Rich Reduction: Sound-segment residuals and the encoding of communicative functions along the hypo-hyper scale

Managing and, ideally, explaining phonetic variation has ever since been a key issue in the speech sciences. In this context, the major contribution of Lindblom's H&H theory was to replace the futile search for invariance by an explainable variance based on the tug-of-war metaphor. Recent empirical evidence on articulatory prosodies and the involvement of reduction in conveying communication functions both suggest the next steps along the line of argument opened up by Lindblom. Specifically, we need to supplement Lindblom's explanatory framework and revise the speaker-listener conflict that lies at the heart of the tug-of-war metaphor. The author's suggestion would be to "offshore" the tug-of-war metaphor and replace it by the ocean metaphor of Bolinger (1964), with the ups and downs at the surface of the ocean representing the speaker's variation along the hypo-hyper scale and wavelength corresponding to the time domain of the reduction variation.