Phonological Theories: A Diachronic Perspective as a Benchmark

Dear Colleagues,

Sound change has been addressed by various different phonological theories, but often without an explicit critical comparison between the specific phonological model adopted and existing competing phonological models. This is exactly the topic of this Special Issue—taking sound change as a benchmark for evaluating competing phonological models.

In the last 50 years, phonological theories have been proposed in which the classical linear representation of sounds as unordered features matrices (Sound Pattern of English, Chomsky and Halle 1968) has been replaced by structured representations, starting in the 70s and 80s with the development of metrical (Liberman and Prince 1977, Hayes 1981) and autosegmental phonology (Goldsmith 1976). The relevance of the syllable and the foot has been highlighted by, among others, Clements and Keyser (1983) and Hayes (1995). The internal structure of segments has led to the development of different models of feature geometry (Clements 1985, Clements and Hume 1995). However, instead of crystallizing into a generally adopted theoretical model, phonological models have been drifting apart. Classic Government Phonology (Kaye, Lowenstamm and Vergnaud 1990) has led to later different versions, such as Strict CV (Scheer 2004), C/V Alignment theory (Carvalho 2017, 2023), Radical CV Phonology (Van der Hulst 2020), GP 2.0 (Pöchtrager 2006) and strict CV metrics (Faust and Ulfsbjorninn 2025). Feature geometrical models of the segment have been challenged by Element (Ewen 1995) and Particle (Schane 1984) models. The advent of Optimality Theory (Prince and Smolensky 1993) and Articulatory Phonology (Browman and Goldstein 1989) has sometimes led to a shift of attention away from phonological structure to phonological computation and has led to different versions of Optimality Theory, such as Stratal OT (Bermúdez–Otero 2005) and Harmonic Serialism McCarthy 2010 next to classical strictly parallel OT (Prince and Smolensky 1993).

A great deal of these different theoretical approaches have been applied to diachronic change. For instance, early non-linear phonology and Optimality theory have been applied to French historical phonology (Jacobs 1989, Gess 1996). Government Phonology (in different versions) has been applied to lenition and fortition (Carvalho, Scheer and Ségéral 2008) and more recently Strict CV (Scheer 2004) has been extensively applied to the historical phonology of French in the Grande Grammaire Historique du Français. Optimality Theory has been applied to phonological change, in general, for example by Holt (2003) who also provides a bibliography of diachronic studies within the field of OT.

A next step forward in phonological theorizing, given that the above-mentioned theoretical phonology approaches to diachronic change had as a focus of highlighting the benefits of the specific approach used to a better understanding of diachrony, does not seem to lie in proposing even more phonological models, but in taking diachronic change as a benchmark to compare and evaluate existing theories on their respective descriptive and explicative adequacy.

This Special Issue, “Phonological Theories: A Diachronic Perspective as a Benchmark”, is dedicated to this end and seeks to collect articles that explicitly address the above-mentioned challenge—to compare and evaluate the explanatory power of existing phonological models when applied to diachronic change.

We request that prior to submitting a manuscript, interested authors initially submit a proposed title and abstract of 400-600 words summarizing their intended contribution. Please send it to the Guest Editors (haike.jacobs@ru.nl) and (jombtc@gmail.com) or to Languages Editorial Office (languages@mdpi.com). Abstracts will be reviewed by the Guest Editors for the purposes of ensuring proper fit within the scope of the Special Issue. Full manuscripts will undergo double-blind peer review.

Tentative Completion Schedule

Abstract Submission Deadline: 12 June 2026
Notification of Abstract Acceptance: 10 July 2026
Full Manuscript Deadline: 6 November 2026

Reference

Bermúdez-Otero, Ricardo. 2018. Stratal Optimality Theory. The Routledge handbook of phonological theory, 100-134. Routledge.

Browman, Catherine and Louis Goldstein. 1989. Articulatory gestures as phonological units. Phonology 6: 201–251.

Carvalho, Joaquim Brandão de, Tobias Scheer and Philippe Ségéral (eds.). 2008. Lenition and Fortition. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Carvalho, Joaquim Brandão de. 2017. Deriving sonority from the structure, not the other way around: A Strict CV approach to consonant clusters. The Linguistic Review 34: 589-614.

Carvalho, Joaquim Brandão de. 2023. The paradox of Portuguese /Vr/ rhymes: Disentangling weight from length via structure-based sonority. Glossa 8: 1-23.

Chomsky, Noam and Morris Halle.1968. The sound pattern of English. New York: Harper & Row.

Clements, Nick. 1985. The geometry of phonological features. Phonology Yearbook 2: 223–252.

Clements, Nick and Elisabeth Hume. 1995. The internal organization of speech sounds. In John Goldsmith (ed.), The handbook of phonological theory. Cambridge: Blackwell. 245–306.

Clements, George Nick and Samuel Keyser. 1983. CV-phonology. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Ewen, Colin. 1995. Dependency relations in phonology. In John Goldsmith (ed.), The handbook of phonological theory. Cambridge: Blackwell. 570–585.

Faust, Noam and Shanti Ulfsbjorninn. 2025. The Typology of Weight in Strict CV Metrics: A Challenge to Moraic Theory. Linguistic Inquiry, 10.1162/ling.a.58

Gess, Randall. 1996. Optimality theory in the historical phonology of French. PhD dissertation. University of Washington.

Goldsmith, John. 1976. An overview of autosegmental phonology. Linguistic Analysis 2: 23-68.

Hayes, Bruce. 1981. A metrical theory of stress rules. PhD, MIT, Cambridge, MA.

Hayes, Bruce. 1995. Metrical stress theory: Principles and case studies. Chicago: Chicago University Press.

Holt, Eric. 2003. Optimality Theory and Soud Change. Berlin: Springer.

Jacobs, Haike. 1989. Nonlinear studies in the historical phonology of French. PhD dissertation, Nijmegen University.

Kaye, Jonathan, Jean Lowenstamm and Jean-Roger Vergnaud. 1990.

Constituent structure and government in phonology. Phonology 7: 193-231.

Liberman, Mark and Alan Prince. 1977. On stress and linguistic rhythm. Linguistic Inquiry 8: 249-336.

McCarthy, John. 2010. Harmonic Serialism Supplement to Doing Optimality Theory. http://works.bepress.com/john_j_mccarthy/108.

Pöchtrager, Markus. 2006. The Structure of Length. PhD dissertation, University of Vienna.

Prince, Alan and Paul Smolensky. 1993. Optimality Theory: Constraint interaction in generative grammar. Technical Report 2. New Schane, Sanford. 1984. The Fundamentals of Particle Phonology. Phonology Yearbook 1: 129-155.

Scheer, Tobias. 2004. A lateral theory of phonology: What is CVCV, and why should it be? Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Van der Hulst, Harry. 2020. Principles of Radical CV Phonology. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Prof. Dr. Haike Jacobs
Prof. Dr. Joaquim Brandão de Carvalho
Guest Editors

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• sound change
• phonological structure
• phonological theories