Seminar paper from the year 2009 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: A, University of Wales, Bangor, course: Phonology, language: English, abstract: Lexical Phonology (LP) is one of the numerous phonological approaches, which has been established after the publication of Chomsky’s and Halle’s (1968) phonological theory the Sound Pattern of English (SPE). The model of Lexical Phonology, which is based on Paul Kiparsky (1982) as well as Halle and Mohanan (1985), is especially characterized by the connection of phonology, morphology, and the lexicon as well as their influence on each other. It contradicts many of SPE’s main theses and thoughts and became one of the leading phonological theories in the 1980s. This essay provides a sketch of LP and its constraints and conventions. This model is illustrated by using some examples of the various components of this approach. Furthermore, the differences between LP and Postlexical Phonology are pointed out. After this section, the controversies of this theory are discussed.

In Lexical Strata in English, Heinz Giegerich investigates the way in which alternations in the sound patterns of words interact with the morphological processes of the language. Drawing examples from English and German, he uncovers and spells out in detail the principles of 'lexical morphology and phonology', a theory that has in recent years become increasingly influential in linguistics. Giegerich queries many of the assumptions made in that theory, overturning some and putting others on a principled footing. What emerges is a formally coherent and highly constrained theory of the lexicon - the theory of 'base-driven' stratification - which predicts the number of lexical strata from the number of base-category distinctions recognized in the morphology of the language. Finally, he offers accounts of some central phenomena in the phonology of English (including vowel 'reduction', [r]-sandhi and syllabification), which both support and are uniquely facilitated by this new theory.

Studies in Lexical Phonology

This book presents a description of the phonology and morphology of the nominal class system in Fula, a dialect which displays 21 nominal classes. These are identified by suffixes, which can attach to nominal, verbal and adjectival stems. The main objective of this work is to show, through a lexical analysis, that there are only two monomorphemic marker variants, and that the distribution of these variants is predictable.

This book has two main goals: the re-establishment of a rule-based phonology as a viable alternative to current non-derivational models and the rehabilitation of historical evidence as a focus of phonological theory. Although Lexical Phonology includes several constraints such as the Derived Environment Condition and Structure Preservation, intended to reduce abstractness, previous versions have not typically exploited these fully. The model of Lexical Phonology presented here imposes the Derived Environment Condition strictly; introduces a new constraint on the shape of underlying representations; excludes underspecification; and suggests an integration of Lexical Phonology with Articulatory Phonology.

This book contains some of the material which originally appeared in my Ph. D. thesis Lexical Phonology, submitted at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, but it can hardly be called a revised version of the thesis. The theory that I propose here is in many ways radically different from the one that I proposed in the thesis, and there is a great deal of new data and analyses from English and Malayalam. Chapter VI is so new that I haven't even had the time to try it out on my friends. As everyone knows, research is a collective enterprise, even though an individual's name appears on the first page of the book or article. I would think of this book as a joint project involving dozens of people, in which I acted as the project coordinator, collecting suggestions from a wide variety of sources. Four major influences on what the book contains were Morris Halle, Paul Kiparsky, Mark Liberman, and Joan Bresnan. I learned the ropes of doing research on phonology, phonetics, and morphology from them, and almost everything that I discuss in this book owes its shape ultimately to one of them. Among the others who contributed generously to this book are: Jay Keyser, James Harris, Douglas Pulleyblank, Diana Archangeli, Donca Steriade, Elizabeth Selkirk, Francois Dell, Noam Chomsky, Philip Lesourd, Mohammed Guerssel, Michel Kenstovicz, Raj Singh, Will Leben, Joe Perkell, Victor Zue, Paroo Nihalani. P. Madhavan, and Stephanie Shattuck-Hafnagel.

This volume explores a variety of aspects of second language speech, with special focus on contributions to the field made by (primarely) generative linguists looking at the sounds and sound systems of second language learners. "Second Language Phonology" starts off with an overview of second language acquisition research in order to place the study of L2 speech in context. This introductory chapter is followed by an outline of traditional approaches to investigating interlanguage phonology. The third chapter consists of a discussion of relevant aspects of a learning theory that must be included in a treatment of how people learn sound systems. The next three chapters focus on particular aspects of the mental represenation of phonological competence; segments, syllables, and stress, respectively. The penultimate chapter deals with issues related to the mechanisms that govern the changing of interlanguage grammars over time. The volume ends with a summary of the issues raised throughout the text.