Concreteness in Generative Phonology presents major topics in French phonology and morphology within the theoretical framework of generative grammar. The concrete analyses advocated in Bernard Tranel’s study constitute a radical departure from the abstract solutions proposed in previous generative treatments. Abundant internal and external evidence anchors the concrete approach, which is based on the recognition of the lexical nature of nasal vowels, the absence of protective schwas, and the necessity of a rule-feature analysis for h-aspire words. French phonology has been a well-known subject of controversy, both because French is an influential Indo-European language and because the complexity of the data has made it difficult to decide certain issues. This integrated account brings to bear data generally omitted from consideration, demonstrates the critical role that substantive evidence plays as a tool of investigation, and provides a data-based comparison between two approaches within the same broad generative framework. Taking advantage of certain theoretical developments, Tranel presents each problem set of data alongside previous and logical possible analyses and clearly lays out the arguments for and against each analysis. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1981.

Generative Phonology: Description and Theory provides a basic understanding of the fundamental concepts of generative phonology and the applications of these concepts in further study of phonological structure. This book is composed of 10 chapters and begins with a survey of phonology in the overall model of generative grammar and introduces the principles of phonetics to. The subsequent chapters introduce the fundamental concept of a phonological rule that relates an underlying representation to a phonetic representation and this concept is applied to the analysis of morphophonemic alternation. These topics are followed by a presentation of phonological sketches of four diverse languages in terms of rules relating underlying and phonetic representations, as well as the major corpus-internal principles and techniques of phonological analysis. The discussion then shifts to the theoretical aspects of phonology, the various degrees of abstractness, and the proposals to limit the divergence between underlying and phonetic representation. Other chapters deal with some of the issues revolving around the representation of sounds and the various hypotheses as to how phonological rules apply to convert the underlying representation to the phonetic representation, particularly the kinds of considerations that motivate rule-ordering statements. The last chapters explore the major notational devices commonly employed in the formulation of phonological rules and the role of syntactic and lexical information in controlling the application of phonological rules. This book is intended primarily for linguistics and phonologists.

Principles of Generative Phonology is a basic, thorough introduction to phonological theory and practice. It aims to provide a firm foundation in the theory of distinctive features, phonological rules and rule ordering, which is essential to be able to appreciate recent developments and discussions in phonological theory. Chapter 1 is a review of phonetics; chapter 2 discusses contrast and distribution, with emphasis on rules as the mechanism for describing distributions; chapter 3 introduces distinctive features, natural classes, and redundancy; chapter 4 builds on the concept of rules and shows how these can account for alternations; chapter 5 demonstrates the use of rule ordering; chapter 6 discusses abstractness and underlying representations; chapter 7 discusses post-SPE developments, serving as a prelude to more advanced texts. Each chapter includes exercises to guide the student in the application of the principles introduced in that chapter and to encourage thinking about theoretical issues. The text has been classroom tested.

Generative phonology is a developing field of linguistics, and is producing both rival interpretations and models. This book provides a clear and accessible evaluation of the debate. It provides a detailed overview of the main models, revealing that they are often complimentary rather than contradictory, and how these can be interconnect and be used together to explore the subject.

This book is relevant for phonologists, morphologists, Slavists and cognitive linguists, and addresses two questions: How can the morphology-phonology interface be accommodated in cognitive linguistics? Do morphophonological alternations have a meaning? These questions are explored via a comprehensive analysis of stem alternations in Russian verbs. The analysis is couched in R.W. Langacker's Cognitive Grammar framework, and the book offers comparisons to other varieties of cognitive linguistics, such as Construction Grammar and Conceptual Integration. The proposed analysis is furthermore compared to rule-based and constraint-based approaches to phonology in generative grammar. Without resorting to underlying representations or procedural rules, the Cognitive Linguistics framework facilitates an insightful approach to abstract phonology, offering the important advantage of restrictiveness. Cognitive Grammar provides an analysis of an entire morphophonological system in terms of a parsimonious set of theoretical constructs that all have cognitive motivation. No ad hoc machinery is invoked, and the analysis yields strong empirical predictions. Another advantage is that Cognitive Grammar can identify the meaning of morphophonological alternations. For example, it is argued that stem alternations in Russian verbs conspire to signal non-past meaning. This book is accessible to a broad readership and offers a welcome contribution to phonology and morphology, which have been understudied in cognitive linguistics.