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BISYLLABIC LAXING RULE: VOWEL PREDICTION IN LINGUISTICS AND LANGUAGE LEARNING
Author(s) -
Dickerson Wayne B.
Publication year - 1980
Publication title -
language learning
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.882
H-Index - 103
eISSN - 1467-9922
pISSN - 0023-8333
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-1770.1980.tb00321.x
Subject(s) - vowel , linguistics , phonology , phonological rule , consonant , generative grammar , psychology , spelling , mid vowel , theoretical linguistics , artificial intelligence , computer science , formant , philosophy
Research to help learners of English use spelling clues to predict the vowel and consonant sounds as well as the stress of words has revealed a rule simplification which has practical and theoretical implications. This paper shows that the well‐known Trisyllabic Laxing Rule is a subcase of a much simpler and more general vowel quality rule, the Bisyllabic Laxing Rule. On the practical side, the Bisyllabic Laxing Rule gives ESL students a way to predict vowel qualities which heretofore they could only guess at. On the theoretical side, the rule (and others like it) challenges the conventional representation of underlying vowels and the use of vowel alternation rules in the generative description of English phonology.