In this paper I shall present a theory of phonetic interpretation of headed phonological representations. The phonological representations in question are non-segmental, hierarchical, graphical objects similar to those in common use in autosegmental, metrical, dependency and ‘government and charm’ phonology, although the details of the phonological formalism I employ are different in some respects from each of these. The theory of phonetic interpretation is based on a parametric, dynamic model of phonetic representation. The distinction between ‘head’ and ‘non-head’ constituents is central to the phonetic interpretation model. As well as being formally explicit, I have developed a computational implementation of this theory, constituting a novel speech synthesis program, ‘YorkTalk’. Consequently, although the theory, like any other, is likely to contain certain faults, it goes beyond pencil-and-paper phonological theories, in that it is capable of algorithmically generating quite natural-sounding speech-like signals of a superior quality to other methods of generating synthetic speech, albeit only for isolated words.

At the level of description, this study is concerned with the interaction of the rules of stress assignment in Spanish with rules governing the alternation of certain vowels with diphthongs. The descriptive discussion, in turn, relates primarily to two theoretical questions concerning the lexicon, namely, the role of null phonological segments in lexical representations and the nature of lexical diacritics that control the application of non-automatic phonological rules.

The purpose of our study is to show that phonological knowledge is an important basis for making predictions during speech perception. Taking the phonological constraint in English that coda obstruent clusters agree in their value for voicing, we conducted two experiments using vowel–stop–fricative sequences, where the task was to identify the fricative. Stimuli included sequences that were either congruent or incongruent. Consistent with models of featural underspecification for voiceless obstruents, our results indicate that only voiced stops induced predictions for an upcoming voiced fricative, eliciting processing difficulty when such predictions were not met. In contrast, voiceless stops appear to induce no equivalent predictions. These results demonstrate the important role of abstract phonological knowledge in online processing, and the asymmetries in our findings also suggest that only specified features are the basis for generating perceptual predictions about the upcoming speech signal.

This paper examines phonological phrasing in the Kwa language Akan. Regressive [+ATR] vowel harmony between words (RVH) serves as a hitherto unreported diagnostic of phonological phrasing. In this paper I discuss VP-internal and NP-internal structures, as well as SVO(O) and serial verb constructions. RVH is a general process in Akan grammar, although it is blocked in certain contexts. The analysis of phonological phrasing relies on universal syntax–phonology mapping constraints whereby lexically headed syntactic phrases are mapped onto phonological phrases. Blocking contexts call for a domain-sensitive analysis of RVH assuming recursive prosodic structure which makes reference to maximal and non-maximal phonological phrases. It is proposed (i) that phonological phrase structure is isomorphic to syntactic structure in Akan, and (ii) that the process of RVH is blocked at the edge of a maximal phonological phrase; this is formulated in terms of a domain-sensitive CrispEdge constraint.

In this paper I discuss a source of reduplicative (non-)correspondence common to Bantu tone languages which has not received attention in the formal literature. In many Bantu languages, the entire RED+Base complex forms a single domain for realisation of the Base stem tone, leading to the occurrence of non-corresponding marked tone in both the RED and the Base. I propose that this pattern of tone realisation in reduplicated forms falls out if the reduplicative complex is a compound verb stem, as compounds are frequently treated as single domains for the realisation of prosodic properties. The length condition on tonal transfer in reduplication which has proven a challenge for previous work on this topic (Myers & Carlton 1996, Hyman & Mtenje 1999) is also shown to follow from the compound structure of the reduplicative complex. This analysis confirms that the morphological status of the reduplicative complex plays an important role in determining the realisation of reduplicative morphemes.

The present study proposes a new interpretation of the underlying distortion in APRAXIA OF SPEECH. Apraxia of speech, in its pure form, is the only neurolinguistic syndrome for which it can be argued that phonological structure is selectively distorted.

Apraxia of speech is a nosological entity in its own right which co-occurs with aphasia only occasionally. This…conviction rests on detailed descriptions of patients who have a severe and lasting disorder of speech production in the absence of any significant impairment of speech comprehension, reading or writing as well as of any significant paralysis or weakness of the speech musculature.

