語言學家長久以來一直對心理學應該在語言學理論中起什麼作用有所爭議。本文無意介入形式學派和功能學派的傳統論戰。但本文倡導採用心理學的方法，而不一定其概念，來檢測語言學論斷。這即是說，透過量化的分析，發展詳盡的模型，來聯結假設的心智本質和所觀察的語料。我們採用這種較懷疑的態度來分析兩個音韻學議題：其一為南島語系的巴宰語之增音和母音調和，其二為台灣手語和美國手語之手形類型比較。在這兩個個案研究中，聯結模型的方法對某些頗
具共識而未被質疑的結論提出了挑戰，卻也同時強化了另外一些結論的可信度。

Linguists have long debated the proper role of psychology in grammatical
theorizing. Rather than taking the traditional formalist or functionalist positions in this debate, this paper instead advocates testing grammatical claims using the methods, but not necessarily the concepts, of psychology. This means developing explicit models of the links between hypothesized mental entities and observed data, often with the use of quantitative analysis. This more skeptical approach is applied in analyses of two phonological issues: epenthesis and vowel harmony in the Formosan language Pazih, and a comparison between the handshape inventories of Taiwan Sign Language and American Sign Language. In both case studies, the linking model approach undermines certain conclusions that might otherwise have been accepted uncritically, but at the same time it strengthens our confidence in others.