ABSTRACT
The projection of phonetics and phonology to the geosocial level raises numerous profound questions, including the following: How are phonological systems of different regions linked into a single suprasystem? How does the connection between systems and suprasystem take place in the speaker’s (psychological) realm and in the sociological domain? With respect to variation, there are facts that have not been sufficiently explained within any given theoretical model. Nevertheless, for structuralism, combinatory variants are considered combinatory only within a given speech community; thus, the same elements do not combine in the same way in all communities sharing a language, that is, in all its geolects. How are, then, these variants organized within a supralinguistic system? Moreover, while optional individual variants are particular by definition, it is possible to find certain regularity in the alternation of variants within a community, a social group or even an individual. How should these regularities be represented in a phonological model?
