Book Description

The Phonology of English introduces the subject from an Optimality-Theoretic perspective. Written by a high-profile American phonologist, the book presents an analysis of new generalizations about the surface shapes of English words. It will not only be the most up to date introduction to English phonology, but will also provide the clearest available account of Optimality Theory. Its combination of accessibility, originality and clear analysis make this essential reading for all those interested in the sounds of English words and some of the latest developments in linguistics theory. - ;The Phonology of English offers 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 focus is on surface distributional regularities and the results presented are based on extensive searches through various computerized lexicons. The outcome is a number of new generalizations about the phonology of English, along with confirmation of some familiar regularities. All of these empirical results are discussed in detail and presented in extensive charts with a plethora of examples. The Phonology of English also offers a unique OT analysis. This provides a detailed introduction to the intricacies of the theory as applied to a significant amount of data. A number of important theoretical proposals are developed in this model, and the analysis presents the idea that certain complex constraints and their ranking can be derived in restricted ways from more basic constraints. In addition, the book also develops the idea that syllables of English can contain from zero to three moras. It is suggested that the phonology of English only makes sense if partial morphemes of the cranberry sort are licensed more widely. 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. -