A remarkably clear and concise presentation of the phonological system of Norwegian by arguably the best Norwegian phonologist. The Norwegian language has undergone considerable change in the last 180 years, and in this book Gjert Kristoffersen considers the abundant evidence in order to provide us with an original analysis of the ways in which the sounds and meanings of competing languages may change and evolve.

A the end of the fourteenth century, Norway, having previously been an independent kingdom, became by conquest a province of Denmark and remained so for three centuries. In1814, as part of the fall-out from the Napoleonic wars, the country became a largely independent nation within the monarchy of Sweden. By this time, however, Danish had become the language of government, commerce, and education, as well as of the middle and upper classes. Nationalistic Norwegians sought to reestablish native identity by creating and promulgating a new language based partly on rural dialects and partly on Old Norse. The upper and middle classes sought to retain a form of Norwegian close to Danish that would be intelligible to themselves and to their neighbours in Sweden and Denmark. The controversy has gone on ever since. One result is that the standard dictionaries of Norwegian ignore pronunciation, for no version can be counted as 'received'. Another is that there has been considerable variety and change in Norwegian over the last 180 years, all of which is well documented. In this pioneering account of Norwegian phonology, Gjert Kristoffersen mines the evidence to present an original analysis of the ways in which the sounds and meanings of competing languages change and evolve.
The book is written within the framework of generative phonology, making use of insights derived from Optimality Theory. Its main, and successful, purpose is to present the phonological system of Norwegian clearly and concisely.

This handbook presents the first systematic account of corpus phonology - the employment of corpora, especially purpose-built phonological corpora of spoken language, for studying speakers' and listeners' acquisition and knowledge of the sound system of their native languages and the principles underlying those systems. The field combines methods and theoretical approaches from phonology, both diachronic and synchronic, phonetics, corpus linguistics, speech technology, information technology and computer science, mathematics and statistics. The book is divided into four parts: the first looks at the design, compilation, and use of phonological corpora, while the second looks at specific applications, including examples from French and Norwegian phonology, child phonological development, and second language acquisition. Part 3 looks at the tools and methods used, such as Praat and EXMARaLDA, and the final part examines a number of currently available phonological corpora in various languages, including LANCHART, LeaP, and IViE. It will appeal not only to those working with phonological corpora, but also to researchers and students of phonology and phonetics more generally, as well as to all those interested in language variation, dialectology, first and second language acquisition, and sociolinguistics.

This handbook presents the first systematic account of corpus phonology - the employment of corpora for studying speakers' and listeners' acquisition and knowledge of the sound system of their native languages and the principles underlying those systems. The first part of the book discusses the design, compilation, and use of phonological corpora, while the second looks at specific applications. Part 3 presents the tools and methods used, while the final part examines a number of currently available phonological corpora in various languages. It will appeal not only to those working with phonological corpora, but also to researchers and students of phonology and phonetics more generally, as well as to all those interested in language variation, dialectology, language acquisition, and sociolinguistics.