This book is about how languages change. It is also a devastating critique of Optimality Theory-the dominant theory in contemporary phonology and increasingly influential throughout linguistics.The author sets out its basis principles and shows it to be incapable of explaining either language change or variation. OT relies on the innateness of certain human language faculties and therefore needs to explain the origins of allegedly genetically-specified features. Professor McMahon considers the nature and evolution of the human language capacity, and reveals a profound mismatch between the predictions of evolutionary biology and the claims for innateness made in OT. She argues further that any convincing theory of linguistic change must take account of the roles of history and chance.

This book is about how languages change. It is also a devastating critique of Optimality Theory-the dominant theory in contemporary phonology and increasingly influential throughout linguistics. The author sets out its basis principles and shows it to be incapable of explaining either language change or variation. OT relies on the innateness of certain human language faculties and therefore needs to explain the origins of allegedly genetically-specified features. Professor McMahon considers the nature and evolution of the human language capacity, and reveals a profound mismatch between the predictions of evolutionary biology and the claims for innateness made in OT. She argues further that any convincing theory of linguistic change must take account of the roles of history and chance.

This is the first comprehensive account of the phonology of Hungarian to have been published in English. Hungarian is a Uralic (Finno-Ugric) language. It is unlike other European languages, and atypical among the members of the Uralic family. The lexicon reflects the country's history, with the earliest layers of loanwords coming from Iranian, various Turkic and Slavonic languages, and German. The book is divided into three parts. Part I introduces the general features of the language and its major dialects. Part II examines its vowel and consonant systems, and its phonotactics (syllable structure constraints, transsyllabic constraints, and morpheme structure constraints). In Part III the authors describe the phonological processes that vowels, consonants, and syllables undergo and/or trigger. They provide a new analysis of vowel harmony, as well as discussions of palatalization, voice assimilation, and processes targetting nasals and liquids. The final chapters of the work are devoted to processes conditioned by syllable structure, and to surface phenomena. The book concludes with a full list of references and a comprehensive index. The authors have framed their discussions within a rule-based, non-linear framework to achieve optimum accessibility and concision. Their authoritative account of the sound-system of this unique language will interest phonologists and their advanced students throughout the world.

What is the relationship between phonetics and phonology? Are phonological features innate and universal, and do they have fixed phonetic correlates? These questions have received renewed prominence in theoretical debates, and this book explores them from a modular, substance-free perspective. This in-depth analysis of Breton serves not only to introduce important data from this endangered language into the theoretical landscape but also to demonstrate the viability of a modular phonological framework. The book introduces a minimalist system of phonological representations built up on a language-specific basis, and integrates it with a fully-fledged computational framework, showcasing the numerous empirical and conceptual advantages of a substance-free view of phonology. Presenting the first comprehensive analysis of the sound patterns of a Breton variety treated in a substance-free phonological framework, this book will enhance the understanding of Celtic phonology and offers a valuable reference for postgraduate students, academics and researchers working in phonological theory and Celtic studies.

This book is a comprehensive guide to the International Phonetic Alphabet, widely used for over a century to transcribe the sounds of languages. The Handbook is in three parts: Part I contains an introduction to phonetic description and exemplification of the use of phonetic symbols; Part II consists of twenty-nine "Illustrations" of the application of the International Phonetic Alphabet to a range of languages; and Part III covers speech pathology, computer codings, and the history of the IPA. This is an essential reference work for phoneticians and linguists more generally.

In many languages, word-formation is restricted by principles of prosody that organise speech into larger units such as the syllable. Written by an international team of leading linguists in the field of prosodic morphology, this book examines a range of key issues in the interaction of word-formation and prosody. It provides an explanation for non-concatenative morphology which occurs in different forms (such as reduplication) in many languages, by an interaction of independent general principles of prosodic and morphological well-formedness. Surveying developments in the field from the 1970s, the book describes the general transition in linguistic theory from rule-based approaches into constraint-based ones, and most of the contributions are written from the perspective of Optimality Theory, a rapidly developing theory of constraint interaction in generative grammar.

This translation of the German edition first published in 1970, introduces the standard text on the comparative-historical method to an English-speaking audience. After surveying the general principles of diachronic-comparative linguistics, the book uses these principles to analyze the phonological and morphological structure of the Indo-European language group. Each section of the book has a detailed bibliography, so readers can progress from the general overview to a more in-depth examination of particular topics.

Slavic Prosody is about the Slavic languages and how they changed over time, especially in their syllable structure and accent patterns. This is not a traditional comparative grammar but rather a discussion of selected problems in Slavic and how they relate to contemporary linguistic theory.

