Languages differ in their sound patterns, but these differences are, to a large extent, systematic. One goal of Universal Grammar (Chomsky 1957, 1965) is to account for the systematic patterns which are attested across languages. Toward this end, Universal Grammar is considered to contain a set of phonological primitives such as features, and some restrictions on their combination. However, in rule-based phonology, it is assumed that rules are part of the grammar of an individual language. By their very nature, rules describe operations. As such, they are not well-suited to express restrictions on the ways in which segments may combine when no overt operation is involved. To account for such restrictions, Chomsky & Halle (Sound Pattern of English (SPE): 1968) supplemented rules with Morpheme Structure Constraints (MSCs) which define the possible morpheme shapes that a particular language allows (see also Halle 1959). Thus, in SPE, both MSCs and rules played a role in accounting for the phonological patterns observed in languages.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.35970 |
| Date | January 1998 |
| Creators | Kawasaki, Takako, 1968- |
| Contributors | Piggott, G. L. (advisor), Good, Heather (advisor) |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Doctor of Philosophy (Department of Linguistics.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001656604, proquestno: NQ54507, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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