Psychological Reality in Phonology: A Theoretical Study

by Per Linell

Generative linguists have always claimed that the transformational models of language offer the best descriptive accounts of language. But they have often made a further and more ambitious claim for these that they have some psychological validity and represent our mental organisation of linguistic knowledge. The models are therefore supposed to explain at least some aspects of how, as speakers and listeners, we produce, perceive and understand all human utterances. Dr Linell attacks this claim and particularly its application to phonology and offers fundamental criticisms of the 'orthodox' school of generative phonology associated with Chomsky and Halle. His own positive proposals stress the importance of surface phenomena as opposed to abstract underlying forms and lead to a new typology of phonological rules and a new consideration of the relations between phonology and phonetics and between phonology and morphology. The book will interest a wide range of linguists and some psychologists as well as specialists in phonology and phonetics.

311 pages, Hardcover

First published October 25, 1979

About the author

Professor in the interdisciplinary (thematic) research organisation in Communication Studies (tema K) at Linköping University 1981-2005 and in Language and Culture (Linköping) 2006-2011. Senior professor in Communication at Göteborg University (Department of education, Communication and Learning) 2011–2015, and since then Professor emeritus there. PhDhc at Helsinki university in 2014.