The Phonology of the World's Languages – Serie

This book offers a comprehensive account of the phonological structure of modern Turkish within the framework of recent linguistic models. While phenomena at both the segmental and suprasegmental levels are discussed, the emphasis is on the latter, with analysis of phonological processes that extend over a number of different domains. Lower-level prosodic constituents, including syllables, feet, and prosodic words, are incorporated into a general theory alongside higher-level constituents - the phonological phrase and the intonational phrase - on the assumption that phonological structure is hierarchical in nature and that phonological representations consist of more than a single linear sequence of segments. The approach employed here draws on theories of both representation - Prosodic Phonology and Autosegmental Phonology - and computation, in the form of Optimality Theory. An overarching theme that emerges in every chapter is that not only regular but also apparently “exceptional” phonological forms demonstrate a systematic pattern, and that both can be captured by the same grammar. The volume provides a critical synthesis of research in Turkish phonology, as well as offering new analyses and data from a theoretically-oriented perspective.

As is typical of African languages, there is little published material on Kimatuumbi, a Bantu language spoken in Tanzania. The grammatical sketch and lexicon published by Krumm in 1912 give no indication of vowel length and tone which are two of the most interesting and complex phonological properties of the language. The descriptive account of these properties and of rule interaction in Kimatuumbi phonology bears on a nember of important theoretical issues, including theories of interaction between phonology and syntax, lexical phonology, the geometric representation of vowel features, and the theory of prosodic representations. This study both broadens our understanding of the structure of African languages and provides data which are crucial for resolving certain questions in contemporary phonological theory.

Portuguese emerged from vulgar Latin during the course of the third century. Influential in its development were successive invasions by Germanic peoples, Visigoths, and Moors, the latter of whom were finally evicted in the thirteenth century. As a consequence of the newly-independent kingdoms imperial achievements, Portuguese is the national language of Brazil and the official language of several African countries. Maria Helena Mateus and Ernesto dAndrade present a broad description and comparative analysis of the phonetics and phonology of European and Brazilian Portuguese. They begin by introducing the history of Portuguese and its principal varieties. Chapter 2 describes the phonetic characteristics of consonants, vowels, and glides, and Chapter 3 looks at prosodic structure. Chapters 4 and 5 present the general characteristics of Portuguese nominal and verbal systems, the former considering inflectional and the latter derivational processes. Chapter 6 examines stress, main, secondary, and echo, and Chapter 7 describes phonological processes that are not related to the morphological structure of the word, including the peculiar process of nazalization. The authors deploy current theoretical models to explain the rich variety of Portuguese phonology and interrelated aspects of morphology. This is by far the most comprehensive account of the subject to have appeared in English, and the most up-to-date in any language.

Armenian is geographically one of the most widespread languages of the world, with distinct dialects located as far west as Poland and as far east as India. It has a rich literary history dating from the fourth-century translation of the Bible into Classical Armenian. It is one of the most linguistically divergent of the Indo-European languages, having undergone a host of complicated phonological, morphological, and syntactic changes that continue to resist satisfactory analysis. However, the language has yet to receive a comprehensive treatment by theoretical linguists. Bert Vaux remedies this problem, bringing Armenian into the sphere of phonological discussion by making available to Western readers the results of Armenological work published in Armenian and Russian, and by presenting theoretical analyses of many of the more striking phonological phenomena described in these sources or culled from the author's fieldwork. The topics addressed include syllabification, stress assignment, vowel harmony, feature geometry, consonantvowel interactions, and prosodic structure. Series Information: The Phonology of the World's Languages Series Editor: Professor Jacques Durand, Université de Toulouse-le-Mirail Series ISBN: 0-19-961355-9 Series Description: The phonology of most languages has until now been available only in a fragmented way, through unpublished theses, or articles scattered in more or less accessible journals. Each volume in this series will offer an extensive treatment of the phonology of one language within a modern theoretical perspective and will provide comprehensive references to recent and more classical studies of the language.

