Seisei-Oninron no Rekisi to Tenbou (The History and Future Development of Generative Phonology: A Handbook-Style Festschrift for Prof. Shin-ichi Tanaka on the Occasion of his 60th Birthday)

This book is a festschrift compiled to celebrate Professor Shin-ichi Tanaka (Graduate School of Arts and Sciences), who became 60 years old in June 2024. While books celebrating 60th birthdays typically compile research papers or essays on a variety of topics, this book is structured as a single academic volume, positioned as an “encyclopedic overview of Generative Phonology.” Its aim is to provide an overview of the history and development of phonology, from Chomsky and Halle's (1968) The Sound Pattern of English, considered the dawn of Generative Phonology, to the latest phonological theories based on experimental and statistical methods, organized by era and theme. While phonological theory has developed in various forms throughout history and around the world, this book’s distinctive feature lies in its compilation of that history in a single volume.
 
Many books have been published both in Japan and abroad as overviews of phonology. However, there has likely never been a comprehensive overview that untangles the history and development of phonological research. This book focuses on the issues that have been raised in each era and how these issues have been overcome to advance phonological research. As a history of phonology like no other before, this book is a one-stop resource for many language researchers and general readers interested in linguistics.
 
While the first half of the book discusses the past and present of Generative Phonology, the second half, a “roundtable discussion,” invites representatives from both formal theoretical and experimental/statistical research to delve deeper into the future, predicting its provable direction. Having a single researcher discuss the future of phonology could result in an inaccurate and biased discussion. The roundtable format is chosen because it offers a valuable opportunity to bring together experts with differing goals and methodologies from a variety of perspectives for open discussion. Rather than descending into aimless discussion, the book delves deeply into the interests of phonology in relation to linguistically significant topics and issues, and how phonology should (and should not) develop in the future in order to respond to these interests, making it well worth a read.
 
Incidentally, at the Phonology Forum 2025, held at Chuo University on August 27, 2025, a special symposium entitled “The ‘Current State’ of Generative Phonology----From the Frontline of Japanese Language Research” addressed topics that extend beyond those in this book. In other words, the focus was on the “present” rather than the “past” or “future,” and cutting-edge developments and research results from representative theories were reported using Japanese as an example. A summary of this was published in issue 29 of Phonological Studies (edited by the Phonological Society of Japan), so please refer to that as well.
 

(Written by TANAKA Shin-ichi, Professor, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences / 2025)