Table of Contents

Preface xv

Acknowledgements xvii

Reading Logistics xviii

Key to Symbols xx

Part I: Phonetics and Phonology 1

1 How Are Sounds Made? The Production of Obstruents 3

1 Speech Sounds 3

2 Fricatives: Place and Manner of Articulation 6

3 Phonetic Transcription 7

4 A Hissing Fricative 9

5 A Fricative in the Back of the Mouth 11

6 A Laryngeal Fricative 14

7 Voice 16

8 The Stop Gesture 19

9 More Stops 20

10 Still More Fricatives 23

11 Affricates 25

12 Summing Up 26

Key Questions 29

Further Practice 29

2 Introducing Phonology: Assimilation 31

1 On How Bilabial Stops Become Labiodental 31

2 Total Place Assimilation in Stops 34

3 Voice Assimilation 38

4 The Organization of Language 41

5 Basic and Derived Forms 45

6 The Formalization of Rules 49

7 Derivations 52

8 Phonetics and Phonology 54

Key Questions 56

Further Practice 57

3 Sonorant Consonants 58

1 General Properties of Sonorants 59

2 Nasality 60

3 The Universal Nasal 63

4 Other Nasal Consonants 65

5 Liquids 69

6 Laterals 70

7 Rhotics 74

8 Summing Up 81

Key Questions 83

Further Practice 83

4 Natural Classes of Sounds: Distinctive Features 85

1 Descriptive Phonetic Parameters 86

2 Distinctive Features 87

3 Naturalness and Formal Economy 90

4 Place Assimilation in Nasals: Natural Classes 92

5 The Feature “Coronal”. Active and Passive Articulators 96

6 Single-Value Features 97

7 Constraining Rules: Autosegmental Formalism 99

8 Functional Groupings of Features 102

9 Feature Dependencies 105

Key Questions 112

Further Practice 112

5 Vowel Sounds: Cardinal Vowels 114

1 On What Vowels Are and How They Are Made 115

2 The Two Basic Cardinal Vowels 117

3 The Four Corner Primary Cardinal Vowels: Two Axial Parameters 119

4 Four Perceptually Intermediate Primary Cardinal Vowels: The Roundness Parameter 123

5 Cardinal Vowels and Real-World Vowels: Diacritic Symbols 126

6 Some Vowel Typology: The Basic Vowel Triangle 127

7 Quantum Vowels 129

8 Secondary Cardinal Vowels: Front Round Vowels 130

9 Back Secondary Cardinal Vowels 134

10 Central Vowels 137

Key Questions 140

Further Practice 141

6 Phonological Processes Involving Vowel Features 143

1 Distinctive Features for Vowels 144

2 Feature Dependencies 146

3 Two More Distinctive Features 147

4 Back Harmony in Turkish 149

5 Lexical Underspecification 152

6 Vowel Disharmony 154

7 The No-Crossing Constraint 157

8 German Umlaut 160

9 English Plurals 164

Key Questions 167

Further Practice 167

7 The Vowels of English 169

1 Variation in English 169

2 The Four Corner Vowels 173

3 Intermediate Primary Vowels 178

4 More Lax Vowels 181

5 Central Vowels 186

6 Homogeneous Diphthongs 190

7 Heterogeneous Diphthongs 195

8 Centring Diphthongs 199

Key Questions 202

Further Practice 202

8 The Timing Tier and the Great Vowel Shift 204

1 A Puzzle with Affricates 205

2 The Timing Tier 207

3 A Strange Set of Vowel Alternations in English 210

4 Short ~ Long Vowel Alternations 212

5 The Great Vowel Shift 214

6 The Synchronic Reflex of the GVS. Vowel Primes    and Vowel Processes 218

7 The SPE Account 221

8 Further Repercussions of the Vowel Shift 223

9 Multidimensional Phonology: The Skeleton 226

Key Questions 229

Further Practice 229

Part II: Suprasegmental Structure 233

9 The Syllable 235

1 The Shape of Children’s Early Utterances 236

2 Structure of the Core Syllable 238

3 Sonority and the Syllable 241

4 The Coda 242

5 The Rime 244

6 Basic Syllable Typology 245

7 The Nature of the Syllable 248

8 Complex Nuclei 249

9 Complex Onsets 252

10 The Sonority Hierarchy 253

11 Sonority Distance 256

Key Questions 258

