Lexical Phonology: lexical and postlexical derivations

Abstract

Paul Kiparsky's paper (1982) ‘From Cyclic to Lexical Phonology’ is the most interesting recent development in the line of research originated by Kiparsky (1973) and Mascaró (1976). The major task in this research is the investigation of the ways in which rules apply to phonological structures. Kiparsky (1973) makes the very pointed observation that some phonological rules apply exclusively in derived environments. An environment is derived if either (i) or (ii) is true:(i) the structure which is relevant to the application of the rule arises at morpheme boundaries: the environment is thus derived morphologically;(ii) the structure which is relevant to the application of the rule arises in the course of phonological derivation due to the application of an earlier phonological rule: the environment is thus derived phonologically.