This book reviews current theories of the sound-structure of words and syllables. Dr. Coleman presents technical arguments showing that the contemporary theories are too complex and that a simpler theory, Declarative Phonology, is adequate. This theory is exemplified with detailed accounts of the sound-structure of words and syllables in English and Japanese.

When published in 1986, this book was the first to survey intonation in all its aspects, both in English and universally. In this updated edition, while the basic descriptive facts of the form and use of intonation are presented in the British nuclear tone tradition, there is nevertheless extensive comparison with other theoretical frameworks, in particular with the ToBI framework, which has become widespread in the United States. The author has expanded the sections on historical background, different theoretical approaches and sociolinguistic variation. Intonation remains a basic reference book for linguists, phoneticians, speech therapists and all those concerned with speech in any way.

When published in 1986, this book was the first to survey intonation in all its aspects, both in English and universally. In this updated edition, while the basic descriptive facts of the form and use of intonation are presented in the British nuclear tone tradition, there is nevertheless extensive comparison with other theoretical frameworks, in particular with the ToBI framework, which has become widespread in the United States. The author has expanded the sections on historical background, different theoretical approaches and sociolinguistic variation. Intonation remains a basic reference book for linguists, phoneticians, speech therapists and all those concerned with speech in any way.

With the ever-growing proliferation of electronic and other popular media, the complexity of relationship between what students see and hear, what they believe and how they interact with one another underscores now, more than ever, the need for across-the-curriculum teaching of critical thinking, critical reading, and critical viewing skills. The emerging consensus is that teaching critical viewing skills bolsters students' abilities in traditional disciplines, combats problems of youth apathy, violence, and substance abuse, and improves students', parents, and teachers' attitudes' toward school."Intermediality: Teachers' Handbook of Critical Media Literacy" challenges the practice of teaching the classics and the canon of acceptable literary works far removed from students' experiences, with emphasis on learning environment over the presentation of any specific or specified content. The authors, Ladislaus Semali and Ann Watts Pailliotet, present literacy education as "intermedial" in nature--it entails constructing connections among varying conceptions and sign systems. Reading printed texts requires more than simply decoding letters into words or sounds; it involves finding meaning, motive, structure, and affect. The same goes for reading the electronic text. The authors argue for the discourse of literacy to take up a critical stance by examining a whole wide array of texts that form the meaning-making process of the looming information age."Intermediality" examines, extends, and synthesizes the existing literary definitions, texts, theories, processes, research and contexts. It brings into focus the possibilities of working with media texts to address questions adapted from linguists and literary educators. Thus, in this book, critical media literacy becomes a competency to read, interpret, and understand how meaning is made and derived from print, photographs and other electronic and graphic visuals.

Die Bedeutung von Satzen wird in der Satzmodusforschung im Wesentlichen uber syntaktische Operationen abgeleitet. Neben der Wortstellung leistet jedoch auch die Intonation einen wichtigen Beitrag zur Interpretation. Ziel der Arbeit ist zum einen die Beschreibung syntaktischer und intonatorischer Eigenschaften selbstandiger Satze und zum anderen die theoretische Rekonstruktion von Satzinterpretationen auf der Grundlage syntaktischer und intonatorischer Aspekte. Dabei bestimmt die Stellung des finiten Verbs zunachst abstrakt die Gultigkeit des Satzinhaltes in Bezug auf die Diskurswelt. Auf dieser Information operiert die Intonation und signalisiert, ob der Satzinhalt zum Common Ground hinzugefugt werden soll und in welchem Verhaltnis der Sprecher zum Satzinhalt steht.

Versprechen sind prekar. Denn nimmt man sie als Worte, verpflichten sie zu Taten. Diese also heiklen Sprechhandlungen sind von literarischem Reiz. Namentlich Burgschafts- und Fleischpfand-Geschichten verhandeln Versprechen. In einer differenzierenden und systematisierenden Lekture eben solcher Texte setzt die Untersuchung ihr doppeltes Forschungsvorhaben um: Zum einen lotet sie die Bedingungen des literarischen Versprechens aus - um diese als koerperliche, oekonomische und poetische zu erhellen. Zum anderen eroertert sie, auf Burgschaft und Fleischpfand aufmerkend, zwei Erzahltypen. Die Studie ist diachron angelegt und verfahrt komparatistisch. Und sie bedient sich sprechakttheoretischer UEberlegungen sowie poetologischer und kulturwissenschaftlicher Ideen. Was die Textauswahl betrifft, werden mehrheitlich mittelalterliche Erzahlungen bedacht. Die Arbeit berucksichtigt indes auch eine Fabel von Hyginus, Schillers Burgschafts-Ballade und Shakespeares Tragikomoedie The Merchant of Venice.

