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2.3 ›The Sound Pattern of English‹ (ChomskyChomsky, Noam & HalleHalle, Morris 1968)

2.3.0 Background information

ChomskyChomsky, Noam and HalleHalle, Morris’s work is coherent with Chomsky’s previous findings. It supplements Chomsky’s approach to syntax with a theorytheory of phonologyphonology. Some of its main tenets are:1

 The neo-Bloomfieldianneo-BloomfieldianBloomfieldian term ›phonemicsphonemics‹ was rejected and ›phonologyphonology‹ was used in its place.

 Phonology is an autonomous component of grammargrammar.

 Underlying phonemic sequences are transformed to phonetic representations that are realized by speakers.2

 The term ›phonemephoneme‹ was rejected and substituted by bundles of binary features such as [+voiced], [-voiced].

2.3.1 KuhnianKuhnian revolutionrevolutionKuhnian

MurrayMurray, Stephen O. (1994: 238) proposes the following hypothesis:

(T15)

It is generative phonologyphonology that ignited a scientificscientific revolution.evolutionevolutionscientific

HymesHymes, Dell & FoughtFought, John (1981) [1975], MurrayMurray, Stephen O. (1994), HarrisHarris, Randy Allen (1993a) and KoernerKoerner, E.F. Konrad (1989) all state that Syntactic StructuresSyntactic Structures as the direct continuation and syntactic extension of the work of Zellig S. HarrisHarris, Zellig S. did not bring about significant intellectual innovations and thus never provoked resistance in neo-Bloomfieldianneo-Bloomfieldians. Based on his investigations, which we have already reported on in Section 2.1.2.6.1, Murray (1994: 238) concludes that »[w]hat outraged neo-Bloomfieldians was not the theorytheory of syntax, but the dismissal of phonemicsphonemics« and that the disagreements in the 1950s and 60s reached their culmination in arguments around phonologyphonology rather than syntax. According to Murray, the dismissal of phonemics in linguistics was a much more provocative step than anything that ChomskyChomsky, Noam could have said about syntax or the conflict between behaviorismbehaviorism and mentalismmentalism (Harris is of a similar opinion, cf. Harris 1993a: 59–61). He makes reference to Archibald HillHill, Archibald A.’s famous memoir in which Hill writes that he had got on well with transformationaltransformation grammarians until his »darling, the phonemephoneme« (Hill 1980: 75) was attacked. Murray draws a counterfactual conclusion: if this interpretation is correct and if one accepted KuhnKuhn, Thomas S.’s approach, then it would be better to deem HalleHalle, Morris (1959) and Chomsky & Halle (1968) revolutionaryrevolutionary instead of Syntactic Structures or AspectsAspects (Murray 1994: 238–239). Consequently:

(SP15)

If we were to accept the terms ›scientificscientific revolution‹revolutionscientific and ›paradigm‹paradigm with respect to generative phonologyphonology as the basic terms of the historiographyhistoriography of generative linguistics in the framework of Kuhn,Kuhn, Thomas S. then its central hypothesis would be (T15).