Focusing on weight-insensitive binary stress systems, the article presents an approach to metrical stress that is more restrictive than standard approaches and more accurate in its predictions. The proposal's restrictiveness derives from a set of constraints and structural assumptions that run counter to prevailing theories' fundamental principles. For example, the proposed account assumes strict succession between prosodic categories, ensuring that syllables are exhaustively parsed into feet. It tolerates improper bracketing of prosodic categories, allowing feet to overlap and to share entries on the metrical grid. Finally, it makes the foot–stress relationship violable, allowing feet to remain stressless under appropriate rankings. The article examines each of these assumptions and demonstrates how they combine to more accurately predict attested typologies.

This paper examines the relationship between tone and prosodic positions. I show that prosodic heads prefer higher tone over lower tone, while non-heads exhibit the opposite preference. These generalisations are expressed within Optimality Theory as a family of constraints in a fixed ranking. One set regulates the relation of tone to heads: *HD/L [Gt ] *HD/M [Gt ] *HD/H; the other deals with tone on non-heads: *NON-HD/H H [Gt ] *NON-HD/M [Gt ] *NON-HD/L. These constraints are used to account for the stress system of Ayutla Mixtec: in this language, stress is attracted to a syllable based on its tonal content, but is also influenced by the post-tonic syllable's tone. The implications of the theory for other tone–stress interactions – metrically influenced tone placement and neutralisation – are also examined.

The canonical image of vowel harmony is of a particular feature distributed throughout a word, leading to symmetric constraints like AGREE or SPREAD. Examination of the distribution of tongue-root advancement in Kinande demonstrates that harmonic feature distribution is asymmetric. The data argue that a formal (yet asymmetric) constraint (like ALIGN) is exactly half right: such a constraint correctly characterises the left edge of the harmonic domain. By contrast, the right edge is necessarily characterised by phonetically grounded restrictions on feature co-occurrence. Of further interest is the role of morphological domains: the interaction between domain restrictions on specific constraints and unrestricted constraints suggests a formal means of characterising the overwhelming similarity between constraint hierarchies at different morphological levels while at the same time characterising the distinctions between levels.

It is well known that initially and when preceded by a word that ends with a voiceless sound, German so-called ‘voiced’ stops are usually voiceless, that intervocalically both voiced and voiceless stops occur and that syllable-final (obstruent) stops are voiceless. Such a distribution is consistent with an analysis in which the contrast is one of [voice] and syllable-final stops are devoiced. It is also consistent with the view that in German the contrast is between stops that are [spread glottis] and those that are not. On such a view, the intervocalic voiced stops arise because of passive voicing of the non-[spread glottis] stops. The purpose of this paper is to present experimental results that support the view that German has underlying [spread glottis] stops, not [voice] stops.

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.

The present article provides a reanalysis of word-edge coronal obstruents in German and English commonly assumed to be extrasyllabic (e.g. the [s] in German Gips ‘plaster' and in English lapse). It will be argued below that (i) there are no extrasyllabic consonants in surface representations in German and English and that surface forms are fully syllabified, and (ii) there is no derivational stage in which extrasyllabicity in either of these languages exists. The evidence commonly presented in support of representations with extrasyllabic consonants will be shown to be compatible with fully syllabified surface representations. An optimality-theoretic treatment with constraints referring to fully syllabified output representations will be proposed.

This article is concerned with an interesting upstep phenomenon in the intonation of some speakers of Southern dialects of German. It experimentally establishes the main properties of this upstep phenomenon, and discusses the theoretical consequences. The upstep occurs on the nuclear pitch accent of a non-final intonation phrase. It targets the phonetic height of the utterance-initial peak, regardless of downstepped peaks that intervene between the initial peak and the upstepped peak. The findings are argued to provide unexpected support for a model of intonation in which downstep among accents can be embedded inside downstep among larger prosodic domains (Ladd 1988, van den Berg et al. 1992). In a combination of that model with an extension of Pierrehumbert & Beckman (1988), it is suggested that the choice between downstep and upstep is conditioned by association to higher prosodic constituents in a systematic way.

Coronals have been claimed to behave as unmarked consonants in epenthesis. However, it is well known that the glottal consonants ([h ʔ]) are frequently epenthetic, and the empirical basis for the claim about coronal epenthesis has been weak, with only a single example commonly cited. I will show that coronals can in fact occur as epenthetic segments, but only in specific situations showing the classic signs of constraint conflict. I will argue that these patterns can be accounted for in Optimality Theory using fully specified Place in the representations and extending Smolensky's (1993) universally ranked *PLACE hierarchy so that the glottals have the least marked Place. The result will be that when all other things are equal, glottals will be the ideal epenthetic consonant, but when some higher-ranked requirement makes epenthesising a glottal impossible, the still relatively low-ranked position of *COR means that coronals will be the next best way to satisfy Place markedness.

I propose that there is a purely phonological drive to impose a reduplication-like structure (‘coupling’) on words. This structure can lead to enhancement or preservation of word-internal self-similarity. The case of vowel raising in Tagalog loan-stems is examined in detail. Raising can be blocked in order to preserve similarity between the stem penult and the stem ultima. The more similar the penult and ultima along various dimensions, the more likely coupling is, and thus the more likely resistance to raising. I attribute phonologically driven coupling to the activity of a constraint REDUP in generation, which shapes the way new words are lexicalised in the vowel-raising case, but also consider an alternative source for reduplicative construals (the effect of *SPEC in lexical learning). The proposal is compared to others that promote correspondence between similar or identical single segments within a word; I conclude that a relation between strings is necessary.

