).
Another vast body of research on infant-directed
speech (IDS) has confirmed that caregiver-infant social
interactions help teach speech and language skills in an
implicit manner (Segar, 1994). Parents do offer natural
consequences for infant speech attempts. There is
plenty of modeling-imitation-and-modeling loop that
reinforces infants’ speech. Multiple replicated studies
have demonstrated that IDS facilitates both speech
and language learning. Consistent with the behavioral
view of language learning, caregiver-infant verbal
interactions are contingent on each other, reinforce each
other’s behavior, and are consistent with the methods
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of teaching verbal skills to young children (Bomstein,
et al., 2015; Eaves et al., 2016; Goldstein and Schwade,
2008; Masataka, 1993; Miller, 2014; Ramirez-Esparza
et al., 2017; Segar, 1994; Thiessen et al., 2005). The empty
mechanical operation of input the phonologists propose
does not capture the complexity or the significance of
IDS that promotes children’s learning of speech sounds
and other elements of language.
For lack of space, I  will only briefly mention a few
other lines of investigation that have affirmed the role
of social interactions in teaching speech-language skills
to children. A  series of studies on statistical learning
has shown that the frequency with which children
hear the speech sounds and their sequences in words
is significantly correlated with speech sound mastery.
Generally, children master sooner the sounds they her
more frequently than those that they hear less frequently
(see Arnon, 2019; Frost and Armstrong, 2019; Saffran,
2020 for reviews of research). Similarly, in learning
speech and language skills, sociolinguistic studies have
emphasized the importance of social interactions, not
innate universal grammars. Sociolinguists also have
documented significant diversity, not universality, of
languages (Foulkes and Docherty, 2006). Finally, the
exemplar and usage-based phonological theories have
postulated that children learn speech and language by the
exemplars they hear frequently. Exemplars are utterances
adults produce and children hear. Children who
repeatedly hear exemplars learn to produce them. Usage-
based phonology, much more empirical than generative
phonology, suggests that speech sound learning is made
possible by their frequent use (productions) in social
contexts (Cousse and von Mengden, 2014; Guy, 2014;
Tomasello, 2003). These theories collectively suggest
that the frequency with which children hear the speech
sounds in words, social interactions, and exemplars the
caregivers provide is helpful in learning speech sounds
(see Peña-Brooks and Hegde, 2022 for more detailed
review of phonological theories). Those suggestions
are consistent with the behavioral analysis of speech-
language learning (Hegde, 2010).
Variables related to ethnocultural conditions and the
child’s family environment do not figure in phonological
theories. Effects of speech-language development of
parental education, especially the educational level of
mothers, the socioeconomic conditions of the family,
child poverty, and abuse and abandonment, have been
well-documented (Peña-Brooks and Hegde, 2022), but
such variables play no role in theories that emphasize
innate universal rules for speech and languages learning.
Several phonological theorists ignore the influence
of well-established phonetic factors in speech sound
Journal of The All India Institute of Speech and Hearing - Volume 40, Issue 1, January-December 2021 15
production (Behrman, 2023; Raphael et  al., 2012).
An exception is Stampe’s (1979) natural phonology
which takes phonetic and physiological factors
into consideration. The OT adherents are especially
vulnerable to the charge that they woefully ignore the
workings of the speech production mechanism, its
limitations in children, and phonetic sequencing factors.
Aerodynamic factors, physical and acoustic features
of speech, physiologic, motoric, and neuromuscular
variables also play no role in deductive and generative
phonological theories.
A pervasive mentalism pushes generative phonological
theories, especially the OT, outside the boundaries of
empirical sciences. They make untestable assertions. In
generative grammar theories, language phenomenon
of significance happens in an unobservable mental
underground. Observable speech-language behaviors
are superficial products of such hypothetical mental
mechanisms as deep or cognitive structures, universal
grammars, GEN and EVAL, and input representations.
As Ohala put it, “Explanation is, after all, reducing
the unknown to the known, not to further unknown,
uncertain, or unprovable entities” (Ohala 1996; p. 262),
but phonological theories complicate and obscure speech
and language. Therefore, it is a puzzle as to why SLPs,
who need to observe, measure, experiment, and stay
close to data in their theories get attracted to obscure
mentalism that banishes observable phenomena into
unobservable territory. It is better for the clinician to heed
Ohala’s conclusion: “there may be no need for features,
underspecification, autosegmental notation, feature
geometry, or similar speculative devices” (2005, p. 35).
Imaginary mechanisms offer no clinical advantage and
most likely a hindrance to developing natural science
accounts of speech and language.
Financial support and sponsorship
Nil.
Conflicts of interest
I have no known conflict of interest to disclose.
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under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-
NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 License, which allows
others to remix, tweak, and build upon the work non-
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the new creations are licensed under the identical terms.
For reprints contact: WKHLRPMedknow_reprints@
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Hegde: Phonological theories: a review
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How to cite this article: Hegde MN. A critical review of phonological
theories. J All India Inst Speech Hear 2021;40:3-17.