This book is intended as an introduction to phonology for students who have not previously been exposed to this area of linguistics. It contains material which can be covered within one academic year and provides guides for extensive further study. While it does not presuppose any knowledge of phonology, it does assume prior familiarity with the basic terminology of articulatory phonetics and some background in general linguistics. For this reason notions such as morpheme or spirant are not explained here – readers needing assistance with such terms should consult other sources, such as, for example, Trask (1996).

Because the objective of the book is to provide a manageable introduction to the field it has been necessary to exercise maximal restraint as far as the issues covered are concerned. As is well-known, phonology, just like any other branch of linguistics, is not a uniform discipline. Quite conversely, the field is theoretically vibrant, with several substantially different models currently vying for the dominant position, a situation which confuses not only the beginner student. It has been decided that introducing all or even a few of these models would amount to a fairly superficial survey of different techniques of description, or would require a book much broader in scope (and in length). It is quite unlikely that a textbook of that sort could be used by the introductory student with much profit, and a course based on it would last much longer than one year.