Phonological Evidence

In working on markedness, I came to realize that many (perhaps most) of the descriptive work that I relied on are inadequate as sources of evidence for Generative theories of the phonological module. Grammars are rarely written with the goals of cognitive science in mind; they often aim to teach, spread religious ideas, or are in an incompatible descriptivist tradition that does not provide appropriate data or evidence for cognitive scientists.

My concerns have broadened to worrying about how one goes about identifying and evaluating appropriate evidence for Generative theories of phonology. I am writing a book about this topic. I've given a few talks about it, and some of my preliminary thoughts are in the publications listed below.

References

de Lacy, Paul (2014).  Evaluating evidence for stress systems.  In Harry van der Hulst (ed.) Word stress: Theoretical and typological issues, Cambridge University Press, pp. 149-193.
[pdf; Data from EC (docx) (pdf)]

de Lacy, Paul (2009). Phonological evidence. In Steve Parker (ed.). Phonological argumentation: Essays on evidence and motivation. Equinox Publications, ch.2. [abstract] [chapter] [handout]

de Lacy, Paul (2007).  Quality of data in metrical stress theory.  Cambridge Extra magazine. Issue 2.  [article]