A the end of the fourteenth century, Norway, having previously been an independent kingdom, became by conquest a province of Denmark and remained so for three centuries. In1814, as part of the fall-out from the Napoleonic wars, the country became a largely independent nation within the monarchy of Sweden. By this time, however, Danish had become the language of government, commerce, and education, as well as of the middle and upper classes. Nationalistic Norwegians sought to reestablish native identity by creating and promulgating a new language based partly on rural dialects and partly on Old Norse. The upper and middle classes sought to retain a form of Norwegian close to Danish that would be intelligible to themselves and to their neighbours in Sweden and Denmark. The controversy has gone on ever since. One result is that the standard dictionaries of Norwegian ignore pronunciation, for no version can be counted as 'received'. Another is that there has been considerable variety and change in Norwe

This is the first comprehensive account of the phonology of Hungarian to have been published in English. Hungarian is a Uralic (Finno-Ugric) language. It is unlike other European languages, and atypical among the members of the Uralic family. The lexicon reflects the country's history, with the earliest layers of loanwords coming from Iranian, various Turkic and Slavonic languages, and German. The book is divided into three parts. Part I introduces the general features of the language and its major dialects. Part II examines its vowel and consonant systems, and its phonotactics (syllable structure constraints, transsyllabic constraints, and morpheme structure constraints). In Part III the authors describe the phonological processes that vowels, consonants, and syllables undergo and/or trigger. They provide a new analysis of vowel harmony, as well as discussions of palatalization, voice assimilation, and processes targetting nasals and liquids. The final chapters of the work are devoted to processes conditioned by syllable structure, and to surface phenomena. The book concludes with a full list of references and a comprehensive index. The authors have framed their discussions within a rule-based, non-linear framework to achieve optimum accessibility and concision. Their authoritative account of the sound-system of this unique language will interest phonologists and their advanced students throughout the world.

In this, the first comprehensive survey of the phonological system of Dutch, Geert Booij lays particular stress on the relation between morphology, syntax, and prosodic structure at both word- and sentence-level. His primary aim is to provide an overview of the system as a whole, based in part on a number of more detailed studies of particular aspects of Dutch phonology. As a reference work, the book directs the reader to the available literature. The book is not primarily intended as a contribution to phonological theory; however, it is couched in terms of present-day non-linear generative phonology, and the author's analyses are relevant for a number of current issues in phonological theory such as the principles of syllable structure, the interaction of phonology and morphology, underspecification, rule typology, the domain specification of phonological rules, cliticization, and the role of rhythm in word stress.

This book has both a descriptive and a theoretical purpose. It is the first full phonological description of Slovak, a language spoken by some four-and-a-half million people in Central and Eastern Europe; and it is a study of the theories of lexical, autosegmental, and prosodic phonology, with a particular emphasis on syllable structure.In a synthesis of these two aims, the author demonstrates how the theories can be integrated in a description of a single language. Particular importance is attached to the problem of phonological representations which, it is shown, must be three-dimensional. Both the independence and the interaction of the melodic, skeletal, and syllabic tiers are investigated in detail.The theoretical linguist will find here a detailed and comprehensive description of the language, deepened by an extensive debate on current phonological theory. For the Slavicist - of whatever theoretical persuasion - the book offers a discussion of the most recent theoretical developments in phonology, couched in the framework of a familiar type of linguistic material.

The book is the most comprehensive account of the phonology of Danish ever published in any language. It gives a clear analysis of the sound patterns of modern Danish and examines the relations between its speech sounds and grammar. The author develops new models for the analysis of phonology and morphology-phonology interactions, and shows how these may be applied to Danish and to other languages. Danish has an unusually rich vowel system and exhibits radical reduction processes that make it difficult for foreigners to understand. The sound pattern is equally challenging for the analyst. Professor Basbøll develops a non-circular model for the sonority syllable and applies it to Danish phonotactics. He presents a radically new and insightful analysis of stød, a syllable accent which has a complex grammatical distribution and is unique among the world´ s languages. He also describes syllabic and word structures, and stress and intonation. The book is fully referenced and indexed. It will be widely welcomed by phonologists and scholars of Danish, and is likely to become the standard account of Danish phonology.

