Rule Ordering

The distributional properties of sound in natural languages are explained by appeal to a level of underlying structure in addition to the level of observed phonetic or surface representation (chapter 1: underlying representations), and to a function that maps underlying representations into surface representations. This function has been conceived since the beginning of generative grammar as an ordered set of rules. In this chapter I will first introduce the main properties of rule ordering and the arguments for ordering rules (§1), and I will review various proposals to modify rule ordering in early generative phonology (§2), including cyclic ordering (§3). In §4 I discuss feeding, bleeding, and similar interactions in more detail, §5 discusses serial ordering and parallel approaches, and §6 draws some conclusions.