(Lebrun 1990: 380)

Based on the experimental investigation of poorly coarticulated speech of patients from two divergent languages (German and Xhosa) it is argued that apraxia of speech has to be seen as a defective implementation of phonological representations at the phonology–phonetics interface. We contend that phonological structure exhibits neither a homogeneously auditory pattern nor a motor pattern, but a complex encoding of sequences of speech sounds. Specifically, it is maintained that speech is encoded in the brain as a sequence of distinctive feature configurations. These configurations are specified with differing degrees of detail depending on the role the speech segments they underlie play in the phonological structure of a language. The transfer between phonological and phonetic representation encodes speech sounds as a sequence of vocal tract configurations. Like the distinctive feature representation, these configurations may be more or less specified. We argue that the severe and lasting disorders in speech production observed in apraxia of speech are caused by the distortion of this transfer between phonological and phonetic representation. The characteristic production deficits of apraxic patients are explained in terms of overspecification of phonetic representations.

Within the autosegmental-metrical approach to French intonation, the existence of an intermediate phrase or ip is controversial. Our study provides strong evidence for its existence, by uncovering systematic pitch-scaling effects within this constituent. We first show that the presence of an ip break is responsible for blocking recursive downstep of subsequent AP-final LH* rises in declarative utterances, causing the return of the final H target to the pitch level set by the first accentual peak of the phrase (i.e. complete reset). Additional evidence for the internal structuring of the Intonation Phrase is also provided by partial reset on the postboundary H target as well as by preboundary lengthening on the last syllable of the ip. The pitch-scaling effects are claimed to result from control over the reference pitch level for the entire ip, which can alternatively be modelled through secondary association of the last pitch accent of the domain.

In this paper I explore the theoretical significance of phonologically conditioned gaps in word formation. The data support the original approach to gaps in Optimality Theory proposed by Prince & Smolensky (1993), which crucially involves MPARSE as a ranked and violable constraint. The alternative CONTROL model proposed by Orgun & Sprouse (1999) is found to be inadequate because of lost generalisations and technical flaws. It is shown that a careful distinction between various morphophonological effects (e.g. paradigm uniformity effects, phonological repair and ‘stem selection’) is necessary to shed light on the morphology–phonology interface. The data investigated here support affix-specific constraint rankings, but argue against any stratal organisation of morphology.

Homeric Greek, Kalevala Finnish, Old Norse and Middle Tamil are all languages in which weight is claimed to be exclusively binary in the poetic metrics. As I demonstrate through corpus studies of these traditions, the poets were sensitive to additional grades of weight, such that finely articulated continua of syllable weight can be inferred from distributional asymmetries in the metres. Across all four languages, the scales are strongly correlated (for example, in each, C0V<C0VC<C0VV<C0VVC). These language-internal scales reflect the cross-linguistic typology of categorical weight criteria, providing new evidence for weight universals. A metrical grammar is proposed in a maximum entropy constraint framework in which categorical and scalar/gradient constraints interact to generate the weight-mapping typology.

Through construction of predictive models, phoneticians are making increasingly sophisticated attempts to account for certain aspects of the phonological structure of languages from very general principles(Stevens 1989; Lindblom 1984; Ohala 1990, 1992).

The placement of F0 peaks in Tashlhiyt Berber is highly variable, both within and across speakers, even across repetitions of the same target sentence. We show that peak placement is determined by a number of competing factors: in addition to a general tendency for the peak to be placed on the rightmost syllable – a tendency that is stronger in questions than in statements – the peak is attracted to the syllable with the most sonorous nucleus and preferentially to heavy syllables. Moreover, in words consisting entirely of obstruents, there are three possible intonation patterns: no F0 peak at all, an anticipated peak (before the target word) or a peak on a vocoid between two obstruents. The F0 peak is analysed phonologically as a H tone that is either associated with a postlexically determined syllable or, if the syllable is not tone-bearing, aligned with the edge of the larger domain.

When a phonological rule applies across words, it is necessary to be able to specify across which types of words it may apply and across which it may not, or in other words, within which domain it applies. That such domains do not necessarily coincide with syntactic constituents has been amply demonstrated in such works as Clements (1978), Napoli & Nespor (1979), Rotenberg (1978), Selkirk (1978, 1984), Nespor & Vogel (1982, 1986) and Kaisse (1985). As has been argued in recent work, what is needed instead is a somewhat more complex theory in which there is a more complex type of interaction between phonological rules and syntactic structures. In the past few years, several such theories have been proposed, in particular, those advanced by Selkirk (1984), Kaisse (1985) and Nespor & Vogel (1986).

The purpose of this paper is to help define and limit the role that temporal ordering plays in morphophonemic representation, syllable structure and phrases in American Sign Language (ASL). First, I will list the ways in which temporal ordering plays a role in morphophonemic structures. Second, I will show that temporal ordering plays a limited role in ASL phrases. Third, I will argue that neither temporal ordering nor segmentation plays a role in syllables, and the bulk of this paper will be devoted to motivating this syllable template. Stokoe (1960) and Stokoe et al. (1965) proposed that ASL is organised according to simultaneous phonemes, but since Liddell (1984) the importance of temporally ordered structure in sign structure has been emphasised by many researchers (Liddell & Johnson 1989; Sandler 1986, 1989; Perlmutter 1990, 1992; Corina 1990a, b; to name a few).

