Chapter 8 Phonology in Universal Grammar Brett Miller, Neil Myler, and Bert Vaux 8.1 Introduction: Definitions and Scope In order to investigate the phonological component of Universal Grammar (UG), we must frst clarify what exactly the concept of UG involves. 1 Te terms ‘Universal Grammar’ and ‘Language Acquisition Device’ (LAD) are ofen treated as synonymous, 2 but we believe that it is important to distinguish between the two. We take a grammar to be a computational system that transduces conceptual-intentional representations into linear (but multidimensional) strings of symbols to be interpreted by the various physi- cal systems employed to externalize linguistic messages. It thus includes the traditional syntactic, morphological, and phonological components, but not phonetics, which converts the categorical symbols output by the grammar into gradient representations implementable by the body. Bearing the above defnition of ‘grammar’ in mind, we take ‘Universal Grammar’ to refer specifcally to the initial state of this computational system that all normal humans bring to the task of learning their frst language (cf. Hale and Reiss 2008:2; and chapters 5, 10, and 12). Te phonological component of this initial state may contain, inter alia, rules (the ‘processes’ of Natural Phonology Stampe 1979), violable constraints (as in Calabrese’s 1988, 1995 marking statements or Optimality Teory (OT)’s markedness and 1 Authors are listed in alphabetical order. Tanks to James Clackson, Ahrong Lee, Dave Odden, Ian Roberts, Bridget Samuels, Oktor Skjærvø, Patrick Taylor, and Jefrey Watumull for helpful comments on aspects of this chapter. 2 Compare for instance Chomsky’s (1968, 1972, 2006) characterization of the LAD with his 2007 defnition of UG as ‘the theory of the initial state of FL [the faculty of language],’ which encompasses the senses of both UG and the LAD defned in this section.