The Role of Surface Phonetic Constraints in Generative Phonology

Abstract

Although morpheme-structure conditions state generalizations about the distribution of morphophonemes of a language, there is no mechanism in the current theory of generative phonology that directly captures generalizations about phonetic patterns. This paper discusses the need for explicitly formulated surface phonetic constraints (SPC's) that state distributional constraints of segments and features at the phonetic level. On the one hand, SPC's are explicit statements about surface phonotactics and redundancies; on the other hand, they function as phonetic structure well-formedness conditions in sentence generation. SPC's will have direct relevance to discussions of the psychological reality of internalized phonological structure, rule conspiracy, lexical borrowing, and phonological change.