René Kager - Böcker

This outstanding 2004 volume presents an overview of linguistic research into the acquisition of phonology. Bringing together well-known researchers in the field, it focuses on constraints in phonological acquisition (as opposed to rules), and offers concrete examples of the formalization of phonological development in terms of constraint ranking. The first two chapters situate the research in its broader context, with an introduction by the editors providing a brief general tutorial on Optimality Theory. Chapter two serves to highlight the history of constraints in studies of phonological development, which predates their current ascent to prominence in phonological theory. The remaining chapters address a number of partially overlapping themes: the study of child production data in terms of constraints, learnability issues, perceptual development and its relation to the development of production, and second-language acquisition.

In many languages, word-formation is restricted by principles of prosody that organise speech into larger units such as the syllable. Written by an international team of leading linguists in the field of prosodic morphology, this book examines a range of key issues in the interaction of word-formation and prosody. It provides an explanation for non-concatenative morphology which occurs in different forms (such as reduplication) in many languages, by an interaction of independent general principles of prosodic and morphological well-formedness. Surveying developments in the field from the 1970s, the book describes the general transition in linguistic theory from rule-based approaches into constraint-based ones, and most of the contributions are written from the perspective of Optimality Theory, a rapidly developing theory of constraint interaction in generative grammar.

In many languages, word-formation is restricted by principles of prosody that organise speech into larger units such as the syllable. Written by an international team of leading linguists in the field of prosodic morphology, this book examines a range of key issues in the interaction of word-formation and prosody. It provides an explanation for non-concatenative morphology which occurs in different forms (such as reduplication) in many languages, by an interaction of independent general principles of prosodic and morphological well-formedness. Surveying developments in the field from the 1970s, the book describes the general transition in linguistic theory from rule-based approaches into constraint-based ones, and most of the contributions are written from the perspective of Optimality Theory, a rapidly developing theory of constraint interaction in generative grammar.