Contrast In Phonology

This book takes contrast, an issue that has been central to phonological theory since Saussure, as its central theme, making explicit its importance to phonological theory, perception, and acquisition. The volume brings together a number of different contemporary approaches to the theory of contrast, including chapters set within more abstract representation-based theories, as well as chapters that focus on functional phonetic theories and perceptual constraints. This book will be of interest to phonologists, phoneticians, psycholinguists, researchers in first and second language acquisition, and cognitive scientists interested in current thinking on this exciting topic.

This book proposes that phonological contrast, in particular the robustness of a phonemic contrast, does not depend solely on the presence of minimal pairs, but is instead affected by a set of phonetic, usage-based, and systemic factors. This perspective opens phonology to a more direct interpretation through phonetic analysis, undertaken in a series of case studies on the Romanian vowel system. Both the synchronic phonetics and morpho-phonological alternations are studied, to understand the forces that have historically shaped and now maintain the phonemic system of Romanian. A corpus study of phoneme type frequency in Romanian reveals marginal contrasts among vowels, in which a sharp distinction between allophones and phonemes fails to capture relationships among sounds. An investigation of Romanian /Ɨ/ provides insight into the historical roots of marginal contrast, and a large acoustic study of Romanian vowels and diphthongs is a backdrop for evaluating the phonetic and perceptual realization of marginal contrast. The results provide impetus for a model in which phonology, phonetics, morphology and perception interact in a multidimensional way.

Phonology - the study of how the sounds of speech are represented in our minds - is one of the core areas of linguistic theory, and is central to the study of human language. This handbook brings together the world's leading experts in phonology to present the most comprehensive and detailed overview of the field. Focusing on research and the most influential theories, the authors discuss each of the central issues in phonological theory, explore a variety of empirical phenomena, and show how phonology interacts with other aspects of language such as syntax, morphology, phonetics, and language acquisition. Providing a one-stop guide to every aspect of this important field, The Cambridge Handbook of Phonology will serve as an invaluable source of readings for advanced undergraduate and graduate students, an informative overview for linguists and a useful starting point for anyone beginning phonological research.

The subject of 'contrast' in phonology is one of the most central concepts in linguistics and is of key importance to linguists working across many languages. This book offers a fascinating account of both the logic and history of contrast in phonology.

Publisher Description

Top researchers explore the nature of stress and accent patterns in languages, especially the nature of their representations and how people learn them.

The Phonology of Contrast argues that contrast is one of the central organizing principles of the grammar and provides a formal theory of contrast couched in the framework of Optimality Theory (Prince & Smolensky 1993/2004). The study of the role of contrast is a growing area of interest in linguistics and this monograph contributes to the debate on where contrast fits in the grammar. The key finding is that contrast exists as an independent principle in the grammar, which in the framework of Optimality Theory can be formulated as a family of rankable and violable constraints. A formal proposal of contrast is developed called Contrast Preservation Theory. This proposal is illustrated and supported with diverse contrast phenomena in the areas of phonology and at the phonology-morphology interface. Evidence is drawn from a number of languages including Finnish, Arabic, and Polish. Predictions of the proposal are discussed and compared with alternatives. Contents: Introduction; The Framework: PC Theory; Phonological Contrast; Morphological Contrast; Conclusion.

Sound disc contains sample of data used.