The essays in this volume are all original contributions dealing in one way or another with the analysis of prosody - primarily intonation and rhythm - and the role it plays in everyday conversation. They take as their methodological starting point the contention that the study of prosody must begin with genuine interactional rather than pre fabricated laboratory data. Through close empirical analysis of recorded material from genuine English, German, and Italian conversations, the prosody emerges here as a strategy deployed by interactants in the management of turn-taking and floor-holding; in the negotiation of conversational activities such as repair, assessments, announcements, reproaches, and news receipts; and in the keying of the tone or modality of interactional sequences.

Este volumen nace en el marco del grupo de investigacion VETERM de la Universidad de Verona, cuyo objetivo es describir los vocabularios especializados en las areas tematicas de la Gastronomia, la Enologia y la Nutricion. Es, asimismo, el resultado del Congreso Internacional "Terminologia, traduccion y comunicacion especializada", celebrado en Verona en octubre de 2007, en el que se reunieron eminentes especialistas, algunos de los cuales colaboran en este libro. El objetivo prioritario de esta obra es, por un lado, subrayar la importancia de la comunicacion especializada y sus terminologias y, por otro, abrir un espacio para la reflexion teorica y analizar, desde diferentes disciplinas y perspectivas, los varios ambitos de estudio relacionados con la transferencia del conocimiento.

The author, once a stutterer, shows how he overcame stuttering, after the age of fifty. He believes anyone who can form the right attitude, accept the responsibility, and work hard enough will eliminate their stuttering problem, or at least reduce it to a controllable level that will allow more freedom and happiness. Presented in two parts, the first part shares anecdotes, stories, and examples to show that attitude and perceptions are important in preparing to approach one's stuttering problem with the realistic anticipation that it can be improved. Part Two gives clear and specific details of the process.

The work published in Phonology and Phonetic Evidence presents an integrated phonetics-phonology approach in what has become an established field, laboratory phonology. This 1995 volume is divided into three sections. Part I deals with the status and role of features in phonological representations; Part II, on prosody, contains, amongst others, two papers which present for the first time detailed acoustic and perceptual evidence on the rhythm rule; and Part III, on articulatory organisation, includes several papers which from different perspectives test hypotheses derived from articulatory phonology, thereby testifying to the great influence this theory has exerted in recent years. This, the fourth in the series of Papers in Laboratory Phonology, will be welcomed by all those interested in phonetics, phonology and their interface.

Fur viele Sprachwissenschaftler ebenso wie fur Sprachbenutzer ist Nicht-Verstehen eine unabsichtlich entstehende Randerscheinung in der Kommunikation, die es zu vermeiden gilt. Die Beitrage in diesem Band rucken das negative Image des Nicht-Verstehens ein wenig zurecht. Sie analysieren und kategorisieren die Formen des Nicht-Verstehens aus unterschiedlichen ingenieurs- wie geisteswissenschaftlichen Blickwinkeln heraus fur verschiedene Sprachen und Medien. Nicht-Verstehen ist - mal mehr, mal weniger ausgepragt - in geschriebener wie gesprochener Sprache allgegenwartig und wird von Sprachbenutzern auch gezielt instrumentalisiert. Zudem werden einige Formen des Nicht-Verstehens uberschatzt - oder durch die Forschung selbst erst geschaffen, die das (Nicht-)Verstehen noch nicht verstanden hat.

In this provocative work, Luigi Burzio argues that many common assumptions within stress theory, and phonological theory more generally, are in fact rather arbitrary. He proposes radical departures from recent tradition. In Part I he analyzes stress in the underived English lexicon, arguing that the basic accentual groups or "feet" are not monosyllabic or bisyllabic, as often assumed, but rather bisyllabic or trisyllabic. This analysis brings significant simplifications to other recent theorizing, including the elimination of standard extrametrically and all rules destressing. In Part II Professor Burzio deals with morphologically complex words, and argues that various phenomena of stress presevation, including the apparent stress "neutrality" of a class of affixes, are all predictable reflexes of a single principle of Metrical Consistency. In addition to a superior account of stress, the proposed metrical theory yields a unitary account of a wide spectrum of vowel-length alternations, in an overall conception of phonology which is modular, like that of comtemporary syntax. The book makes a major theoretical contribution to the analysis of English word stress and to phonological theory.

