Developments leading towards generative phonology

Abstract This chapter discusses key figures in the 1950s and 1960s whose work led to the theory of generative phonology. Generative phonology developed in part from the collaboration of Roman Jakobson and Morris Halle, continuing the Prague School approach by elaborating and modifying earlier ideas concerning distinctive features and relating them to mathematical models from the then-new field of information theory. Another source was the formalization of American structuralist phonology by Zellig Harris and the critique of that theory by Noam Chomsky. These sources merged in the collaboration of Chomsky and Halle and their criticisms of prevailing notions of the phoneme. Another fruitful area of collaboration was their account of English stress and the cycle. We will show how the emerging synthesis both built on and diverged from earlier ideas, and discuss some of the controversies of the years leading up to the appearance of The Sound Pattern of English.