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. To discuss your book idea or submit a proposal, please contact Birgit Sievert

This volume contains papers from the 1974, 1975, and 1976 meetings of the annual conference of the Linguistic Society of the Netherlands (Algemene Vereniging voor Taalwetenschap), held in Amsterdam. The aim of the annual meeting is to provide members with an opportunity to report on their work in progress. The papers in this volume cover a range of different fields of linguistics, presenting articles on phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics.

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.

Bringing together well-known researchers, this collection of essays focuses on constraints in phonological acquisition. The first two chapters review the research in its broader context, including an introduction by the editors that provides a concise tutorial on Optimality Theory. The remaining chapters address a number of partially overlapping themes: the study of child production data in terms of constraints; learnability issues; perceptual development and its relation to the development of production; and second language acquisition.

De fonologie beschouwt het als haar taak, de klanksystemen der verschillende talen alsmede de functies van elk hunner elementen te bestuderen. En die taak vloeit voort uit het inzicht, dat de klanken ener taal een geordend systeem vormen, waarin elk hunner een bepaalde plaats inneemt. (N. van Wijk, Phon%gie een hoofdstuk uit de structurele taalwetenschap) 1. 1. Het onderwerp van dit boek De bekende Amerikaanse fonoloog James Harris begint in zijn laatste boek (Harris 1983) een uiteenzetting over de Spaanse lettergreep als voIgt: "Consider the word huey 'ox' ." Zo'n mooie openingszin hebben wij voor dit boek niet kunnen bedenken, maar we zijn het weI met Harris eens dat een inleiding het gemakkelijkst begonnen kan worden met een voorbeeld. We beginnen daarom met de volgende zin: (1) De groep praatte als een stelletje gladiolen over de dwarsdruknorm. Aan de hand van deze zin kan een grote hoeveelheid taalkunde worden geillustreerd. Met een deel daarvan benje ongetwijfeld bekend, met een deel misschien een beetje, en met een groot deel (kunnen we zonder schroom aannemen) totaal niet. In het deel waarmee je redelijk goed bekend bent, huist hoogstwaarschijnlijk bijvoorbeeld de simpele observatie dat het eerste woord van de zin een zogenaamd lidwoord is; ook dat het eerste zelfstandig naamwoord van de zin bestaat uit de opeenvolging van klanken g. r. oe en p; dat het werkwoord be staat uit de klanken t, p, r, a en de zwakke klinker e, maar dan in een andere volgorde, enzovoort.

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 outstanding 2004 volume presents an overview of linguistic research into the acquisition of phonology. Bringing together well-known researchers in the field, it focuses on constraints in phonological acquisition (as opposed to rules), and offers concrete examples of the formalization of phonological development in terms of constraint ranking. The first two chapters situate the research in its broader context, with an introduction by the editors providing a brief general tutorial on Optimality Theory. Chapter two serves to highlight the history of constraints in studies of phonological development, which predates their current ascent to prominence in phonological theory. The remaining chapters address a number of partially overlapping themes: the study of child production data in terms of constraints, learnability issues, perceptual development and its relation to the development of production, and second-language acquisition.