II Phonological Theory Edited by

While morphosyntax and semantics have been studied from afunctional and cognitive perspective, much less emphasis has been placed on phonological phenomena in these frameworks. This paper proposes a rethinking of phonology , arguing that (i) the lexical representation of words have phonetic substance that is gradually changed by phonetic processes; (ii) the spread of these phonetic changes is at least partly accounted for by the way particular items are used in discourse; (iii) the study of exceptions, marginal phenomena , and subphonemic detail are important to the understanding of how phonological information is stored and processed; (iv) generalizations at the morphological and lexical level have radically different properties than generalizations at the phonetic level, with the former having a cognitive or semantic motivation, while the latter have a motor or physical motivation; and (v) that the best way to model the interaction of generalizations with the lexicon is not by separating rules from lists of items, but rather by conceiving of generalizations as patterns or schemas that emerge from the organization of stored lexical units.

Phonology, 2012

Goldsmith's (1995) Handbook of phonological theory provided an influential overview of the field in the mid-90s, earning a well-deserved place on the shelf of practising phonologists. The volume under review is not the first to attempt to update this classic work. Two other recent handbooks of comparable length and scope are the second edition of Goldsmith (Goldsmith et al. 2011), and de Lacy's (2007) well-received Cambridge handbook of phonology. Besides evaluating how well the current work meets the general expectations that readers have for a handbook, this review must necessarily also address the inevitable questions : why yet another handbook of phonology just now ? ; how does this volume distinguish itself from its competitors ? ; does this work fill a gap that is not met by the other handbooks ? The names of the editors and authors provide the first clue to what makes this volume distinctive. Almost all contributors work and/or received their PhDs in Europe, whereas North American phonologists dominate the other handbooks. The European perspective is felt in several of the core chapters in the second and longest part of the volume, ' Research issues ', which discuss certain approaches-such as Element Theory, Government Phonology and CV theory-that tend to be less well known in North America. The chapter by Botma, Kula & Nasukawa on ' Features' has a comprehensive discussion of the phonetic motivation for different feature theories in early generative phonology, followed by a clear introduction to Element Theory. One of the distinctive properties of Element Theory is that the same feature can have different phonetic realisations, depending on the featural configuration (in particular, which other feature is the head of the configuration). The advantages of representing voicing and nasality with a single feature are exemplified with a detailed analysis of alternations involving nasal prefixes in Zoque. Péter Szigetvári's chapter on ' Syllables ' follows a critical historical survey of motivations for syllable structure with an exceptionally clear introduction to CV theory, a theory which essentially dispenses with the syllable as a constituent. As someone who was not trained in this approach, I read the chapter with scepticism. However, by the end of it I felt I had an appreciative understanding of how strict CV licensing can account for classic problems like restrictions on consonant and vowel clusters which are usually considered motivations for syllable structure. Both this chapter and the one on features will be read with interest by phonologists wishing to understand the highlighted theories better. They will surely be recommended to students as useful introductory chapters by phonologists working in the theories presented. However, as the focus in these chapters is on the particular theories under discussion, they are not intended to provide a useful guide to current research and issues in other frameworks.

Talk presented at The 77th Annual Meeting of the …, 2003