''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 has wide variation in pronunciation, both historically and from dialect to dialect. In general, however, the regional dialects of English share a largely similar (but not identical) phonological system. Amon ...

, 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 In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language. For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-west ...

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.

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 In linguistics, Optimality Theory (frequently abbreviated OT) is a linguistic model proposing that the observed forms of language arise from the optimal satisfaction of conflicting constraints. OT differs from other approaches to phonological ...

. 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 In linguistics, extrametricality is a tool for prosodic analysis of words in a language. In certain languages, a particular segment or prosodic unit of a word may be ignored for the purposes of determining the stress structure of the word. For ...

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