''The Sound Pattern of English'' (frequently referred to as ''SPE'') is a 1968 work on

phonology Phonology (formerly also phonemics or phonematics: "phonemics ''n.'' 'obsolescent''1. Any procedure for identifying the phonemes of a language from a corpus of data. 2. (formerly also phonematics) A former synonym for phonology, often pre ...

Noam Chomsky Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American professor and public intellectual known for his work in linguistics, political activism, and social criticism. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is also a ...

and Morris Halle. In spite of its title, it presents not only a view of the

phonology of English English phonology is the system of speech sounds used in spoken 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 En ...

, but also 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 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 In linguistics, grammar is the set of rules for how a natural language is structured, as demonstrated by its speakers or writers. Grammar rules may concern the use of clauses, phrases, and words. The term may also refer to the study of such rul ...

, that transforms an underlying

phonemic A phoneme () is any set of similar speech sounds that are perceptually regarded by the speakers of a language as a single basic sound—a smallest possible phonetic unit—that helps distinguish one word from another. All languages con ...

sequence according to rules and produces as its output the

phonetic Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds or, in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech are phoneticians ...

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 (constituenc ...

Overview

''The Sound Pattern of English'' has had substantial 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, lexical phonology and

optimality theory 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 analysis, which ty ...

. 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 In the field of linguistics, specifically in syntax, phonetic form (PF), also known as phonological form or the articulatory-perceptual (A-P) system, is a certain level of mental representation of a linguistic expression, derived from surface stru ...

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".

Editions

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 Books about the English language