Rethinking reduction and canonical forms

We conclude the book’s reflections on reduction and reduced forms by exploring the complementary concept of canonical forms, which has profoundly shaped research on sound segments and their realization. Canonical forms have been described as symbolic, linear, and minimalistically contrastive representations, as in the case of phonological transcriptions of words. They have been conceived as mental word templates that can be eroded step by step in speech production, and then have to be reconstructed in speech perception. As a consequence, in theories focusing on canonical forms, reduced forms have often been relegated to energy efficiency or mere performance accidents. Drawing insights from (a) the history of linguistics (with a focus on the reasons behind the long-standing success of canonical forms) and (b) the book’s contributing chapters (with a focus on how the study of reduced forms can inform linguistic theory), we identify four directions into which reduction research must be extended in the future with empirically rather than canonically defined reference forms. These are reduction patterns and reference forms in the area of prosody, reinforcement or strengthening as the antithesis of speech reduction, factors for predicting degree of reduction and their phonetic results, and, with regard to the latter, the separate contribution of reduction to communicative function. These research directions will help us to reassess our understanding of the dichotomy between canonical and reduced forms.