Harry van der Hulst

The series is a platform for contributions of all kinds to this rapidly developing field. General problems are studied from the perspective of individual languages, language families, language groups, or language samples. Conclusions are the result of a deepened study of empirical data. Special emphasis is given to little-known languages, whose analysis may shed new light on long-standing problems in general linguistics.

Word Prosodic Systems in the Languages of Europe

Vincent van Heuven

Jeroen Maarten van de Weijer

A comprehensive overview of current developments in phonological theory, by providing a number of papers in different areas of current theorizing which reflect on particular problems from different angles. This volume deals with phonological structure above the segmental level, in particular with syllable structure, metrical structure and sentence-level prosodic structure.

The Phonological Spectrum: Suprasegmental structure

B. Elan Dresher

This volume is the first to provide an up-to-date and comprehensive history of phonology from the earliest known examples of phonological thinking, through the rise of phonology as a field in the twentieth century, and up to the most recent advances. The volume is divided into five parts. Part I offers an account of writing systems along with chapters exploring the great ancient and medieval intellectual traditions of phonological thought that form the foundation of later thinking and continue to enrich phonological theory. Chapters in Part II describe the important schools and individuals of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries who shaped phonology as an organized scientific field. Part III examines mid-twentieth century developments in phonology in the Soviet Union, Northern and Western Europe, and North America; it continues with precursors to generative grammar, and culminates in a chapter on Chomsky and Halle's The Sound Pattern of English (SPE). Part IV then shows how phonological theorists responded to SPE with respect to derivations, representations, and phonology-morphology interaction. Theories discussed include Dependency Phonology, Government Phonology, Constraint-and-Repair theories, and Optimality Theory. The part ends with a chapter on the study of variation. Finally, chapters in Part V look at new methods and approaches, covering phonetic explanation, corpora and phonological analysis, probabilistic phonology, computational modelling, models of phonological learning, and the evolution of phonology. This in-depth exploration of the history of phonology provides new perspectives on where phonology has been and sheds light on where it could go next.

The Oxford History of Phonology

Norval Smith

The Structure of Phonological Representations. Part 2

René Kager

Wim Zonneveld

Leading linguists address various issues in the interaction of word formation and prosody.

The Prosody-Morphology Interface

Rob Goedemans

Jeffrey Heinz

Explores the nature of stress and accent patterns in natural language using a diverse range of theories, methods and data.

Theories, Methods and Data

The Study of Word Stress and Accent

Anikó Lipták

This volume contains a selection of papers from the 12th International Conference on the Structure of Hungarian (Leiden, 2015). The contributions cover a wide range of topics and their significance in generative theorizing. The papers about morphosyntax focus on the formation of comparative clauses, the behavior of particle verbs, scope taking in deverbal nominal constructions, measure constructions, classifier constructions, the mass/count distinction as well as focus and quantifier scope. The papers about phonology investigate coexisting patterns of variation in vowel harmony, the representational account of vowel harmony and the nature of heteromorphemic vowel sequences. While the focus of the volume is on Hungarian, comparison is made with several other languages, such as English, German and Portuguese among others. The broad range of topics discussed in this volume will appeal both to scholars working on Hungarian and to a general audience of generative linguists.

Volume 15: Papers from the 2015 Leiden Conference

Approaches to Hungarian

The two volumes of the Phonological Spectrum aim at giving a comprehensive overview of current developments in phonological theory, by providing a number of papers in different areas of current theorizing which reflect on particular problems from different angles. Volume II deals with phonological structure above the segmental level, in particular with syllable structure, metrical structure and sentence-level prosodic structure. Different syllable structure theories, as well as possible relations between segment structure and syllabic structure, and evidence from language acquisition and aphasia are examined in section 1. Metrical structure is examined in papers on foot structure, and, experimentally, on word stress in Indonesian. Finally in this volume, there are three laboratory-phonological reports on the intonation of Dutch.

A team of world-renowned phonologists present new perspectives on word stress, exploring stress as a phenomenon, data selection, and analysis.

Theoretical and Typological Issues

Word Stress

Ellen van Zanten

In part I of this volume, experts on various language areas provide surveys of word stress/accent systems of as many languages in 'their' part of the world as they could lay their hands on. No preconditions (theoretical or otherwise) were set, but the authors were encouraged to use the StressTyp data in their chapters. Australian Languages (Rob Goedemans), Austronesian Languages (Ellen van Zanten, Ruben Stoel and Bert Remijsen), Papuan Languages (Ellen van Zanten and Philomena Dol), North American Languages (Keren Rice), South American Languages (Sergio Meira and Leo Wetzels), African Languages (Laura Downing), European Languages (Harry van der Hulst), Asian Languages (Harry van der Hulst and René Schiering), Middle Eastern Languages (Harry van der Hulst and Sam Hellmuth). There is an introductory chapter (Chapter 1) that will provide the reader with elementary terminology and theoretical tools to understand the variety of accentual systems that will be discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. Chapter 2 has a double function. It presents an overview of stress patterns in Australian languages, but at the same time it is intended to (re-)familiarize readers with the coding, terminology and theoretical ideas of the StressTyp database. Chapter 11 presents statistical and typological information from the StressTyp database. Part II of this volume contains 'language profiles' which are, for each of the 511 languages contained in StressTyp (in 2009), extracts from the information that is contained in the database. This volume will be of interest to people in the field of theoretical phonology and language typology. It will function as a reference work for these groups of researchers, but also, more generally, for people working on syntax and other fields of linguistics, who might wish to know certain basic facts about the distribution of word accent systems

