While each of the papers in this volume has its specific individual topic, collectively they address a more general issue, that of the relationship between the phonological component and the phonetic component. This issue encompasses at least three large questions. First, how, in the twin processes of producing and perceiving speech, do the discrete symbolic or cognitive units of the phonological representation of an utterance map into the continuous psychoacoustic and motoric functions of its phonetic representation? Second, how should the task of explaining speech patterns be divided between the models of grammatical function that are encoded in phonological representations and the models of physical or sensory function that are encoded in phonetic representations? And third, what sorts of research methods are most likely to provide good models for the two components and for the mapping between them?

Previous answers to these questions have been largely unsatisfactory, we think, because they have been assumed a priori, on the basis of prejudices arising in the social history of modern linguistics. In this history, phonology and phonetics were not at first distinguished. For example, in the entries for the two terms in the Oxford English Dictionary each is listed as a synonym for the other; phonology is defined as “The science of vocal sounds (= PHONETICS)” and phonetics as “The department of linguistic science which treats of the sounds of speech; phonology.”