Introduction

Abstract

In many ways, the theory of generative phonology launched by Chomsky & Halle (1968) (= SPE) is a continuation, not a total rejection, of some of the central concerns of the classical phonemic theory that preceded it. The SPE theory stood firmly on the foundations built by its predecessor: both assumed the need for a phonetic representation in terms of strings of segments which abstracted away the linguistically irrelevant properties of speech; both premised a more abstract representation, namely, a phonemic or underlying representation, in order to capture the regularities of phonetic representations; and both attempted to encode certain kinds of morphological information, required by the phonological rules, in terms of juncture symbols like + and #. The principal divergence between the two approaches lay in the answer to the question: what are the levels of representation in phonological theory? The answer that classical phonemic theory yielded was that there are three levels: phonetic, phonemic and morphophonemic.1 SPE abandoned the intermediate level, its (systematic) phonemic level approximating the morphophonemic level of the earlier theory.KeywordsPhonological ProcessPhonological TheoryRule ApplicationWord StructureLexical RuleThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.