Lexical Phonology and the History of English [Paperback]

This book aims to re-establish a rule-based phonology and rehabilitate historical evidence as a focus of phonological theory.This book analyses some differences between English, Scottish and American accents of English, and shows how they developed and why they have their current form. Although the revised version of lexical phonology presented here is intended to describe present-day patterns, it can also show how historical sound changes gave rise to these patterns.This book analyses some differences between English, Scottish and American accents of English, and shows how they developed and why they have their current form. Although the revised version of lexical phonology presented here is intended to describe present-day patterns, it can also show how historical sound changes gave rise to these patterns.This book analyzes some differences among English, Scottish and American accents of English, and shows how they developed and why they have their current form. Although the revised version of lexical phonology presented here is intended to describe present-day patterns, it can also show how historical sound changes gave rise to these patterns.Acknowledgements; 1. The r?le of history; 2. Constraining the model: current controversies in lexical phonology; 3. Applying the constraints: the Modern English Vowel Shift Rule; 4. Synchrony, diachrony and lexical phonology: the Scottish Vowel Length Rule; 5. Dialect differentiation in lexical phonology: the unwelcome effects of underspecification; 6. English /r/; Bibliography; Index.