Tobias Scheer - Böcker

Following up on the Guide to Morphosyntax-Phonology Interface Theories (2011), written from a theory-neutral point of view, this book lays out the author’s approach to the representational side of the interface. The book is thus about how information is transmitted to phonology when an object is inserted into phonological representations (as opposed to the derivational means, i.e. phase theory today). The idea of Direct Interface is that diacritics such as hash-marks in SPE or prosodic constituency since the early 80s, which mediate between morpho-syntax and phonology, are illegal in a modular environment where computational systems can only process domain-specific vocabulary. Direct Interface instead holds that only truly phonological vocabulary can carry morpho-syntactic information. It is shown that of all representational objects only syllabic space qualifies. Couched in CVCV (or strict CV), i.e. Government Phonology, this insight is then applied in detailed case studies of Belarusian, Corsican, Greek and the exhaustive lexical inventory of sonorant-obstruent-initial words in 13 Slavic languages,. In this sense, the book is the 2nd volume of A Lateral Theory of Phonology (2004).

This book presents a development of Jean Lowenstamm's idea that phonological constituent structure can be reduced to a strict sequence of non-branching Onsets and non-branching Nuclei. The approach at hand is known as 'CVCV', and emerged from Government Phonology. Since its very beginnings in the early 80s, the central claim of this theory has been that syllable-based generalisations are due to lateral relations among constituents, rather than to the familiar arboreal structure. This book shows that Standard Government Phonology did not go far enough in implementing this idea. CVCV completes the missing steps: structure and causality are fully lateralised. Detailed discussion is offered how basic phonological objects and processes such as Codas, closed syllables, long vowels, geminates, syllabic consonants, vowel-zero alternations, closed syllable shortening, compensatory lengthening, lenition and the like can be represented within the CVCV frame. The first part of the book is called "What is CVCV ?". It presents the properties of the theory. The second part focuses on the reasons why it is worthwhile considering CVCV a valuable and viable approach. The primary goal of the book is not to engage the dialogue with other phonological theories. Rather, it aims at establishing a player in the general game: defining the properties of a theory is always prior to its comparison with other models. In the current OT-dominated phonological scene, then, CVCV appears as a true theory of the 80s insofar as it is representational at core: representations exist and are primitive, rather than arising as accidental results from a heterogeneous set of constraints. The original analyses presented in this book are grounded in the languages that the author is best familiar with, i.e. (Western) Slavic, French, German and some Semitic. Particular attention is paid to diachronic evidence in its relation to the synchronic state of languages.

There are books on tone, coronals, the internal structure of segments, vowel harmony, and a couple of other topics in phonology. This book aims to fill the gap for Lenition and Fortition, which is one of the first phenomena that was addressed by phonologists in the 19th century, and ever since contributed to phonological thinking. It is certainly one of the core phenomena that is found in the phonology of natural language: together with assimilations, the other important family of phenomena, Lenition and Fortition constitute the heart of what phonology can do to sound.The book aims to provide an overall treatment of the question in its many aspects: historical, typological, synchronic, diachronic, empirical and theoretical. Various current approaches to phonology are represented.The book is structured into three parts: 1) properties and behaviour of Lenition/Fortition, 2) lenition patterns in particular languages and language families, 3) how Lenition/Fortition work. Part 1 describes the properties of lenition and fortition: what counts as such? What kind of behaviour is observed? Which factors bear on it (positional, stress-related)? Which role has it played in phonology since (and even before) the 19th century? The everything-you-always-wanted-to-know-about-lenition-and-fortition philosophy that guides the conception of the book supposes a descriptive, generalisation-oriented style of writing that relies on a kind of phonological lingua franca, rather than on theory-laden vocabulary. Also, no prior knowledge other than about general phonological categories should be required when reading through Part 1. The goal is to provide a broad picture of what lenition is, how it behaves, which factors it is conditioned by and what generalisations it obeys. This record may then be used as a yardstick for competing theories.Part 2 presents a number of case studies that show how Lenition/Fortition behave in a number of languages that include systems which are notoriously emblematic for Lenition/Fortition: Celtic, Western Romance, Germanic and Finnish.Finally, Part 3 is concerned with the analysis of the patterns that have been described in Parts 1 and 2. Given their analytic orientation, Part 3 chapters are theory-specific. They look at the same empirical record, or at a subset thereof, and try to explain what they see. Even though Part 3 chapters are couched in a specific theoretical environment that most of the time supposes prior conceptual knowledge, authors have been asked to assure theoretical interoperability as much as they could.

This book reviews the history of the interface between morpho-syntax and phonology roughly since World War II. Structuralist and generative interface thinking is presented chronologically, but also theory by theory from the point of view of a historically interested observer who however in the last third of the book distills lessons in order to assess present-day interface theories, and to establish a catalogue of properties that a correct interface theory should or must not have. The book also introduces modularity, the rationalist theory of the (human) cognitive system that underlies the generative approach to language, from a Cognitive Science perspective. Modularity is used as a referee for interface theories in the book. Finally, the book locates the interface debate in the landscape of current minimalist syntax and phase theory and fosters intermodular argumentation: how can we use properties of morpho-syntactic theory in order to argue for or against competing theories of phonology (and vice-versa)?