Taking an interdisciplinary approach to phonological theory and analysis, A Critical Introduction to Phonology introduces the key aspects of the discipline. Departing from the mainstream tradition, Daniel Silverman argues that the nature of linguistic sound systems can only be understood in the context of how they are used by speakers and listeners.By proposing that linguistic sound systems are the product of an interaction among sound (acoustics), mind (cognition), and bo...

‘Let’s eat Grandma’ OR ‘Let’s eat, Grandma’?This fun yet informative book offers bite-sized tips and advice on everything you need to know about grammar – including common misspellings, how to use punctuation correctly, applying the right tense – and will turn you from a logophobe to a grammarphile in no time!

Covering thinkers from Aristotle to Saussure and Chomsky, "Introducing Linguistics" reveals the rules and beauty that underlie language, our most human skill.

In most languages we find 'little words' which resemble a full word, but which cannot stand on their own. Instead they have to 'lean on' a neighbouring word, like the 'd, 've and unstressed 'em of Kim'd've helped'em ('Kim would have helped them'). These are clitics, and they are found in most of the world's languages. In English the clitic forms appear in the same place in the sentence that the full form of the word would appear in but in many languages clitics obey quite separate rules of...

This volume showcases recent sociolinguistic research about Wales and offers contributions from scholars working on Welsh, English and other languages spoken in the country. The chapters present a range of frameworks and methodologies used in sociolinguistics and apply them to the Welsh linguistic context. This context is very distinctive compared to the rest of the UK and represents a prime ground to observe different aspects of the interplay between language and society. The structure of...

The highly frequent word items TO and OF are often conceived merely as prepositions, carrying little meaning in themselves. This book disputes that notion by analysing the usage patterns found for OF and TO in different sets of text corpora.

The papers collected in this volume examine selected aspects of the interaction of phonology with phonetics, morphosyntax and the lexicon in a variety of languages including Korean, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, British English, Polish, Russian, Ukrainian, Dutch and Hawaiian. In order to approach the role and ways of expressing extraphonological information in phonology, the international contributors adopt different methods of analysis (data gathering, experiments, theoretical discussion...

The volume addresses issues concerning prosody generation in speech synthesis, including prosody modeling, how we can convey para- and non-linguistic information in speech synthesis, and prosody control in speech synthesis (including prosody conversions). A high level of quality has already been achieved in speech synthesis by using selection-based methods with segments of human speech. Although the method enables synthetic speech with various voice qualities and speaking styles, it requir...

This book provides a fascinating account of the psycholinguistic and social factors behind variation in speech timing in US English. With detailed discussions of its methods and data, it also acts as a valuable model for conducting corpus (socio)phonetic research.

One of the core challenges in linguistics is elucidating compounds—their formation as well as the reasons their structure varies between languages. This book on Modern Greek rises to the challenge with a meticulous treatment of its diverse, intricate compounds, a study as grounded in theory as it is rich in data. Enhancing our knowledge of compounding and word-formation in general, its exceptional scope is a worthy model for linguists, particularly morphologists, and offers insights for st...

Optimality Theory and Language Change:-discusses many optimization and linguistic issues in great detail;-treats the history of a variety of languages, including English, French, Germanic, Galician/Portuguese, Latin, Russian, and Spanish;-shows that the application of OT allows for innovative and improved analyses;-allows researchers that appeal to OT to see the connections of their (usually synchronic) work with diachronic studies;-conta...