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A note on the genealogy of research traditions in modern phonology

This brief note is concerned with the notions of genealogy and continuity in linguistic research.1 Our natural methods of work require of us some beliefs about the origins of our intellectual tools, and these beliefs play an active role in the unfolding of our field's progress. In short, these beliefs matter, and they matter to all of us. Furthermore, any insights to be gained in this area are likely to have a salutary effect on our profession. For these remarks, I will focus on the area of African language phonology, and its relationship to phonological theory. Many other choices could have been made, and thus to some extent the choice is arbitrary; but it can hardly escape even the casual observer of the current phonological scene that it stands in profound debt to work on African languages. Our task, we may say, is to elucidate what such a statement of intellectual debt consists in. It would be disingenuous to press too far the arbitrariness of the choice of African-language phonology, for part of the choice rests on the personal, working experience of this writer. The choice is a reasonable one in other, less subjective ways: African lingiistics is a particularly unified field, experiencing remarkably little in the way of schisms based on the language or country of the investigators, or the theoretical background of the researcher. There is some of this, to be sure, but conferences and publications continue to show a thorough integration of workers in North America, Africa and Europe. Moreover, it is by no means a straightforward task, in many cases, to distinguish phonological theory and work on African-language phonology. To some degree, the difference between the two lies in the eye of the beholder, and this will hold true in most areal sub-disciplines. What may strike one reader today as a highly theoretical work may seem in forty years' time to be hardly theoretical at all, perhaps no more than a passing description of some