readjustment rules

A class of RULES in GENERATIVE GRAMMAR which help to relate the SYNTACTIC COMPONENT to the PHONOLOGICAL component. The rules make modifications in SURFACE STRUCTURES by effecting individual changes in the shapes of certain FORMATIVES in the context of other formatives. The output of these rules then provides the input to the phonological rules. For example, readjustment rules would take the formative ‘past’ (i.e. past TENSE) and generally replace it by d; however, in such cases as sing, the rules would provide a special FEATURE specification to ensure that i would be converted to a.