Prosodic Phonology

Prosodic Phonology by Marina Nespor and Irene Vogel is now available again. "Nespor & Vogel 1986" is a citation classic - even after twenty years, it is still recognized as the standard resource on Prosodic Phonology. This groundbreaking work introduces all of the prosodic constituents (syllable, foot, word, clitic group, phonological phrase, intonational phrase and utterance) and provides evidence for each one from numerous languages. Prosodic Phonology also includes a chapter in which experimental psycholinguistic data support the proposed hierarchy. A perceptual study provides evidence that prosodic constituent structure - not syntactic constituent structure - predicts whether listeners are able to disambiguate different types of ambiguous sentences. A chapter on the phonology of poetic meter examines portions of Dante's Divine Comedy. It is demonstrated that the constituents proposed for spoken language also make interesting predictions about literary metrical patterns. Prosodic Phonology is an important reference not only for phonologists, but for all linguists interested in the issue of interfaces among the components of grammar. It is also a basic resource for psycholinguists and cognitive scientists working on linguistic perception and language acquisition.

Prosodic Phonology of the Fuzhou Dialect: Domains and Rule Application is the first attempt to conduct a comprehensive analysis of the Fuzhou phonological system from the perspective of prosodic phonology. It addresses the following issues: What prosodic constituents exist in the Fuzhou dialect and what kinds of roles they play in the Fuzhou phonological system; how to define the domain formation of these prosodic constituents in the Fuzhou dialect; what kinds of Fuzhou phonological phenomena make crucial reference to these prosodic constituents as the domain of application; and what implications does the study of the Fuzhou phonological system have for the prosodic phonology theory. This book is a valuable text for students and scholars in the field of Chinese dialectology, Min dialects, prosodic phonology, and phonology-morphosyntax interface.

First published in 1988. The goal of this study is to explore the workings of a syllable theory which is an integral part of Prosodic Phonology. It will be shown that theory-internal considerations and a variety of empirical arguments converge on a conception of syllabification as continuous template matching governed by syllable wellformedness conditions and a directional parameter. This title will be of interest to students of language and linguistics.

Superior to any other book on the subject that I have seen. I can see it being used as a class text or reference for current theory in sign language phonology.Carol A. Padden, Department of Communication, University of California

This book illustrates an approach to prosodic typology through descriptions of the intonation and the prosodic structure of thirteen typologically different languages based on the same theoretical framework, the 'autosegmental-metrical' model of intonational phonology, and the transcriptionsystem of prosody known as Tones and Break Indices (ToBI). It is the first book introducing the history and principles of this system and it covers European languages, Asian languages, an Australian aboriginal language, and an American Indian language. The book shows how languages and dialects aresimilar to or different from other languages or dialect varieties in terms of the prosodic structure, the intonational categories, and their realizations. This is the first book on intonation which is accompanied by a CD-ROM where sound files mentioned in each chapter are stored.

This text illustrates an approach to prosodic typology through descriptions of the intonation and the prosodic structure of 13 typologically different languages based on the same theoretical framework and the transcription system of prosody known as Tones and Break Indices (ToBI).

Prosodic Features and Prosodic Structure presents an overall view of the nature of prosodic features of language - accent, stress, rhythm, tone, pitch, and intonation - and shows how these connect to sound systems and meaning. It is a work of great scholarship and learning, expressed in way that will be accessible to all linguists from advanced undergraduates to postdoctoral researchers. The last substantial overview was published over 20 years ago. Since then the subject has been transformed by linked advances in phonological and phonetic theory and accoustic technology. This book will interest phonologists, phoneticians, and researchers in related applied fields such as speech pathology and speech synthesis.

The Phonology of English introduces the subject from an Optimality-Theoretic perspective. Written by a high-profile American phonologist, the book presents an analysis of new generalizations about the surface shapes of English words. It will not only be the most up to date introduction to English phonology, but will also provide the clearest available account of Optimality Theory. Its combination of accessibility, originality and clear analysis make this essential reading for all those interested in the sounds of English words and some of the latest developments in linguistics theory. - ;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. -