We develop an extensible description logic for stating the content of optimality-theoretic constraints in phonology, and specify a class of structures for interpreting it. The aim is a transparent formalisation of OT. We show how to state a wide range of constraints, including markedness, input–output faithfulness and base–reduplicant faithfulness. However, output–output correspondence and ‘intercandidate’ sympathy are revealed to be problematic: it is unclear that any reasonable class of structures can reconstruct their proponents' intentions. But our contribution is positive. Proponents of both output–output correspondence and sympathy have offered alternatives that fit into the general OT picture. We show how to state these in a reasonable extension of our formalism. The problematic constraint types were developed to deal with opaque phenomena. We hope to shed new light on the debate about how to handle opacity, by subjecting some common responses to it within OT to critical investigation.

Opaque interactions have long been recognised as a challenge for Optimality Theory. We show that although there has been considerable effort to bring opacity into the scope of Optimality Theory, some types of process interactions are still problematic for the theory. Based on data from Tundra Nenets, we present and analyse a case of fed counterfeeding in which a process A feeds a process B, and B counterfeeds A. We argue that such interactions present a challenge to Optimality Theory with Candidate Chains (OT-CC; McCarthy 2007) since the two interactions impose contradictory ranking requirements. We propose an extension of the theory that does not abandon its main assumptions and that makes fed counterfeeding analysable in OT-CC. This extension is based on the assumption that constraints can make reference to the position specified in a previous step in the derivation.

As stated in its Foreword, the Handbook is a ‘user’s manual’ for the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). It provides a variety of information about the philosophy and practice of IPA usage and in so doing, confronts a number of current issues in phonetics. But the goal of the Handbook remains resolutely practical, the intention being to give just ‘the information needed for getting to grips with the IPA’ (p. viii). Nonetheless, it provides much more information and discussion about transcription than the previous official source of information about the IPA, the 1949 Principles of the International Phonetic Association. The decision to produce a new Handbook was made at the 1989 Kiel Convention of the International Phonetic Association.

One of the major aims of linguistic theory is to determine what is universal vs. language-specific within grammatical systems. In phonology, for example, a number of universals have been proposed and incorporated into the various subtheories that deal with segmental and prosodic aspects of sound systems. In his original autosegmental theory, for instance, Goldsmith (1976) provided a formalism and a set of principles embodying a number of universal claims about how different tiers may link to each other. Most of the support for this theory came from the study of tone: tones (Ts) were said to reside on separate ‘tiers’ joined by association lines to their respective tone-bearing units (TBUs).

Korean possesses a rich onomatopoeic and mimetic vocabulary that may be augmented by partial reduplication and/or suffixation. This augmented category, which is referred to as partial extension in Jun (1993), is semantically characterised by a lengthening, or temporal extension of the base form:

Recent work in metrical typology within Optimality Theory has emphasised the rhythmic distribution of stress peaks by reference to clashes and lapses, compared to the more central role of foot constituency characteristic of most previous approaches. One consequence of this emphasis has been the introduction of constraints that require reference to non-adjacent objects in the representation, such as two unstressed syllables plus a word edge or a stress peak. I argue here for a constraint-based approach to metrical typology that permits only strictly local formulations. This approach requires increased reference to foot structure, while maintaining local reference to clashes and lapses. The revised set of constraints predicts a larger set of possible stress systems, but correctly includes an attested iambic pattern excluded by recent theories.

Phonologists have known for some time that the so-called ‘standard’ theory of generative phonology is not adequate for the analysis of vowel harmony. Ringen (1975, 1977, 1980) suggests that some of the problems can be solved by abandoning the assumption that phonological representations are fully specified. Clements (1977b, 1980) suggests that vowel harmony should be analysed autosegmentally. Underspecification theory, developed in the recent work of Kiparsky, Archangeli and Pulleyblank, incorporates both of these proposals. This paper considers how Hungarian can be analysed within this theory. It is shown that by adopting Goldsmith's (1985) proposal that vowel harmony in Hungarian involves the spreading of the feature [−back], the transparent (neutral) vowels in Hungarian are derived because the redundancy rule assigning [−back] to these vowels, although available, does not apply early in the derivation because its structural description is not met.