A Survey of Word Accentual Patterns in the Languages of the World

Koen Bogers

Marten Mous

Studies on African Languages Offered to John M. Stewart on his 60th Birthday

The Phonological Representation of Suprasegmentals

Vincent J. van Heuven

Jeroen van de Weijer

The two volumes of the Phonological Spectrum aim at giving a comprehensive overview of current developments in phonological theory, by providing a number of papers in different areas of current theorizing which reflect on particular problems from different angles. Volume I is concerned with segmental structure, and focuses on nasality, voicing and other laryngeal features, as well as segmental timing. With respect to nasality, questions such as the phonetic underpinning of a distinctive feature [nasal] and the treatment of nasal harmony are treated. As for voicing, the behaviour of voicing assimilation in Dutch is covered while its application in German is examined with an eye to its implications for the stratification of the German lexicon. In the final section of volume I, the structure of diphthongs is examined, as well as the treatment of lenition and the relation between phonetic and phonological specification in sign language.

Volume I: Segmental structure

The Phonological Spectrum

Teun Hoekstra

Michael Moortgat

Perspectives on Functional Grammar

Autosegmental Studies on Pitch Accent

The present volume is an edited collection of original contributions which all deal with the issue of recursion in human language(s). All contributions originate as papers that were presented at a conference on the topic of recursion in human language organized by Dan Everett in March 22, 2007. For the purpose of this collection all articles underwent a double-blind peer-review process. The present chapters were written in the course of 2008. Although the ‘recursive’ nature of linguistic expressions, i.e. the apparent possibility of producing an infinite number of expressions with finite means, has been noted for a long time, no general agreement seems to exist concerning the empirical status as well as mathematical formalization of this ‘characteristic’ of human languages or of the grammars that lie behind these utterances that make up these languages. Renewed interest in this subject was sparked by recent claims that ‘recursion’ is perhaps the sole uniquely human and as such universal trait of human language (cf. Chomsky, Hauser and Fitch 2000). In this volume, the issue of recursion is tackled from a variety of angles. Some articles cover formal issues regarding the proper characterization or definition of recursion, while others focus on empirical issues by examining the kinds of structure in languages that suggest recursive mechanism in the grammar. Most articles discuss syntactic phenomena, but several involve morphology, the lexicon and phonology. In addition, we find discussions that involve evolutionary notions and language disorders, and the broader cognitive context of recursion.

Recursion and Human Language

Nancy Ritter

The architecture of the human language faculty has been one of the main foci of the linguistic research of the last half century. This branch of linguistics, broadly known as Generative Grammar, is concerned with the formulation of explanatory formal accounts of linguistic phenomena with the ulterior goal of gaining insight into the properties of the 'language organ'. The series comprises high quality monographs and collected volumes that address such issues. The topics in this series range from phonology to semantics, from syntax to information structure, from mathematical linguistics to studies of the lexicon.

Views and Facts

The Syllable

Roberto Petrosino

Pietro Cerrone

The term ‘Maya’, in Indian traditions, refers to our sensory perception of the world and, as such, to a superficial reality (or ‘un–reality’) that we must look beyond to find the inner reality of things. Applied to the study of language, we perceive sounds, a superficial reality, and then we seek structures, the underlying reality in what we call phonology, morphology, and syntax. This volume starts with an introduction by the editors, which shows how the various papers contained in the volume reflect the spectrum of research interests of Andrea Calabrese, as well as his influence on the work of colleagues and his students. Contributors, united in their search for the abstract structures that underlie the appearances of languages include linguists such as Adriana Belletti, Paola Benincà, Jonathan Bobaljik, Gugliemo Cinque, David Embick, Mirko Grimaldi, Harry van der Hulst, Michael Kenstowicz, Maria Rita Manzini, Andrew Nevins, Elizabeth Pyatt, Luigi Rizzi, Leonardo Savoia, Laura Vanelli, Bert Vaux, Susi Wurmbrand, as well as a few junior researchers including Mariachiara Berizzi, Giuliano Bocci, Stefano Canalis, Silvio Cruschina, Irina Monich, Beata Moskal, Diego Pescarini, Joseph Perry, Roberto Petrosino, and Kobey Schwayder.

Beyond the Veil of Maya

From Sounds to Structures

Rachel Channon

Sign languages and spoken languages have an equal capacity to communicate our thoughts. Beyond this, however, while there are many similarities, there are also fascinating differences, caused primarily by the reaction of the human mind to different modalities, but also by some important social differences. The articulators are more visible and use larger muscles with consequent greater effort. It is difficult to visually attend to both a sign and an object at the same time. Iconicity is more systematic and more available in signs. The body, especially the face, plays a much larger role in sign. Sign languages are more frequently born anew as small groups of deaf people come together in villages or schools. Sign languages often borrow from the written form of the surrounding spoken language, producing fingerspelling alphabets, character signs, and related signs. This book examines the effects of these and other differences using observation, experimentation and theory. The languages examined include Asian, Middle Eastern, European and American sign languages, and language situations include home signers and small village signers, children, gesturers, adult signers, and non-native signers.

Formational Units in Sign Languages

In this volume, the issue of recursion is tackled from a variety of angles. Some articles cover formal issues regarding the proper characterization or definition of recursion, while others focus on empirical issues by examining the kinds of structure in languages that suggest recursive mechanism in the grammar. Most articles discuss syntactic phenomena, but several involve morphology, the lexicon and phonology. In addition, we find discussions that involve evolutionary notions and language disorders, and the broader cognitive context of recursion.

Harry van der Hulst

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