Phonological opacity is a term used in
phonology. It was first defined by
Kiparsky as a measure of how far the context or the consequences of a
phonological process may be determined only by examining the
surface structure. Kiparsky defined it in the following way:
A phonological rule
P,
![](http://info.babylon.com/onlinebox.cgi?rt=GetFile&uri=!!ARV6FUJ2JP&type=0&index=3904)
, is opaque if any of the following surface structures exists:
- instance of A in the
environment; - instance of B created by P in an environment other than
; - instance of B not derived from P that occur in the context
.