The Mystery of Austronesian Final Consonant Loss

Within Evolutionary Phonology, recurrent sound patterns are argued to be a direct consequence of recurrent types of phonetically based sound change. Common phonological alternations like final obstruent devoicing, placeassimilation, intervocalic consonant lenition, and unstressed vowel deletion are shown to be the direct result of phonologization of well-documented articulatory and perceptual phonetic effects. Synchronic markedness constraints of structuralist, generativist, and optimality approaches are abandoned, and replaced, for the most part, with historical phonetic explanations that are independently necessary. Under the general Evolutionary Phonology approach, any recurrent sound pattern, like Austronesian final consonant loss, that does not lend itself to phonetic explanation is problematic.