In this book, Richard Wiese provides the most complete and up-to-date description presently available of the phonology of German. Starting with a presentation of phonemes and their features, the author then describes in detail syllables, higher prosodic units, phonological conditions of word formation, patterns of redundancy for features, phonological rules, and rules of stress for words and phrases, giving particular emphasis to the interaction of morphology and phonology. He focuses on the present-day standard language, but includes occasional discussion of other variants and registers. The study is informed by recent models in phonological theory, and for phonologists and morphologists it provides both a rich source of material and a critical discussion of current problems and their solutions. It also serves as an introduction to the sound system of German for the non-specialist reader.

The Phonology of English offers a new approach to English phonology. It focuses on the prosody of the language, i.e. syllable and foot structure, and does so from an optimality-theoretic (OT) perspective. The focus is on surface distributional regularities and the results presented are based on extensive searches through various computerized lexicons. The outcome is a number of new generalizations about the phonology of English, along with confirmation of some familiar regularities. All of these empirical results are discussed in detail and presented in extensive charts with a plethora of examples. The Phonology of English also offers a unique OT analysis. This provides a detailed introduction to the intricacies of the theory as applied to a significant amount of data. A number of important theoretical proposals are developed in this model, and the analysis presents the idea that certain complex constraints and their ranking can be derived in restricted ways from more basic constraints. In addition, the book also develops the idea that syllables of English can contain from zero to three moras. It is suggested that the phonology of English only makes sense if partial morphemes of the cranberry sort are licensed more widely. The book is thus intended as a detailed presentation of novel empirical results about the sound system of English, along with important theoretical results about phonological theory.

This book provides thorough descriptive and theory-neutral coverage of the full range of phonological phenomena of Chichewa, a Malawian Bantu language. Bantu languages have played and continue to play an important role as a source of data illustrating core phonological processes such as vowel harmony, nasal place assimilation, postnasal laryngeal alternations, tonal phenomena such as High tone spread and the OCP, prosodic morphology, and the phonology-syntax interface. Chichewa, in particular, has been a key language in the development of theoretical approaches to these phenomena. In this volume, Laura Downing and Al Mtenje examine not only these well-known features of Chichewa but also less well-studied phonological topics such as positional asymmetries in the distribution of segments, the phonetics of tone, and intonation. They survey important recent theoretical approaches to phonological problems such as focus prosody, reduplication, and vowel harmony, where Chichewa data is routinely referred to in the literature. The book will serve as a resource for all phonologists interested in these processes, regardless of their theoretical background, as well as Bantu scholars and linguists working on interface issues.

This is a new and revised edition of the title first published by OUP in 2000. From the reviews of the first edition:'This book is a comprehensive study of the phonology of Standard Chinese. Not only is it rich in detailed and amazingly accurate factual description, it also proposes elegant theoretical solutions to many long-standing problems in Chinese phonology, such as word length variation, word order, and the application of the third tone sandhi. Another great strength of the book is that in every chapter, the generative literature on related issues is carefully reviewed. Therefore it can also serve as a great reference book for the past advances in Chinese generative phonology. Moreover, the book is written in a down-to-earth fashion and is very approachable by anyone with the slightest interest in Chinese languages or phonology but relatively little training in either area.' Jie Zhang, Linguist'Because of its accessibility, this book can be used as an introductory textbook for Chinese phonology or Chinese linguistics.... Every phonologist and student of Chinese linguistics will find something valuable from the book because of its wealth of data and insightful analyses.' Yen-Hwei Lin, Phonology'Explanations are based on a variety of perspectives, from traditional views of the phoneme to feature geometry and Optimality Theory, each concisely introduced so that the discussion easy to follow even for the novice. The result is a flowing, integrated approach that addresses - and solves - some of the thorniest perennial problems in Chinese phonology.... Because this user-friendly introduction offers innovative new solutions to old problems, it enjoys the rare distinction of succeeding both as an essential textbook of Standard Chinese phonology and as an important new theoretical advance in phonological analysis.' Edward J. Vajda, Language

