Adequately accounting for patterns of dissimilation has challenged more than one linguistic theory. This paper brings together evidence for certain recurrent patterns of dissimilation in Austronesian and Australian languages. It does not claim to have found a definitive solution to why these patterns occur, but it does provide indications that avoidance of multiple markedness may be causally implicated. Although the emphasis is different, the proposal offered here thus has fundamental similarities with Alderete (1997) in arguing that where it applies to dissimilation the Obligatory Contour Principle is inseparably connected with marked elements. Its primary contributions are to provide further empirical support for this claim that may not be readily accessible to non-specialists, to generalise the claim to a larger class of data, to suggest that the explanation for such patterns may be cognitive rather than phonetic and particularly to draw attention to conditions under which markedness-triggered dissimilation is suppressed.

This paper argues in favour of the analysis of Tohono O'odham stress originally presented in Fitzgerald (1997). This analysis relies on a single grammar in which metrical and rhythmic constraints are interleaved with the MORPHEME-TO-STRESS PRINCIPLE (MSP), a constraint that requires morphemes to be stressed. The single-grammar approach is contrasted with the co-phonology account offered for the same data in Yu (2000). The two analyses use the same basic constraints, with the exception of the MSP. Instead of this constraint, Yu uses three separate co-phonologies. The comparison between the two theories is focused on this difference, the MSP vs. the multiple grammars of the co-phonology model. The point made here is that Tohono O'odham does not need co-phonologies.

The mora is defined as something of which a long syllable ((C)VV or (C)VC) consists of two and a short syllable ((C)V) consists of one (McCawley 1968). According to some linguists, languages are classified into two groups: those that are best analysed in terms of morae and those that should be analysed in terms of syllables. Japanese is frequently cited as an example of a language that belongs to the former group. However, if the ultimate goal of the field of phonology is to seek for a group of principles that make up Universal Phonology, a unit such as the mora, which is indispensable in some languages but completely irrelevant in other languages, is an unwelcome innovation.

Recent work in distinctive features and feature geometry has presented strong evidence that certain features are privative: they have no negative values, so a sound is either marked [F] or else it is not. Evidence comes from possible types of sounds (for example, multiply articulated segments, in Sagey 1986) and from the fact that the negative values of these features are not referred to in phonological rules. Currently there is a nearly universal consensus that Place features are privative, and converging evidence from several authors (Mester & Itô 1989; Cho 1990; Lombardi 1991, 1995a) that [voice] is privative also.

The functional load hypothesis of Berinstein (1979) put forward the idea that languages which use a suprasegmental property (duration, F0) contrastively will not use it to realise stress. The functional load hypothesis is often cited when stress correlates are discussed, both when it is observed that the language under discussion follows the hypothesis and when it fails to follow it. In the absence of a more wide-ranging assessment of how frequently languages do or do not conform to the functional load hypothesis, it is unknown whether it is an absolute, a strong tendency, a weak tendency or unsupported. The results from a database of reported stress correlates and use of contrastive duration for 140 languages are presented and discussed. No support for the functional load hypothesis is found.

In Korean compound nouns, the onset of the second element tensifies: /pjəl + picʰ/ → [pjəl.p*icʰ]. This process displays a substantial number of exceptions. We show that in the Yanbian dialect phonological factors influence compound tensification; their influence is confirmed by the results of a wug test. These results mostly mirror generalisations informed by lexical data, but a pattern not clearly observed in the existing lexicon also emerged (analytic bias or ‘overlearning’), while phonologically implausible interactions were not actively incorporated (‘underlearning’). Preliminary acoustic analysis motivates an OCP restriction against multiple laryngeally marked segments, due to the shared feature [long non-modal voicing]. But in simplex nouns the co-occurrence of two tense onsets is overrepresented. This apparent contradiction is explained by a directionality difference: compound tensification is progressive, as opposed to the regressive assimilation of creaky voice from the vowel of the following syllable in simplex words.

This paper presents evidence against the existence of sonority-driven stress in Gujarati. Gujarati is one of the clearest and most revealing cases of sonority-driven stress with distinctions among peripheral vowels. A production experiment was performed to determine the accuracy of the claim that [a] attracts stress away from the default position. Of the five types of phonetic evidence examined, only F1 provides clear evidence for stress, revealing stress to be consistently penultimate, and not sonority-driven. As Gujarati is one of the core cases of sonority-driven stress, this finding challenges the claim that it exists. However, this paper does not exclude the possibility that stress may avoid schwa (or central vowels), as reported for several languages. Theoretical and methodological implications are discussed, particularly for theories that have a ‘symmetric effect’ and for descriptions that are impressionistic.