Further Practice 259

10 Syllable Complexity: English Phonotactics 261

1 Complex Codas 262

2 Non-Vocalic Nuclei 265

3 Vowels in Disguise 268

4 Onset Vowels. The “OCP” 271

5 Syllabification of [ı˘u] 275

6 Onset Fulfilment 278

7 Onset Maximization. English Stop Allophony 279

8 No Complex Codas in English 284

9 The Antics of /s/ 288

Key Questions 291

Further Practice 292

11 The Phenomenon of Stress: Rhythm 294

1 Syllable Prominence 295

2 Word Prominence 296

3 Metrical Grids 299

4 Motivating Stress Constrasts 300

5 The Distribution of Stress in Personal Names 302

6 Stress Retraction under Clash 304

7 Word-Internal Stress Retraction 307

8 Retraction Failures: The Continuous Column Constraint 310

9 Rhythm 312

10 Segmental Evidence for Stress: Vowel Reduction 314

11 Stop Allophony 315

Key Questions 318

Further Practice 318

12 Metrical Principles and Parameters 321

1 English Phrasal and Compound Stress 321

2 Extrametricality 323

3 The Elsewhere Condition 325

4 Stress Assignment in Words 327

5 Basic Stress Pattern of English Nouns 329

6 The Metrical Foot 331

7 Main Word Stress in English 333

8 Multiple Stress 335

9 Stress Typology: Metrical Parameters 338

10 Word-Level Stress: Line Conflation 342

Key Questions 346

Further Practice 346

13 Syllable Weight. Further Metrical Machinery 349

1 An Additional Pattern of Stress in English 349

2 Syllable Weight and Metrical Accent 352

3 The Word-Final Consonant 357

4 Long Vowels in the Last Syllable 359

5 Moras 361

6 Foot Structure and Universal Rhythm 365

7 Non-Rhythmic Stress 368

8 Unbounded Feet 371

9 Idiosyncratic Accent 373

Key Questions 379

Further Practice 379

14 Tonal Phonology 382

1 The Phenomenon of Intonation 383

2 The Mechanics of Intonation 384

3 The Primitives of Intonation 385

4 Autosegmental Intonation 387

5 Stress and Intonation 389

6 Non-Lexical Tones 390

7 Three Types of Intonational Tones 391

8 Sentence Intonation 392

9 Tone Languages 393

10 Pitch Accent Languages 395

11 Principles of Autosegmental Association 399

12 Floating Tones 402

Key Questions 406

Further Practice 406

Part III: Advanced Theory 409

15 Modes of Application: The Cycle 411

1 Staged Grid Construction 412

2 Cyclic Tone Association 415

3 Non-Cyclic Refooting 418

4 Final Stress Retraction 422

5 Vowel Shortening 424

6 Strict Cyclicity 427

7 Non-Cyclic Accenting 429

8 Word-Internal Stress Cycle 432

9 The Structure of the Word-Final Syllable 436

Key Questions 441

Further Practice 441

16 Domains of Application: Lexical and Prosodic Phonology 444

1 Three-Mora Feet? 444

2 Violations of the Three-Syllable Window 446

3 Cyclic and Non-Cyclic Affixes 449

4 The Interaction between Morphology and Phonology 451

5 The Scope of Peripherality 455

6 Word-Internal Cohesion: The Bracket Erasure Convention 457

7 Non-Cyclic Processes 459

8 Ordered Affixes 465

9 Lexical Phonology: Problematic Orderings 469

10 The Phonological Phrase 472

11 The Intonational Phrase 476

12 The Phonological Utterance 480

13 Properties of Phonological Domains 481

14 Subphrasal Phonological Domains 483

15 Segmental Affiliation to the Phonological Word 486

16 Small Phonological Words 488

Key Questions 494

Further Practice 495

17 Aspects of Lexical Representation: Underspecification, Markedness and Feature Geometry 498

1 Effects of Strict Cyclicity 499

2 Lexical Underspecification 502

3 Feature Transparency as Underspecification 504

4 Underspecification and Markedness 507

5 The Theory of Radical Underspecification 511

6 Problems for Radical Underspecification 516

7 Contrast-Restricted Underspecification 521