Phonological Structure and Phonetic Form brings together work from phonology, phonetics, speech science, electrical engineering, psycho- and sociolinguistics. The chapters are organized in four topical sections. The first is concerned with stress and intonation; the second with syllable structure and phonological theory; the third with phonological features; and the fourth with "phonetic output." This volume will be important in making readers aware of the range of research relevant to questions of linguistic sound structure.

The Oxford Guide to Australian Languages is a wide-ranging reference work that explores the more than 550 traditional and new Indigenous languages of Australia. Australian languages have long played an important role in diachronic and synchronic linguistics and are a vital testing ground for linguistic theory. Until now, however, there has been no comprehensive and accessible guide to the their vast linguistic diversity. This volume fills that gap, bringing together leading scholars and junior researchers to provide an up-to-date guide to all aspects of the languages of Australia. The chapters in the book explore typology, documentation, and classification; linguistic structures from phonology to pragmatics and discourse; sociolinguistics and language variation; and language in the community. The final part offers grammatical sketches of a selection of languages, sub-groups, and families. At a time when the number of living Australian languages is significantly reduced even compared to twenty year ago, this volume establishes priorities for future linguistic research and contributes to the language expansion and revitalization efforts that are underway.

Die Autorin klassifiziert das Komma im Sprach- und Schriftsystem des Deutschen. Sie diskutiert (system-)linguistische Beschreibungsansatze und modelliert das Komma ausgehend von seinem Form- und Funktionszusammenhang als graph(emat)isches und in seiner historischen Kontinuitat relationales Zeichen. Aus historischer Perspektive erforscht sie dessen Zeichenvorlaufer in zwei empirischen Korpusuntersuchungen: zur formalen (typographischen) Durchsetzung des Kommas in deutschsprachigen Texten gegenuber der Virgel im fruhen Neuhochdeutschen (GerManC) und zur Grammatikalisierung der Interpunktion im Mittelhochdeutschen (Prosatexte im Korpus der Mhd. Grammatik) am Beispiel des Punktes. Dieser tritt in semantisch-syntaktisch ambigen Kontexten auf und hat bereits Funktionen inne, die spater dem binnengliedernden Komma zukommen.

This book has both a descriptive and a theoretical purpose. It is the first full phonological description of Slovak, a language spoken by some four-and-a-half million people in Central and Eastern Europe; and it is a study of the theories of lexical, autosegmental, and prosodic phonology, with a particular emphasis on syllable structure. In a synthesis of these two aims, the author demonstrates how the theories can be integrated in a description of a single language. Particular importance is attached to the problem of phonological representations which, it is shown, must be three-dimensional. Both the independence and the interaction of the melodic, skeletal, and syllabic tiers are investigated in detail. The theoretical linguist will find here a detailed and comprehensive description of the language, deepened by an extensive debate on current phonological theory. For the Slavicist - of whatever theoretical persuasion - the book offers a discussion of the most recent theoretical developments in phonology, couched in the framework of a familiar type of linguistic material.

Written entirely in Spanish, Manual de fonetica y fonologia espanolas has a comprehensive scope that touches on all aspects of phonetics and phonology-including acoustic and auditory phonetics, phonotactics, and suprasegmentals, which most often remain untreated. The book provides students with a detailed and accurate yet accessible introduction to Spanish phonetics and phonology. It includes introductory chapters which place these disciplines within the general field of linguistics and which emphasize the role of sounds and their representation in human communication. Key features: Written by trained phoneticians and informed by the current science of phonetics. No prior knowledge of linguistics assumed, as a foundation is laid throughout for all linguistic terms and concepts. Each chapter contains a summary, a list of concepts and terminology, review questions, and pedagogically relevant pronunciation exercises keyed to the specific hints and suggestions provided in the chapters. Chapters dealing with the physical production of sounds contain sections with "Pedagogical Hints," "Practical Suggestions," and "Pronunciation Exercises" to link theory to the practical aspects of improving pronunciation. A wealth of graphic material to illustrate each concept clearly. Models of how to pronounce the sounds, sentences and exercises presented in the text, are available online at routledge.com/cw/clegg. Manual de fonetica y fonologia espanolas is a comprehensive introduction designed to be clear and accessible to advanced students of Spanish to help them understand how to improve their pronunciation. It will serve as an excellent book for graduate students as well as a valuable resource for teachers, linguists and language professionals.