A Phonological Rule Tester

The design and implementation of a system to
alleviate the problem of rule evaluation for the 
linguist in the area of phonology are presented.  It
permits the user to define, on-line, sets of rules 
statable within the framework presented in The Sound
Patterns of English by Chomsky and Halle, 1968, 
to define phonemes as bundles of specified distinctive
features, to define data as strings of phonemes 
with associated grammatical structure, to test the effect
of applying rules to the data, and to store 
both the definitions and results.  The rule application
facility described in detail was implemented 
by translating linguistic rules to rules in FLIP, a
format-directed list processor embedded in LISP. 
 This made the system construction easy while providing
sophisticated capabilities for the linguist. 
 The system is written in BBN LISP on the Scientific
Data System 940 computer and is designed to be used 
on-line in interactive fashion, with control returned
to the user after each command is executed.

CACM November, 1968

Borrow, D. G.
Fraser, J. B.

phonology, rule tester, linguistics, transformational
grammar, LISP, format-directed list processing, 
on-line systems

3.42 4.13 4.22

CA681108 JB February 21, 1978  2:41 PM

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