This monograph proposes a new interpretation of the intrasegmental structure of consonants and provides the first systematic intra- and cross-linguistic study of consonant prevocalization. The proposed model represents consonants as inherently bigestural and makes strong predictions that are automatically relevant to phonological theory at both the diachronic and synchronic levels, and also to the phonetics of articulatory evolution. It also clearly demonstrates that a wide generalization of the notion of consonant prevocalization provides a uniform account for many well-known processes generally considered independent – from asynchronous palatalization in Polish to intrusive [r] in nonrhotic English, to vowel epentheses in Avestan, and to pre-/s/ vowel prothesis in Welsh. Consonant prevocalization has not played a significant role in the development of modern phonological theory to date, and this work is the first to highlight its broad theoretical significance. It develops important theoretical insights, with a wealth of supporting data and a rich bibliography. No doubt, this book will be of great interest to phonologists, phoneticians, typologists, and historical linguists.

Preface & acknowledgments -- Part I. The theory: 1. Consonant prevocalization -- 2. Intrasegmental consonant structure -- 3. Related processes -- Part II. The data: 4. Front prevowels -- 5. Other prevowels -- 6. Conclusions and outlook -- References -- Appendix I: Rosapelly's vocaloid -- Appendix II: Languages in the survey

For many different reasons, speakers borrow words from other languages to fill gaps in their own lexical inventory. The past ten years have been characterized by a great interest among phonologists in the issue of how the nativization of loanwords occurs. The general feeling is that loanword nativization provides a direct window for observing how acoustic cues are categorized in terms of the distinctive features relevant to the L1 phonological system as well as for studying L1 phonological processes in action and thus to the true synchronic phonology of L1. The collection of essays presented in this volume provides an overview of the complex issues phonologists face when investigating this phenomenon and, more generally, the ways in which unfamiliar sounds and sound sequences are adapted to converge with the native language s sound pattern. This book is of interest to theoretical phonologists as well as to linguists interested in language contact phenomena."

Generative phonology aims to formalise two distinct aspects of phonological processes: the functional and the representational. Since functions operate on representations, it is clear that the functional aspect is influenced by the form of representations, i.e. different types of representation require different types of rules, principles or constraints. This volume examines the representational issue in phonology and considers what kind of representation is most appropriate for recent models of generative phonology. In particular, it provides the first platform for debate on the place of morpheme-internal structure and on the formal status of phonology in the language faculty, and attempts to identify phonological recursive structure as a means of capturing frequently observed processes.

This book offers a survey of current work in Nordic and General Linguistics, with a special focus on language contact. The papers in this book were presented at the 11th International Conference of Nordic and General Linguistics (ICNGL) in Freiburg. The ICNGL conference series aims to facilitate the exchange of ideas on Scandinavian and other languages, between researchers from the Nordic countries and elsewhere. The present volume focuses on language contact, which has always been a topic of great interest in Nordic Linguistics. Additionally, the contributions in this book address issues of phonology, morpho-syntax, syntax, and grammaticalization. The book is meant to be a snapshot of Nordic Linguistics as it is practiced today, reflecting at the same time its established research traditions as well as its forages into new methodologies and theories.

Examines advanced approaches to sound change from various theoretical and methodological perspectives, including articulatory variation and modeling, speech perception mechanisms and neurobiological processes, geographical and social variation, and diachronic phonology.

This volume should be of great interest to phoneticians, phonologists, and both historical and cognitive linguists. Using data from the Romance languages for the most part, the book explores the phonetic motivation of several sound changes, e.g., glide insertions and elisions, vowel and consonant insertions, elisions, assimilations and dissimilations. Within the framework of the DAC (degree of articulatory constraint) model of coarticulation, it clearly demonstrates that the typology and direction of these sound changes may very largely be accounted for by the coarticulatory effects occurring between adjacent or neighbouring phonetic segments, and by the degrees of articulatory constraint imposed by speakers on the production of vowels and consonants. The phonetically-based explanations presented here are formulated on the basis of coarticulation data from speech production and perception research carried out during the last fifty years and are complemented with data on the co-occurrence of phonetic segments in lexical forms of the languages being considered. Attention is also paid to the role that positional and prosodic factors play in sound change implementation, as well as to the cognitive and peripheral strategies involved in segmental replacements, elisions and insertions.