Much debate in recent years has focused on the relative contribution of analytic and channel biases in shaping the typology of sound. Moreton (2008) argues forcefully for the strength of analytic bias, such as Universal Grammar and other non-modality-specific cognitive biases that facilitate the learning of some phonological patterns and inhibit that of others, in creating typological asymmetries on its own, unassisted by the robustness of phonetic precursors. This article focuses on the assessment of phonetic precursor robustness. The main goal of this article is two-fold: (i) to establish the inadequacy of Moreton's method of evaluating relative phonetic precursor robustness and to offer an alternative to his approach; (ii) to report the results of a cross-linguistic study comparing the nature of vowel-to-vowel coarticulation and the interaction between obstruent voicing and vowel height with the same languages – no previous studies have directly compared these two phonetic precursors.

We investigate the phonotactic behaviour of nasal consonants in a database of over 200 languages. Our findings challenge the common classification of nasals as intermediate between obstruents and liquids on the sonority hierarchy. Instead, we propose that there are two types of nasal consonants, one group with lower sonority than liquids and one with higher sonority. We propose that these two types of nasals differ in the presence or absence of a value for the feature [±continuant].

Phonotactic generalisations can be computed at different levels of granularity, from a coarse-grained legal/illegal dichotomy (blick, dwick ≻ *bnick, *lbick) to a fine-grained gradient of acceptability (blick ≻ dwick ≻ bnick ≻ lbick). This article investigates the sensitivity of the English metrical parse to the granularity of medial onset phonotactics. We present two experiments that feature pseudo-words with medial consonants and CC clusters varying in word-edge frequency and sonority (e.g. vatablick, vatadwick, vatabnick, vatalbick). The metrical parse is inferred from a hyphenation experiment and an online stress-assignment experiment. The results of both studies indicate that the parse is stochastic, and guided by relatively fine-grained phonotactic dependencies. Vocabulary simulations suggest that this level of granularity may arise because the gradient parser consistently outperforms the coarse-grained alternative across the developing lexicon.

This article examines the calling contour (CC) in Hungarian and systematically compares its formal properties with those of its English counterpart. After a critical survey of the literature on the English CC, it carries out a phonological analysis of the Hungarian CC, offering a plausible representation based on that analysis. This contains a H pitch accent (H*) and a downstepped H phrase tone (!H-), corresponding to the first and second terrace of the CC respectively. Other apparent possibilities, viz. that the second H tone is a trailing tone or a boundary tone, are rejected. When the Hungarian CC is utterance-final, it coincides with the final portion of an intonational phrase and needs a boundary tone. It is argued that this boundary tone is neither H% nor L but 0% (H* !H-0%). Hungarian utterances can also contain utterance-internal CCs. These can be analysed as being intermediate phrases, lacking a final boundary tone.

Three important strands of research characterise modern phonological theory; (i) the cyclic interaction of morphology and phonology; (ii) prosodic structure as it is built from segments into moras, syllables, feet and ultimately the phonological word; and (iii) the precise internal structure of segments, including feature geometry, how these features may reside on autosegmental tiers, and how they may be underspecified.

Phonological rules can be variable in two ways: they can apply to a subset of the lexicon (lexical variation), or apply optionally, with a probability that depends on the phonological environment (stochastic variation). These two types of variation are occasionally seen as mutually exclusive. We show that the vowel–zero alternation in Russian prepositions ([s trudom] ‘with difficulty’ vs. [sə stinoj] ‘with the wall’) exhibits both types of variation. In two corpus studies and a nonce-word experiment, we document novel stochastic factors that influence the alternation: similarity avoidance, stress position and sonority profile. These constraints interact additively, lending support to a weighted-constraints analysis. In addition to phonologically determined stochastic variation, we find significant lexical variation: phonologically similar nouns differ in the rate at which they condition the alternation in the prepositions. We analyse this pattern by augmenting the weighted-constraints approach with lexical scaling factors.

This paper develops a model of lenition in Campidanese Sardinian. The model treats lenition (and its inverse, fortition) as a predictable consequence of gradient changes in duration associated with prosodic structure. A more typical approach to lenition processes in Campidanese and other languages is to treat them as changes in phonological features. I show here that a phonetic model operating on the output of phonological computations avoids some of the analytical problems associated with such phonological analyses, unifies the phonetic and phonological description of lenition, and captures the relationship between prosody, lenition and duration. While the detailed simulations here are specific to Campidanese, I suggest that the model is broadly applicable to languages with intervocalic lenition processes such as voicing, spirantisation and tapping.

