Phonetics / Phonology

Exponence is the mapping of morphosyntactic structure to phonological representations, a research area which is not only the traditional bone of contention between phonology and morphology, but also approached in fundamentally diverse ways in different theoretical frameworks such as Optimality Theory and Distributed Morphology: by morphological rules carrying out complex phonological operations, highly abstract morphophonological representations, and/or by phonological constraints which are sensitive to morphological information. This volume presents a synopsis of the state-of-the-art in research on exponence, based on a novel conception: Every chapter systematically discusses a specific aspect of exponence from the point of view of current theoretical morphology, but also from a theoretical phonology perspective. Topics include nonconcatenative morphology, allomorphy, iconicity, dissimilation and truncation processes. Two detailed chapters formulate a new coherent research program for exponence which integrates the central insights of the last decades and provides important new challenges for years to come.

This volume showcases the current state of the art in phonologization research, bringing together work by leading scholars in sound change research from different disciplinary and scholarly traditions. The authors investigate the progression of sound change from the perspectives of speech perception, speech production, phonology, sociolinguistics, language acquisition, psycholinguistics, computer science, statistics, and social and cognitive psychology. This volume highlights the fruitfulness of collaborative efforts among phonologists with specialists from neighboring disciplines seeking unified theoretical explanations for the origins of sound patterns in language, as well as seeking to move toward a new and improved synthesis of synchronic and diachronic phonology.