This book contains a selection of papers presented at the 9th Conference on Laboratory Phonology, which was held in June 2004 at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology on the campus of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The theme of the conference was Change in Phonology, broadly conceived as to include both language evolution at the level of the speech community and development within the individual speaker/hearer. The chapters in this book are organized in five sections: phonological variation and change within the speech community, mechanisms of change in sound systems, phonological acquisition from different experimental perspectives, second language phonology, modeling of language variation, and segmental and suprasegmental phenomena related to the timing of speech gestures. These topics are explored from a number of perspectives, both within and outside of traditional linguistics. We believe that the papers included in this volume demonstrate that the Laboratory Phonology approach has reached maturity and has succeeded in its aim not only to bridge the gap between phonetics and phonology but also to establish a fruitful and mutually beneficial dialog between linguists and other scientists and scholars concerned with the study of the sound patterns of human language from different perspectives.

This book is the first comprehensive treatment of the phonological system of Basque available in English. Basque is a morphologically rich and fairly regular language with a number of active phonological rules that are limited to certain morphological environments. In addition, it has a high degree of dialectical fragmentation. These characteristics of Basque make this language a good test ground to investigate the interaction of phonological rules both with each other and with morphological processes, which the author does within the Lexical Phonology framework. The effects of rule interaction on feature geometry are a major concern - how phonological operations modify underlying structures and how the structures created by one phonological rule can serve as input to other rules. These effects are examined in a study of the rather peculiar behaviour of Basque affricates. Another area which requires particular attention, and in which Basque dialects differ widely, is prosody. Along with stress-accent systems of different types, Basque also possesses pitch-accent or restricted tonal systems in some of its western dialects. This book should be of interest to advanced students and teachers of linguistics, especially Romance linguistics and lexical phonology.

Among the languages of Europe Catalan has a special status because it enjoys official recognition, along with Spanish, in a number of Spanish-speaking regions. These include Catalonia, Valencia and the Balearic Islands and the principality of Andorra. Also spoken in Roussillon, France, and in the town of Alghero, Sardinia, it therefore has a relatively large number of speakers. Catalan is also of importance within the Romance family of languages, because it constitutes a link between the Ibero-Romance and the Gallo-Romance branches. In its syntax and morphology it presents characteristics which will be familiar to readers with a knowledge of other Romance languages, especially Spanish. But there are a number of areas in which Catalan differs markedly, and this study explores them in depth. This book should be of interest to postraduates and academics in linguistics, particularly Romance and comparative linguistics.

This book is the first comprehensive treatment of the phonological system of Basque available in English. Basque is a morphologically rich and fairly regular language with a number of active phonological rules that are limited to certain morphological environments. In addition, it has a high degree of dialectical fragmentation. These characteristics of Basque make this language a good test ground to investigate the interaction of phonological rules both with each other and with morphological processes, which the author does within the Lexical Phonology framework. The effects of rule interaction on feature geometry are a major concern - how phonological operations modify underlying structures and how the structures created by one phonological rule can serve as input to other rules. These effects are examined in a study of the rather peculiar behaviour of Basque affricates. Another area which requires particular attention, and in which Basque dialects differ widely, is prosody. Along with stress-accent systems of different types, Basque also possesses pitch-accent or restricted tonal systems in some of its western dialects. This book should be of interest to advanced students and tea

Among the languages of Europe spoken by bilingual communities, Catalan has a special status because of its vitality. Catalan enjoys official recognition in Catalonia, Valencia and the Balearic Islands, in spain and in the principality of Andorra. Catalan is of importance within the Romance family because it constitutes a link between the Ibero-Romance family of languages and the Gallo-Romance branches. This book will be of interest to both Romanists and general linguists engaged in comparative work.

This accessible textbook provides a clear introduction to the sounds of Spanish, designed specifically for English-speaking students of the language. Assuming no prior knowledge of linguistics, it explains from scratch the fundamentals of phonetics (the study of sounds) and phonology (the study of sound systems) and describes in detail the phonetic and phonological characteristics of Spanish as it is spoken in both Spain and Latin America. Topics covered include consonants, vowels, acoustics, stress, syllables, intonation, and aspects of variation within Spanish. Clear comparisons are made between the sounds of Spanish and those of English, and students are encouraged to put theory into practice with over fifty graded exercises. Setting a solid foundation in the description and analysis of Spanish sounds, The Sounds of Spanish will help students improve their pronunciation of the language, and will also be useful to those studying the linguistic structure of Spanish for the first time. All the sounds described in this book are demonstrated on the audio resources that accompany this book online.

Written entirely in Spanish, this is the ideal introduction to Spanish linguistics for students. Using clear explanations, it covers all the basic concepts required to study the structural aspects of the Spanish language - phonetics and phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics - as well as the history of Spanish, its dialects, and its linguistic variation in Latin America, Spain, and the US. This third edition incorporates new features designed to enhance its usefulness for classroom teaching: a new chapter on the teaching and learning of Spanish as a second language, expanded discussion of syntax, and more detailed coverage of Spanish semantics and pragmatics. Numerous exercises have been added throughout the text, some of which are now presented as problems for students to solve, allowing students to gain a more complete mastery of the analytical concepts at hand.

This accessible textbook provides a clear introduction to the sounds of Spanish. Assuming no prior knowledge of linguistics, it explains from scratch the fundamentals of phonetics (the study of speech sounds) and phonology (the study of sound systems) and describes in detail the phonetic and phonological characteristics of Spanish as it is spoken in both Spain and Latin America. Topics covered include consonants, vowels, acoustics, stress, syllables, intonation, and aspects of variation within Spanish. Clear comparisons are made between the sounds of Spanish and those of English, and students are encouraged to put theory into practice with over fifty graded exercises. Los sonidos del espanol will help students gain a solid understanding of the sound system of Spanish and will also be useful to scholars in phonetics and phonology. All the sounds described in this book are demonstrated in the online audio sound files which accompany this book.