8 Feature Dependencies 522

9 Feature Geometry 524

10 Class Nodes 526

11 Relations between Vowels and Consonants 529

12 Redundancies between Features 531

13 Privative Features 534

Key Questions 539

Further Practice 539

18 Rules and Derivations 543

1 Rule Ordering: Feeding and Counterfeeding 543

2 Bleeding and Counterbleeding 549

3 Transitivity 552

4 Palatalization 556

5 Further Twists 561

6 Vowel Length Alternations. Tensing 565

7 Cyclic Rules 570

8 Non-Cyclic Rules 576

Key Questions 580

Further Practice 580

19 Constraints: Optimality Theory 584

1 Naturalness of Phonological Inventory: Markedness 585

2 Constraint Ranking: Faithfulness 588

3 Structural Constraints: Syllables 592

4 The Generator. Tableaux 594

5 Basic English Syllables 596

6 Syllable Complexities 600

7 Basic Metrical Structure 605

8 Extrametricality 607

9 Quantity-Sensitivity 609

10 Secondary Footing 612

11 Correspondence Constraints 613

12 Cyclic Effects 617

13 Word Formation through Truncation 619

14 OT Morphology: English Plurals 620

15 English Possessives and Correspondence Theory 624

Key Questions 627

Further Practice 628

20 Looking Back and Moving On 630

1 Phonetics 631

2 Foundations of Phonology 634

3 Syllables 637

4 Stress 639

5 Tone 641

6 The Interaction between Morphology and Phonology 643

7 Phonological Domains 646

8 Aspects of Lexical Representation 648

9 Derivational Theory 651

10 Optimality Theory 654

Key Questions 660

Further Practice 661

References 665

Glossary 683

Index of Languages 705

Index of Names 709

Index of Subjects 712

About the Author

Iggy Roca is Professor in the Department of Language and Linguistics at the University of Essex. He specializes in phonology and is the author of Generative Phonology (1994) and the editor of Derivations and Constraints in Phonology (1997).

Wyn Johnson wrote her doctorate on the lexical phonology of French, and has been teaching phonology at the University of Essex since 1983.

Reviews

"An outstanding didactic achievement likely to replace other publications in the area of introductory phonology ... An excellent introduction to the theory and practice of mainstream generative phonology and should be on the reading list of any course on this topic. It has been written by people who are not only exceptionally good at doing linguistics, but also at teaching it." Lingua
"A Course in Phonology is a success story overall, in terms of its vast coverage and its pedagogical goals. Roca and Johnson are to be congratulated on this accomplishment, to be sure, as these will be features that will appeal to students and instructors alike. The presentation is logical and clear. Exercises are well chosen ... I have no doubt that A Course in Phonology will be, because of its depth and coverage and its attention to pedagogical concerns, the book of choice for many instructors of phonology." Phonology
"Roca has done an impressive job of covering the broad field of phonology in a comprehensive yet accessible manner. Beginning with the basic principles of phonological investigation, the text leads the reader through all major theoretical frameworks, up to and including Optimality Theory. Professor Roca's experience as an educator is evident in both content and quality; constant self-checks ensure the active participation of the reader." Kevin Vardin, Meiji Gakuin University

"[T]he meticulous care and exceptionally readable manner in which this broadly-based survey of phonology is presented will almost certainly ensure it becomes a highly successful introduction to the field." Journal of the International Phonetic Association