Utterance-Finality — Framing the Issues

Several matters pertaining to the notion of “utterance-finality” are presented here, as a way of framing the issues that the serious investigation of this notion entails. Attention is paid to matters of description, synchronic analysis, and diachrony, with particular focus on the use that has been made of utterance-final phenomena in language as a way of explaining apparent exceptions to the Neogrammarian principle of regularity of sound change. Implications for phonological theory are suggested as well.