Complex segments consisting of two phases are potentially ambivalent as to which phase determines their phonemic status – e.g. whether // is a stop or a nasal. This theoretical problem is addressed here with respect to a typologically unusual phoneme in Hiw, an endangered Oceanic language of Vanuatu. This complex segment, //, combines a velar voiced stop and a velar lateral approximant. Similar phonemes, in the few languages which have them, have been variously described as (laterally released) stops, affricates or (prestopped) laterals. The nature of Hiw // can be established from its patterning in tautosyllabic consonant clusters. The licensing of word-initial CC clusters in Hiw complies with the Sonority Sequencing Principle, albeit with some adjustments. Consequently, the well-formedness of words like /mejiŋə/ ‘berserk’ relies on // being analysed as a prestopped velar lateral approximant – the only liquid in the system.

In this article we will analyse a number of phonological processes occurring in three Australian Aboriginal languages, all of which involve changes of vowels or sequences of vowels under the influence of neighbouring vowels or consonants. The rules which we will propose will be referred to as UMLAUT rules. Our goal is to investigate how these rules and the forms to which they apply can best be described in an autosegmental model.

This paper proposes that closed syllable laxing and open syllable tensing of non-low vowels are motivated by conflicting strategies of contrast enhancement in vowel–consonant sequences. Laxing enhances the distinctiveness of consonant contrasts by allowing for more distinct VC formant transitions, in particular in sequences involving a non-low vowel followed by an oral labial/coronal/velar consonant (e.g. [p t k]). Tensing enhances the distinctiveness of vowel contrasts by providing more distinct formant realisations for vowels. Linguistic variation results from different ways of resolving the tension between maximising vowel dispersion and maximising consonant dispersion. Laxing typically applies before coda consonants as a way to compensate for the absence of good perceptual cues to place of articulation. The hypothesis that laxing enhances the distinctiveness of postvocalic place contrasts is supported by a study of mid-vowel laxing in French, which corroborates the general claim that perceptual contrast plays a role in shaping phonotactic restrictions.

A basic assumption of generative and lexical phonology is that lexical entries of morphemes contain abstract phonological representations (APRs), and that surface pronunciations are derived from them by rules. Whether and how such a system can be acquired is problematic. This paper looks at the acquisition of APRs for English vowels and the Vowel Shift Rule (VSR), and tries to ascertain (1) whether VSR has any psychological reality, (2) at what age this psychological reality begins to be manifested, and (3) what the source of any psychological reality of VSR is. It finds that (1) pre-literate children show no signs of knowing VSR, (2) literate children and adults show marginal knowledge of only those VSR relations represented by the English vowel letters, and (3) the source of this knowledge can be demonstrated to be the learning of spelling conventions. It is concluded that theories which posit more concrete lexical representations are supported by this evidence.

Consonant epenthesis is typically assumed to be part of the basic repertoire of phonological grammars. This implies that there exists some set of linguistic data for which epenthesis is the best analysis. However, a series of artificial grammar learning experiments found no evidence that learners ever selected an epenthesis analysis. Instead, phonetic and morphological biases were revealed, along with individual variation in how learners generalised and regularised their input. These results, in combination with previous work, suggest that synchronic consonant epenthesis may only emerge very rarely, as a result of a gradual accumulation of changes over time. It is argued that stored stem–allomorph pairs should be adopted as the null hypothesis in cases of potential epenthesis, and that a universal criterion is needed for rejecting this hypothesis. Such a criterion requires a formal theory of exceptions, a necessity for falsifiability in phonological theory.

Following the Articulatory Model of Handshape (Keane 2014), which mathematically defines handshapes on the basis of joint angles, we propose two methods for calculating phonetic similarity: a contour difference method, which assesses the amount of change between handshapes within a fingerspelled word, and a positional similarity method, which compares similarity between pairs of letters in the same position across two fingerspelled words. Both methods are validated with psycholinguistic evidence based on similarity ratings by deaf signers. The results indicate that the positional similarity method more reliably predicts native signer intuition judgements about handshape similarity. This new similarity metric fills a gap in the literature (the lack of a theory-driven similarity metric) that has been empty since effectively the beginning of sign-language linguistics.