This is a new and revised edition of the title first published by OUP in 2000. From the reviews of the first edition:'This book is a comprehensive study of the phonology of Standard Chinese. Not only is it rich in detailed and amazingly accurate factual description, it also proposes elegant theoretical solutions to many long-standing problems in Chinese phonology, such as word length variation, word order, and the application of the third tone sandhi. Another great strength of the book is that in every chapter, the generative literature on related issues is carefully reviewed. Therefore it can also serve as a great reference book for the past advances in Chinese generative phonology. Moreover, the book is written in a down-to-earth fashion and is very approachable by anyone with the slightest interest in Chinese languages or phonology but relatively little training in either area.' Jie Zhang, Linguist'Because of its accessibility, this book can be used as an introductory textbook for Chinese phonology or Chinese linguistics.... Every phonologist and student of Chinese linguistics will find something valuable from the book because of its wealth of data and insightful analyses.' Yen-Hwei Lin, Phonology'Explanations are based on a variety of perspectives, from traditional views of the phoneme to feature geometry and Optimality Theory, each concisely introduced so that the discussion easy to follow even for the novice. The result is a flowing, integrated approach that addresses - and solves - some of the thorniest perennial problems in Chinese phonology.... Because this user-friendly introduction offers innovative new solutions to old problems, it enjoys the rare distinction of succeeding both as an essential textbook of Standard Chinese phonology and as an important new theoretical advance in phonological analysis.' Edward J. Vajda, Language

This book is the first comprehensive account of the phonology and morphology of Arabic. It is a pioneering work of scholarship based on the author's research in the region. Arabic is a Semitic language spoken by some 250 million people in an area stretching from Morocco in the West to parts of Iran in the East. Apart from its great intrinsic interest, the importance of the language for phonological and morphological theory lies, as the author shows, in its rich root-and-pattern morphology and its large set of guttural consonants. Dr Watson focuses on two eastern dialects, Cairene and San'ani. Cairene is typical of an advanced urban Mediterranean dialect and has a cultural importance throughout the Arab world; it is also the variety learned by most foreign speakers of Arabic. San'ani, spoken in Yemen, is representative of a conservative peninsula dialect. In addition the book makes extensive reference to other dialects as well as to classical and Modern Standard Arabic.The volume opens with an overview of the history and varieties of Arabic, and the position of Arabic within Semitic. Dialectal differences and similarities are discussed in successive chapters which cover the phoneme system and the representation of phonological features; the syllable and syllabification; word stress; derivational morphology; inflectional morphology; lexical phonology; and post-lexical phonology. The Phonology and Morphology of Arabic will be of great interest to Arabists and comparative Semiticists, as well as to phonologists, morphologists, and linguists more generally.

This is the first comprehensive account of the segmental phonology of Hungarian in English. Part I introduces the general features of the language. Part II examines its vowel and consonant systems, and its phonotactics (syllable structure constraints, transsyllabic constraints, and morpheme structure constraints). Part III describes the phonological processes that vowels, consonants, and syllables undergo and/or trigger. The authors provide a new analysis of vowel harmony as well as discussions of vowel length alternations, palatalization, voice assimilation, and processes targeting nasals and liquids. The final chapters cover processes conditioned by syllable structure, and briefly describe a selection of surface phenomena.This authoritative account of the sound pattern of this unique language will interest phonologists and advanced students throughout the world.

This book presents a comprehensive, contrastive account of the phonological structures and characteristics of Icelandic and Faroese. It is written for Nordic linguists and theoretical phonologists interested in what the languages reveal about phonological structure and phonological change and the relation between morphology, phonology, and phonetics. The book is divided into five parts. In the first Professor Árnason provides the theoretical and historical context of his investigation. Icelandic and Faroese originate from the West-Scandinavian or Norse spoken in Norway, Iceland and part of the Scottish Isles at the end of the Viking Age. The modern spoken languages are barely intelligible to each other and, despite many common phonological characteristics, exhibit differences that raise questions about their historical and structural relation and about phonological change more generally. Separate parts are devoted to synchronic analysis of the sounds of the languages, their phonological oppositions, syllabic structure and phonotactics, lexical morphophonemics, rhythmic structure, intonation and postlexical variation. The book draws on the author's and others' published work and presents the results of original research in Faroese and Icelandic phonology.