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 Mouton interactive introduction to phonetics and phonology (henceforth MIIPP) is an informative and interesting interactive CD introduction to phonetics and phonology. It is compatible with both Macintosh (version 8.1 or higher) and Windows (NT 4.0 or higher, 95 or higher) operating systems. Ambitious in coverage and innovative in its multimedia presentation, the CD offers an engaging overview of a number of topics in phonetics and phonology, including articulatory phonetics, auditory phonetics, acoustics, segmental and prosodic phonology, and phonological theory. It is ideal for informal self-study or as an accompaniment to a formal undergraduate introductory course in phonetics and phonology, used in conjunction with a textbook or other materials.

In this squib we introduce new language data into the debate concerning the markedness of place of articulation. The data illustrate a process of assimilation in Sri Lankan Portuguese Creole where coronal patterns as more marked than both labial and dorsal. Labial unmarkedness is further supported by the feature's asymmetrical patterning in consonant deletion as well as its distribution and frequency. The patterns are of particular significance since they provide a clear example of a language in which labial patterns as unmarked, thus leading us to the conclusion that there is no single, universal unmarked place of articulation. Implications of the Sri Lankan Portuguese Creole pattern for structure- and constraint-based accounts of markedness are discussed.

Bachra takes a fresh look at the issue of phonotactic constraints in the consonantal verbal roots of the Semitic languages. This topic has received much previous attention, both descriptive and theoretical. The prevailing view is that consonant combinations in verbal roots are avoided when those consonants share major place of articulation features. For example, roots in Arabic containing both /b/ and /f/ are highly underrepresented, and these two consonants share [labial] place. In generative analyses, this constraint is considered to be an instantiation of the Obligatory Contour Principle (OCP), restricted to place of articulation features (e.g. McCarthy 1994). There are, of course, some complications. The constraint is partially sensitive to manner features, as combinations of coronal obstruents and coronal sonorants are permitted. In addition, the set of uvular, pharyngeal and laryngeal consonants is prohibited from co-occurring, indicating that shared place of articulation can be construed rather broadly. Finally, the constraint is gradient, rather than absolute. In many cases, consonant combinations that share place are found, but are just very infrequent.

In his article ‘Consonant cluster neutralisation and targeted constraints’, Wilson (2001) proposes a far-reaching revision of Optimality Theory to accommodate targeted constraints, which compare candidates differing only in certain specific ways. Targeted constraints, it is argued, can explain why cluster-simplification processes affect the first member of a cluster but never the more marked member of a cluster. In this remark, I show that this argument encounters difficulties once it has been embedded in a fuller picture of constraint interaction. Some general properties of the targeted-constraints model are also discussed.

The functionalist viewpoint in linguistics can take different forms. A caricature of functionalist thinking is the notion that the structure of language is optimised, or nearly so, for its function as a means of human communication. This notion has met with widespread scepticism because of its lack of predictiveness in the face of typological variation. Either it leads to the prediction that all languages are en route to some single ‘Utopian’ (even if they have not quite achieved it) or it leads one to posit so many contradictory functional goods that the nature of possible languages is not effectively restricted. A second, and far more sophisticated, understanding of functionalism is the claim that there are regular relations between the way language is represented in the mind and the way that it is processed during speech production and perception. These relations arise because language is acquired from experiences of use, and because even in adults patterns of use affect cognitive representations. The effects of individual instances of language use are local, incremental and context-dependent. Language use and competence in a language are thus two aspects of a single system. Multiple system configurations are possible for the same reason that multiple ecosystems are possible; like the products of biological evolution, human languages are merely good enough, and not globally or absolutely optimised. This understanding of linguistic functionalism has proved fruitful for at least two decades and is now coming into its own. Its rise constitutes part of the rise of scientific research on complex systems and emergent structures generally, in areas ranging from geophysics and granular media to population biology.

This volume is a welcome addition to the literature on Italian dialectology, specifically phonology, and to the wider discourse of phonological theory.I would like to thank Sharon Hargus for her keen attention to detail on earlier drafts of this review. Originally intended as a companion volume to Syntactic theory and the dialects of Italy (Belletti 1993), this volume grew out of a project initiated by the editor in 1995. The contributions collected in this book display the enormous richness of Italy's complex linguistic situation, a complexity which arises from the interaction between Standard Italian and Italian dialects, as well as from influences from other minority languages spoken throughout the Italian peninsula. Standard Italian as a widely used national language is little over 100 years old. However, as Berruto (1993: 3) points out, ’whether or not Italian is the national language of our country, maintaining that all Italians speak (only) Italian would be a serious misrepresentation of the facts‘ (my translation). Italian dialects are classified geographically into three macro-categories: Northern (those above the La Spezia-Rimini isogloss), Tuscan and those of the Centre-South (which includes Sicily and Sardinia) (see Lepschy & Lepschy 1992, Sobrero 1993 and Maiden & Parry 1997 for detailed information pertaining to both Standard Italian and Italian dialects). As well as providing descriptive and theoretical accounts of aspects of Standard Italian phonology, the contributions in this volume cover a range of southern and northern dialects, including Friulian, a Tuscan variety (Pisan) and data from the Raeto-Romance of Eastern Switzerland. There are, however, no in-depth treatments of the dialects of Sicily or Sardinia. Theoretical frameworks include classical generative phonology, (early) Optimality Theory, derivational constraint and repair models, moraic phonology and feature-based models. The collection resembles a who's who of Italian phonology, in that it gathers together work from many important established and upcoming scholars in the field.