Vowel harmony is a well known phonological phenomenon found in a large number of languages spoken mainly in Eurasia and the African continent. In simple terms, vowel harmony is a law which governs the co-occurrence of vowels within a span of utterance, nearly always the word. The contributions of this volume focus on various (not always uncontroversial) aspects of vowel harmony that include typological investigations, phonetic/acoustic experimental studies, descriptions of individual systems, genetic and historical ramifications, and implications for a variety of theoretical models. This volume will prove to be a useful guide to the multifaceted issues posed by an often discussed and quite significant phonological process. This volume will stimulate further discussion and better understanding of the issues raised by the intricate process called vowel harmony.

From language creator David J. Peterson comes a creative gui de to language constructio, offering an overview of language creation, covering its history from Tolkien's creations and Klingon to today's thriving global community of conlangers. He provides the essential tools necessary for inventing and evolving new languages, using examples from a variety of languages including his own creations.

Vowel Harmony and Correspondence Theory covers the major issues in the generative analysis of vowel harmony and vowel harmony typology. The book offers an economical account of the most prominent features of vowel harmony systems (root control, affix control, dominance, vowel opacity, and neutrality) within the framework of optimality theory, extending the notion of correspondence to the syntagmatic dimension.The book contains a typological overview of vowel harmony patterns, an introduction to the basics of optimality theory including some of its most recent extensions and detailed studies of harmony systems in 10 languages from a variety of language families.

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.

Manchu was the language of a group of people who in the sixteenth century lived to the northeast of China and later became known as Manchus. After establishing a new state in the southern part of Manchuria in the early seventeenth century, they conquered China and ruled as the Qing dynasty until 1911. Millions of Manchu records along with records in Chinese and Mongolian were created during nearly three hundred years in power. Nowaday, with an imperial Manchu court out of the picture, hardly anybody knows the language. With the accessibility of large number of Manchu documents, today scholars study Manchu to understand the documents.

This book reflects an ongoing shift in the study of contact languages: After a period of history-free universalism, it directs the attention to the individual historical circumstances under which the pidgin and creole languages arose. The contributions deal with different areas of language structure including phonology, morphology, and syntax, providing a wealth of structural and sociohistorical data that any comprehensive theory of contact languages will have to account for. Each of the papers provides a thorough description of a structural phenomenon against the background of the sociohistorical contact situation. The languages covered in the book are: Guiné-Bissau Creole, Haitian Creole, Hawai'i Creole, Indo-Portuguese creoles, Jamaican Creole, Lingua Franca, North American French, Mauritian Creole, Santomense, Saramaccan, Seychelles Creole, Sranan, Surinamese Maroon creoles, Vincentian Creole, and Zamboangueño Chavacano.