Phonology

Master phonology, morphology, syntax & semantics theories to develop advanced analytical skills in linguistic research.

Learn the basics of the study of language sounds.

This book provides an overview of the phonology of Italian. It covers the different levels of analysis from individual sounds up to the phrasal level. It focuses on the most widely dispersed features of the language reflecting its significant regional and social variation and its most prominent regionally restricted patterns.

This is the most comprehensive account of Catalan phonology ever published. Catalan is a Romance language, occupying a position somewhere between French, Spanish, and Italian. It is the first language of six and a half million people in the northeastern Spain and of the peoples of Andorra, French Catalonia, the Balearic Islands, and a small region of Sardinia. Dr Wheeler describes Barcelona pronunciation and the major varieties of western Catalonia, Valencia, and Majorca, and considers social and stylistic variation. The author's approach is through a clear, pragmatic version of orthodox Optimality Theory and is informed by close attention to articulatory phonetics. He includes a substantial account of post-lexical (phrasal) phonology and has designed his approach to be of maximum use to those seeking either to understand the phonology and morphology of Catalan and its varieties or to set these within a comparative or typological perspective. After an introduction to the varieties of Catalan the author devotes chapters to segment inventories; syllable structure; phrasal phonology; coda voicing; coda place; cluster reduction; epenthesis; stress and prosody; word phonology and allomorphy; and the syllabification of pronominal clitics. The book is fully referenced and contains a comprehensive bibliography. It is likely to be the standard account of its subject for many years.

This spirited and original synthesis will enable its readers to acquire a real understanding of the fundamentals of phonology.