1 - A requiem for Lexical Phonology?

Summary

Shortly after the appearance of the first main-stream book on Lexical Phonology (Mohanan 1986), Gussmann published an incisive and detailed review (1988), which – as is strangely more apparent now than it was then – captured the mood of the time. In it, he attacked not just the book under review but the entire programme of Lexical Phonology, meticulously dismantling Mohanan (1986) chapter by chapter and concluding: ‘If the critical assessment of lexicalism presented here and elsewhere were to be accepted, then Mohanan's book would very likely come to stand as a requiem for Lexical Phonology’ (Gussmann 1988: 239). As at that time phonologists were beginning to abandon in droves not only derivationalist theories but also English – one of Mohanan's main concerns – Gussmann's review could not have come at a better time for some, and at a worse time for others. Such was the mood of the time.

The title of Mohanan (1986), The theory of lexical phonology, misleadingly suggested that the book reported, and indeed was, the state-of-theart. It wasn't anything like that; but the misled reviewer can be forgiven for responding in kind. Mohanan (1986) was an easy target not only for a reviewer hostile to the programme but, perhaps even more so, for the theory-internal and therefore constructively minded critic.