ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that Lexical Phonology provides a satisfactory answer to the problem of the definition of a level of representation between the underlying representation and the surface representation. The crucial assumption made by Lexical Phonology is that some of the phonological generalizations of a language are stated in the lexicon, the morphological module which incorporates the semantic, phonological and morphological information of the language's morphemes, while others are stated outside it. Lexical rules are structure-preserving in the sense that their output is confined to segments that already exist in underlying representations. Native speakers would appear to make reference to the lexical representation when determining whether two phonetically different sounds are 'the same sound'; their judgements refer to the lexical segment inventory. The phonological surface representation which ultimately results from the phonological grammar consists of some configuration of phonological features and structures.
