In this commentary, I discuss why, despite the existence of gradience in phonetics and phonology, there is still a need for abstract representations. Most proponents of exemplar models assume multiple levels of abstraction, allowing for an integration of the gradient and the categorical. Ben Ambridge’s dismissal of generative models such as Optimality Theory (OT) is problematic because OT not only allows for the abstract, but can also handle a variety of phenomena, including gradient representations, and similarity among output forms.

中文翻译：

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语音学中的抽象需求：《关于安布里奇的评论》（2020年）

在这篇评论中，我讨论了为什么尽管语音和语音学上存在梯度，但仍然需要抽象表示。示例模型的大多数支持者都假设了多个抽象级别，从而允许将梯度和分类集成。本·安布里奇（Ben Ambridge）否决了诸如Optimality Theory（OT）之类的生成模型是有问题的，因为OT不仅允许抽象，而且还可以处理多种现象，包括梯度表示和输出形式之间的相似性。