Phonological opacity
Encyclopedia
Phonological opacity was first defined by Kiparsky as a measure of how far the context or the consequences of a phonological process
may be determined only by examining the surface structure
. It was by Kiparsky defined in the following way.
A phonological rule P give by
is opaque if any of the following surface structures exists:
Phonological rule
A phonological rule is a formal way of expressing a systematic phonological or morphophonological process or diachronic sound change in language. Phonological rules are commonly used in generative phonology as a notation to capture sound-related operations and computations the human brain performs...
may be determined only by examining the surface structure
Transformational grammar
In linguistics, a transformational grammar or transformational-generative grammar is a generative grammar, especially of a natural language, that has been developed in the Chomskyan tradition of phrase structure grammars...
. It was by Kiparsky defined in the following way.
A phonological rule P give by
is opaque if any of the following surface structures exists:- instance of A in the
environment; - instance of B created by P in an environment other than
; - instance of B not derived from P that occur in the context
.