This is a comprehensive account of the phonetic and phonological properties of Norwegian. The author considers the structure of the lexicon and the principles by which the ordering of sounds in Norwegian can be defined. He then discusses word phonology and its interaction with lexical structure; the principles of syllabification; the placement of dialects; intonation; and connected speech. Dr Kristoffersen concludes with an analysis of the complex relations between written and spoken language in Norway. The book is written within the framework of Generative Phonology, making use of insights mainly derived from Lexical Theory. Its main, and successful, purpose is to present the phonological system of Norwegian clearly and concisely.

Portuguese emerged from vulgar Latin during the course of the third century. Influential in its development were successive invasions by Germanic peoples, Visigoths, and Moors, the latter of whom were finally evicted in the thirteenth century. As a consequence of the newly-independent kingdom's imperial achievements, Portuguese is the national language of Brazil and the official language of several African countries.Maria Helena Mateus and Ernesto d'Andrade present a broad description and comparative analysis of the phonetics and phonology of European and Brazilian Portuguese. They begin by introducing the history of Portuguese and its principal varieties. Chapter 2 describes the phonetic characteristics of consonants, vowels, and glides, and Chapter 3 looks at prosodic structure. Chapters 4 and 5 present the general characteristics of Portuguese nominal and verbal systems, the former considering inflectional and the latter derivational processes. Chapter 6 examines stress, main, secondary, and echo, and Chapter 7 describes phonological processes that are not related to the morphological structure of the word, including the peculiar process of nazalization.The authors deploy current theoretical models to explain the rich variety of Portuguese phonology and interrelated aspects of morphology. This is by far the most comprehensive account of the subject to have appeared in English, and the most up-to-date in any language.

This book is the first comprehensive account of the phonology and morphology of Arabic. It is a pioneering work of scholarship, based on the author's research in the region. Arabic is a Semitic language spoken by some 250 million people in an area stretching from Morocco in the West to parts of Iran in the East. Apart from its great intrinsic interest, the importance of the language for phonological and morphological theory lies, as the author shows, in its rich root-and-pattern morphology and its large set of guttural consonants. Dr Watson focuses on two eastern dialects, Cairene and San'ani. Cairene is typical of an advanced urban Mediterranean dialect and has a cultural importance throughout the Arab world; it is also the variety learned by most foreign speakers of Arabic. San'ani, spoken in Yemen, is representative of a conservative peninsula dialect. In addition the book makes extensive reference to other dialects as well as to classical and Modern Standard Arabic.The volume opens with an overview of the history and varieties of Arabic, and of the study of phonology within the Arab linguistic tradition. Successive chapters then cover dialectal differences and similarities, and the position of Arabic within Semitic; the phoneme system and the representation of phonological features; the syllable and syllabification; word stress; derivational morphology; inflectional morphology; lexical phonology; and post-lexical phonology. The Phonology and Morphology of Arabic will be of great interest to Arabists and comparative Semiticists, as well as to phonologists, morphologists, and linguists more generally.

This is the most comprehensive account of Catalan phonology ever published. Catalan is a Romance language, occupying a position somewhere between French, Spanish, and Italian. It is the first language of six and a half million people in the northeastern Spain and of the peoples of Andorra, French Catalonia, the Balearic Islands, and a small region of Sardinia. Dr Wheeler describes Barcelona pronunciation and the major varieties of western Catalonia, Valencia, and Majorca, and considers social and stylistic variation.The author's approach is through a clear, pragmatic version of orthodox Optimality Theory and is informed by close attention to articulatory phonetics. He includes a substantial account of post-lexical (phrasal) phonology and has designed his approach to be of maximum use to those seeking either to understand the phonology and morphology of Catalan and its varieties or to set these within a comparative or typological perspective. After an introduction to the varieties of Catalan the author devotes chapters to segment inventories; syllable structure; phrasal phonology; coda voicing; coda place; cluster reduction; epenthesis; stress and prosody; word phonology and allomorphy; and the syllabification of pronominal clitics. The book is fully referenced and contains a comprehensive bibliography. It is likely to be the standard account of its subject for many years.

