PHONOLOGY

Generative phonology
Phonological theory has witnessed a substantial change in the nature of its basic orientation.
These changes have been marked with the development of new theoretical frameworks. In
the 1960’s, generative phonology emerged and was developed as a reaction to the various
assumptions made in the previous approach of structural phonology (SP).
Structural phonology was first brought up by Leonard Bloomfield (1887-1949) in his ‘Item
and Arrangement model’ and Edward Sapir (1884-1942) in his ‘Item and Process Model’
(Crystal, 2008). These scholars postulate an abstract phonological representation, which is
changed into a phonetic representation by processes that “delete, add, and change sounds”
(Chomsky and Halle, 1968: 35).
In this model, the relations between the words are seen as “processes of derivation”, for
instance, the verb ‘made’ is the product of a derivation process, which alters the velar /k/
into the alveolar /d/. Lies at the heart of structural phonology, is the notion of ‘phoneme’
which was regarded as the most basic unit and a fundamental unit of organization of sound
systems (ibid.)
Generative Phonology is largely dominated by the basic assumptions made by Chomsky and
Halle in their monumental book ‘The Sound Pattern of English’ (SPE, 1986). These two
linguists proposed the notion of ‘underlying representation’. In fact, Chomsky and Halle
(1968) distinguish between two levels of representation: underlying phonological level and
surface phonetic level. The underlying level consists of a set of phonological rules that
applies to the underlying forms to yield surface phonetic representation. A representation at
either one of these levels is a linear sequence of units and the representation of underlying
form is mapped onto the phonetic form through the application of an ordered set of rules.
Chomsky and Halle attempt to state explicitly the phonological rules underlying the speech
sounds of native English speakers. For instance, the vowel length rule, which specifies vowels
as long before voiced consonants, takes roughly the following form:
(1) [Vowel] 🡪 [+long] / __ [+cons +voiced]
Nonlinear phonology
In the 1970s, critics started to find some problems with some of SPE’s basic assumptions. The
first break from this tradition came from the study of three types of phenomena: syllable
structure, stress, and tone, all of them leading to a richer conception of phonological
representations. Hence, several approaches were advanced in the hopes to remedy the
situation.
● Autosegmental phonology: in this theory phonological representations are no longer
seen as simple rows of segments, with all phonological processes taking place at one
single level. John Goldsmith (1976) proposed to represent tonal features on a
separate level (tier) associated with but autonomous from the segmental tier. These
two tiers are linked together via association lines.
● CV phonology: in this theory, the different tiers or layers are linked via association
lines which are subject to the well-formedness condition. The C element in the
segmental tier dominates a non-syllabic segment whereas the V-element dominates a
syllabic segment. This eliminates the need for the feature [syllabic].

● X-slot theory Vs. Moraic theory: Skeletal theory is different from the moraic theory in
that each position in the word is marked by an x-slot, consonants and vowels. Nonlinear
phonologists suggested replacing the CV- tier by pure empty positions mediated between
the various tiers. Instead of Cs and Vs in the syllable hierarchy, X is a skeleton slot
unspecified for syllabicity.
● The moraic approach, replaces the skeletal units (Xs) by moras. Employing this
approach, moras do not merely represent a segment (as X did) but play two different
roles: they count as phonological positions (i.e. they are phonological primitives) and
also represent the contrast between light (monomoraic) and heavy syllables (Watson,
2002).