''The Sound Pattern of English'' (frequently referred to as ''SPE'') is a 1968 work on
phonology (a branch of
linguistics) by
Noam Chomsky and
Morris Halle. In spite of its title, it presents not only a view of the
phonology of English
Like many other languages, English language, English has wide variation in pronunciation, both History of the English language, historically and from List of dialects of the English language, dialect to dialect. In general, however, the regiona ...
, but also contains discussions of a large variety of phonological phenomena of many other languages. The index lists about 100 such languages. It has been very influential in both the field of phonology and in the analysis of the English language. Chomsky and Halle present a view of phonology as a linguistic subsystem, separate from other components of the
grammar, that transforms an underlying
phonemic sequence according to rules and produces as its output the
phonetic form that is uttered by a speaker. The theory fits with the rest of Chomsky's early theories of language in the sense that it is
transformational; as such it serves as a landmark in Chomsky's theories by adding a clearly articulated theory of phonology to
his previous work which focused on
syntax
In linguistics, syntax () is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure ( constituency) ...
.
Overview
''The Sound Pattern of English'' has had some influence on subsequent work. Derivatives of the theory have made modifications by changing the inventory of segmental features, considering some to be absent rather than having a positive or negative value, or adding complexity to the linear, segmental structure assumed by Chomsky and Halle. Its treatment of phonology as rules that operate on features, as well as its particular feature scheme, survive in various altered forms in many current theories of phonology. Some major successor theories include
autosegmental phonology
Autosegmental phonology is a framework of phonological analysis proposed by John Goldsmith in his PhD thesis in 1976 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
(MIT).
As a theory of phonological representation, autosegmental phonology develop ...
,
lexical phonology and
optimality theory.
Chomsky and Halle represent speech sounds as bundles of plus-or-minus valued features (e.g. vocalic, high, back, anterior, nasal, etc.) The phonological component of each lexical entry is considered to be a linear sequence of these feature bundles. A number of context-sensitive rules transform the underlying form of a sequence of words into the final
phonetic form that is uttered by the speaker. These rules are allowed access to the tree structure that the syntax is said to output. This access allows rules that apply, for example, only at the end of a word, or only at the end of a noun phrase.
The influence of SPE has led to rules of the form given in SPE,
A→B / recontext _ postcontext/nowiki>, often being called "SPE-style rules" or "SPE-type rules".[https://digital.lib.hkbu.edu.hk/linguisticglossary/PDF-HO/SPE-type%20rule.pdf ]
Editions
*1968: Chomsky, Noam and Halle, Morris. ''The Sound Pattern of English''. New York: Harper & Row.
Related works
* Goyvaerts, Didier L. and Pullum, Geoffrey K. (eds.) (1975) ''Essays on the Sound Pattern of English''. Ghent: Editions Story-Scientia.
* Halle, Morris and Mohanan, K. P. (1985) "Segmental phonology of Modern English". ''Linguistic Inquiry''; 16, 57–116.
* Hayes, Bruce (1982) " Extrametricality and English stress". ''Linguistic Inquiry''; 13, 227–76.
* Ross, John Robert (1972) "A reanalysis of English word stress". In: ''Contributions to Generative Phonology'', ed. Michael Brame, pp. 229–323. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.
* Stampe, David (1973) "On chapter nine". In: ''Issues in Phonological Theory'', ed. Kenstowicz, Michael and Charles W. Kisseberth, pp. 44–52. The Hague: Mouton.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sound Pattern Of English, The
1968 non-fiction books
Books by Noam Chomsky
English phonology
English orthography
Cognitive science literature
Harper & Row books
Phonology books
Generative linguistics