This book provides (a) the first comprehensive description of the phonology and phonetics of Standard Mongolian, known as the Halh (Khalkha) dialect and spoken in Ulaanbaatar, the capital of the Republic of Mongolia; and (b) the first account in any language of the historical phonology of the Mongolian group of languages. The synchronic phonology is based on data collected by the authors and on their own phonological analyses. The historical phonology is based on their research on the Halh, on published Chinese and Mongolian sources for the modern Mongolic languages, and on their reconstruction of Old Mongolian from the medieval written sources.

This book is the most complete phonology of contemporary Polish ever published. It is topic-oriented and presents the fundamental characteristics and problems associated with each topic, among them syllable structure, vowel-zero alternations, palatalizations, and other vowel and consonant changes. Professor Gussmann re-examines assumptions about phonological contrasts and alternations, and raises and addresses central questions in morphophonology. He takes morphophonology to be systematically separate from phonology. Palatalizations, he shows, are crucial to Polish, as both phonological and morphophonological phenomena: their detailed description leads him to a systematic presentation of vocalic alternations. The book develops a Government Phonology account of Polish, but is primarily a description of the language with the model subordinated to the organization of data. All the many examples used to illustrate the presentation are transcribed in standard IPA, and translated. This important book will interest all scholars and advanced students of Polish and Slavic phonology.

This book provides an overview of the phonology of Italian. It covers the different levels of analysis from individual sounds up to the phrasal level. It focuses on the most widely dispersed features of the language reflecting its significant regional and social variation and its most prominent regionally restricted patterns. Martin Krämer provides a critical survey of the generative literature on Italian phonology. He reports on current debates in the field, considers their particular and general theoretical interest, and provides both syntheses and original analyses. His accounts of the main aspects and characteristics of Italian phonology are couched in the framework of Optimality Theory, but he keeps formal aspects and theory-internal matters to a minimum and separate from the presentation and description of the data. His exposition is thus fully accessible to students and researchers who are not familiar with or do not subscribe to the tenets of the theory. Individual chapters may thus serve as starting points for in-depth investigations into particular aspects of Italian phonology in whatever framework the reader chooses to employ. The Phonology of Italian is the first fully comprehensive account of its subject for many years. It will interest scholars and advanced students of Italian, Romance phonology, and phonology as a system.

This book provides the fullest account of Japanese phonology ever published. At the same time it makes original contributions both to current understanding of the Japanese sound system and to contemporary phonological theory more generally. After a consideration of the history of linguistic variation in Japanese, the book focuses on modern standard Japanese and its major dialectical variations. Professor Labrune presents a critical overview of current Japanese phonology and new analyses of the central features of Japanese phonology, including segment inventory, the phonology of voicing, the nature of moraic segments, the mora, the syllable, the foot and the upper prosodic units, and accent. Drawing on her own extensive research and on published work in and outside Japan Professor Labrune presents a synthesis of work within and outside Japan. In doing so she shows the great value as well as some of the limitations of approaches derived from Japanese traditional linguistics and philology, work which has largely been ignored outside the country. Her balanced, clear presentation will appeal to phonologists and their advanced students throughout the world.

This book provides the first comprehensive description of the phonology and phonetics of Standard Mongolian, known as the Halh (Khalkha) dialect and spoken in Ulaanbaatar, the capital of the Republic of Mongolia. It is also the first account in any language of the historical phonology of the entire Mongolian group of languages. The synchronic phonology is based on data collected by the authors and their own phonological analyses. The historical phonology is based on original research on the Halh, on published Chinese and Mongolian sources for the modern Mongolic languages, and on their reconstruction of Old Mongolian from the medieval written sources.