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Language has
many interesting, apparently complicated effects. Linguists typically explain these by discrete rules on
discrete objects, such as “a /stop t/ should be transformed to a /flap t/
when in the middle of an unstressed syllable”. This is phonetics – operations on discrete entities. Phonology is the physical implementation
of these discrete entities, and is often considered relatively
unimportant. I’ll show in this talk
that with a physically reasonable model, the phonetics (I.e. the strategy
that the brain uses to control the articulators) can explain much that is
normally considered to be phonology.
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