The Phonology of English A Prosodic Optimality-Theoretic Approach [Paperback]

The Phonology of Englishoffers a new approach to English phonology. It focuses on the prosody of the language, i.e. syllable and foot structure, and does so from an optimality-theoretic (OT) perspective. The book is thus intended as a detailed presentation of novel empirical results about the sound system of English, along with important theoretical results about phonological theory.

1. Some Basic Ideas
The sounds of English; Characterizing the sounds of English; Phonological generalizations; Treating phonological generalizations; Optimality Theory; Further reading
2. Syllables
Intuitive evidence for the syllable; Distributional evidence for a syllable; A general theory of the syllable; Further reading
3. English Syllables: margins and consonants
Word onsets; Word-final clusters; Medial clusters; Clusters vs. margins; Linear restrictions;Summary; Further reading
4. English syllables: peaks and moras
Vowels and diphthongs; Co-occurrence restrictions; Mora-based restrictions; Syllabic consonants and [r]; Summary; Further reading
5. Stress, Accent, and Feet
What is stress?; What is a metrical foot?; Intuitive evidence for the foot; Distributional evidence for the foot; General theory of the foot; Further reading
6. Syllables and Stress
Basic distributional regularities; The analysis; Summary; Further reading
7. The Rightmost Stress
Review of previous results; The basic analysis; The role of syllable weight; Other nominal stress patterns; Final syllables; Verbs and adjectives; Summary; Further reading
8. Other Stresses
Other stresses; Long vowels; Nonfinal primary stress; Morphemes and feet; Summary; Further reading
9. Afterword
Some remaining issues; Statistics; Russian; Remaining issues; Further reading
References

This book offers a comprehensive account of English phonology based on distributional regularities as opposed to alternations. The book is remarkably systematic and thorough in itslc-