Generative phonologists share the goal of modeling the internalized grammars that allow members of a linguistic community to produce and understand utterances they have not previously encountered. But while most generativists assume that the internalized grammar maps lexical to surface representations, they may disagree on the nature of that mapping, the makeup of the mental representations of phonological structure, and the role of universal well-formedness constraints in grammar. This chapter surveys analyses of data from multilinguals, foreign language learners, and loanword adapters within different generative models, exploring both strengths and limitations of competing approaches. Issues addressed include the role of phonological vs. phonetic structure, the relationship between the production grammar and the perception grammar, and the role of putative innate learning biases vs. factors such as input frequency and perceptual salience.

Basic principles of generative phonology, as codified in SPE, and later developments within this framework, including metrical phonology, lexical phonology, autosegmental phonology, and underspecification theory. The role of cyclicity. The rise of Optimality Theory and the difficulties encountered in this framework in accounting for opaque relationships.